Oregon

October 15, 2024October 16, 2024 | Megan

No Phone

All this connectivity
Search engines and
Social media, email
Severs and direct
Message platforms
Every app, it can
Certainly feel
Exhausting to be
so very connected
to each other, yet
Barely involved with
One another,
Bodily, physically,
Beyond productivity
Trackers and fitness
Bits what happens
When you are
Cabined away
In the ferns, Sitka
Spruce, magnolia, and
Dogwood of the

Oregon Coast
Magic as the mist
rolls in from
Cove Beach and you
Stretch out on a
Carnelian settee to
Watch the fog billow
In and congeal on the
Picture windows and
Back-bone of
Driftwood lying in the
Long grass
Gray-white skeletons
of the Ocean made
Manifest to
Remind that
Everything has
Source, spirit, purpose
You put some Peace
Piece, Bill Evans
On the record player,

But eventually let
Everything fall silent
Once again because
The treasure is the
Stillness, the disconnect
The quiet hum of the
Needle across vinyl
Being dampened by
Swelling waves perhaps
Yards away, the mighty
Roll of the Ocean speaking
that sometimes being
Whole means being
Havened away, un-
Reachable,
no phone,
SOS, airplane mode,
Out of service
Out-of-office
Elsewhere, gone

More sunset, i. Oregon, Coast. Image, my own.

Slow Dance

Slow dance with yourself on a Sunday morning
Take your hair down and grab one hand in your other
Life your spirit onto the raw wooden floor of the
Little house you call home, hickory scraped by thoughtful
Hands, where you live, sway to the beat of your heart, love
In time to the pulse of your quiet longings, smile
in self-solidarity, spin, circle, so that you see where
you are, grounded, so that your heart senses that
every part of you understands that you are the only one
who can inhabit your soul, your spirit, your life, your love
kiss your own vitality with a gentle nod, your body, your mind,
your essence, well, whole, perfectly safe. Let the music
take your shoulders and hips in the rhythm and stride
or two, of just you, slow dancing with yourself

Beija Flora, Cove Beach, Oregon. Image, my own.

Yes

Yes to me
Yes to life
Yes to ocean
Yes to mountain
Yes to lift
Yes to love
Yes to change
Yes to work
Yes to nobility
Yes to learning
Yes to risk

New Mythologies: Achilles

I’ve needed new mythologies
For a long while now, in fact,
I remember stating this bluntly
When heading out for a swim
Around the long arm of a lake
With a friend, and it turns
Out that the inception of these

Tales and tides save(d) me
from both pride and envy,
boredom and bliss, these
mythologies had already begun to
Take root in my life,
some of them recently, and some
Long, long ago

Achilles was the son of Thetis
And Peleus most strong and noble
Soldier of the Trojan War who was
Dipped in the River Styx by his ankle
His weakness, you know it,
Because it becomes the place of his
Death, pierced by Paris’s arrow

But my achilles is the only thing that
Was saved when I fell free
Climbing, ten feet, and my foot was torn from
My ankle nearly off, but for the
tendon, the achilles, which saved me–
my ability to walk, to run, to ambulate, to
Be in the woods and rivers, canyons
And valleys

How important then, that all that was
Holding my life together actually was
My hubris, my weakness, my ineptitude
The irony wasn’t lost on me, and how
Weakness is in us all, and thereby
A crucial part of every life
And maybe our downfall

But may actually become our very
Strength as I learned the gift of
Living, of understanding difference
And ability across many fractals
Was shown and learned to show
Others empathy in their need,
In their frailty

I was dipped back into mortality
By my wound, by my heel,
By my maiming
The weak point
The place of mortality
The pinch of imperfection
Made into strength

Jack Johnson

September 12, 2024September 15, 2024 | Megan

Happy Day, my friends. We’re getting on toward the weekend. Thank you for reading, sharing, and general love for poetry. Even my poetry. 😉 XX, M

Just want to ask anyone who reads this post to kiss Jack Johnson for me if you see him. Oh, and invite him, Jack Johnson, to come and play at my son’s 16th birthday!

Jack, from a Mother,
with love

Sometimes,
you have to write
love poems to people
you may never meet.
Here is mine:
Jack,
We, my people and I,
Have listened to you,
Jack,
their whole lives.
I have to say ‘their’
whole lives because I
found you on a foggy
day in Anchorage,
Alaska. Bubbly Toes
and all. A CD player
in the white honda
accord. I was 19.
When they, my boys,
were small
and still afraid of Mike
Wazowski. You know,
Mike, he’s scary.
He scares children.
On purpose. One eye.
My boys understood
exactly what you
were saying. It
Is. Completely.
Utterly. Better.
When we are
together, Jack.
I don’t mean you
and I, or you and me,
but me and them, Jack
You sang it best.
And you turned
our whole world
Upside Down for
the better. In fact,
that is exactly what
We’ve done. My boys
and I, we’ve tried
to share the love
We’ve found with
everyone. And,
you know, I think
it is working.
With love, M

One Little Fisherman. San Francisco Bay, Crown Beach Tidal Zone. Image, my own.

Ocean in the Bay

there is a time that is tattooed
in my memory, it will never be extracted
We were on Crown Beach, in the San
Francisco Bay, and somehow,
All of Us– Mothers and children,

Grandmothers, mothers and
daughters, sons, and cousins, and
grandchildren, we swam into the
tide. We rocked in the waves; we
laughed out loud with joy in the
shift of the spray, mousse, and suds

god, that memory will sustain
me until the end of my days
an inaudible melody of the past
so whole, so common,
so elemental,
so joy

More Half Moon. September 2024. Image, my own.

Oh, she knew

Oh, she knew
every step in this
dance

She walked in strength,
threaded through the lecterns to
shake

his hand, who would
never have given Her the same grace and
humanity

Of course, she knew,
to live your life in the skin of a
woman

You’d have to know,
what a task, what a challenge, what a
gift

Beach Walkers. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Let it Be

Let it overwhelm you
the unwashed windows
and dishes and uncut grass

Let it be heavy, the
loneliness, the longing, the
unfilled space

Let it be exhausting, to be with
others and support them when you
can barely support yourself

Let it be Wednesdays of barely
making it. Fridays of surrender, and Sundays of
wishing you could have just one more.

Let it be weary when you wish you had the
energy to help one more human with
their diction and syntax

Let it be a complete let-down to
go to the grocery store at 9 p.m. under the too-green
neon lights, the alien otherworld before you sleep

Let it be 6 a.m. and you simply cannot
want for the slow coffee of Saturdays the physical newspaper,
black ink and real paper in your hands

Let it be too much to drink at happy hour on a Thursday
when you know you’ll pay for it
the very next day, poor move

Let it be hiding from virtual bread crumbs that somehow
you created and left for yourself, unanswered
texts and plans gone cold

Ocean

September 10, 2024September 10, 2024 | Megan

Noordwijk, Netherlands; North Sea Shore. January 2023. Image, my own.

Regret

I stood in the tide of
the North Sea
and I should have dived in.
I should have stripped
off my clothes
like an overgrown baby
and screamed and
squawked into the surf

I should have shrugged
off my care for my
friend’s husband. I’m
sure he would have
politely turned around
if I’d asked.
then I’d have had to
contend with the flotsam

on the beach, but that
wouldn’t have mattered,
half shells, stones, sponges
even the cuts on my
feet would have been
worth it if I’d boldly
yawped into the bubbling
spume, a signal

to the universe that I knew,
I saw what was coming
next (which is a lie)
but in that moment,
to prove to myself I was
animate, to confirm I
could do anything, to
beat my chest at the

edge of the world,
to be alive,
especially if I had
known everything that
would begin– days
later– the layers of dreams
I’d have to divest,
the altar I’d have to burn

in sacrilege, the pain that
would engulf me, the end
This is important because
now I know that my
jaunt into the North Sea
would look pale,
naked, unfeathered in
comparison to reality

and it really wouldn’t
have changed anything.
the tide would have
rolled, salt-gray, rhythmic,
unforgiving, over me
as the lanterns burned
brightly in the beach house
but it’s one thing I may
always regret

Flotsam of the North Sea. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.

Ghost

You never think
That someone will pass through you
Like the ghost of who they once were
Like the spirit of a person you once knew

You never think
That it could hurt so badly to unravel
Like every color of who they were was in you
Like each thread that stitched you all together was undone

You never knew
What death while someone is alive feels like
What saying goodbye without saying anything means
What one body of pain can experience

Until you knew

Tide. North Sea, Noordwijk, Netherlands. Imgae, my own.

Comfort

sink into the folds
of an oversized chaise
tuck your body between
the seat cushion
and english arm
rest your head on the
soft folds of the chenille
bolster, squish and
knead yourself into
the billows of down fill
rest all of yourself in
there to see if you’ll
be safe from the storm

Directions. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.

Celebrate

listen, don’t you forget
that even days of sorrow
can be days of celebration
that’s the paradox
we were born for this

My House at Night. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.

Spoon

if you bring your thighs
right under the nook
of my knees
and the bulk of your
body right into the
curve of my hips
and your chest flush
with my back and
wrap yourself around
me all night, I
may remember what
love, and safety, and
sighing in peace
really feels like
I’ll be home again
quiet, delicious, hazy jazz
you’ll quell my longing