gift

Weave

| Megan
Hoar Frost. December 2024. Image, my own.

Chancel

And now I bow
In the nave
I built with my
Own hands
A force of will
Maybe, and of
Hope, and strength
And love, and
Power, and good
Ness and weak
Ness and sacrifice
And longing and
Grief and beginning
I kneel before this
Altar to my dreams
Before I burn
It down, before
The doing and
Undoing pulse
Through my being
And there it is
Again, my knowing
In the unknowing
That this temple
This altar this
Divine expression
Must ignite, must
Burn, must be made
Into ash, and thereby
Made into everything
That comes after–
The garden, the
Synagogue, the holiest
Holy, of all the sacred
Spaces, filled with the
Breath, the Fire of the
Divine Universe intoned
In your throat, in your
Heart, in your center
Melted to make
Way for something New

Wintery walk. Image, my own.

Gift

Sometimes the memories
And myths that were woven
Into your childhood become
Magic again to your arcing
Soul. The songs that break
Forth in trumpets. The
Prayers that end in good
Tidings. The trees all
Dressed in snow and stars
Light against long December
Nights which beg gathering
And joy-filled repasts

Aspen and snow. Image, my own.

Roads Taken

Two roads diverged in a snowy wood
And knowingly, quiet and somber I stood,
looking out on the starry, moonlit way
then took the path that had already been trod

With careful foot-fall through the hoary frost,
after the ribbon of travelers who’d crossed
the fork in the road, the decision place
And rather than test the dark and the cold

I took the chance to walk along
where others had gone, and bend my care
instead to perceiving the moment, the present
The here, the now, the trees and the fences

I shall be telling this in an age
from maiden, to matron, to crone, to sage,
I took the road that many had paved
And made it my journey, anyway

Fern Frost. Photograph: Skip Via, West Valley Naturalists.

Braid

dark and light
strands of fermion
behavior spin
good
evil
if they
exist
tethered
whole
to the same
fate maybe
driving Dirac’s
trick
as truth
every particle
we are made of
even distantly
is woven, connected
to the cosmological
horizon, all tangled up,
simultaneously unspun
strand by strand into
infinity

Half Moon. Image, my own.

Nothing Like

| Megan
Jupiter and the Pleiades. November. Northern Hemisphere. Image, my own.

Holocene

When the sky lifts, so lapis and milky blue,
Your ocular senses are overwhelmed
The owl calls out, into and through the pencil-
Sketched branches of the cottonwood, then
Down from the neighbor’s roof, as the golden

Sky continues to lift into day, a flat aquamarine
The stark lines of leafless branches against
The air stand beckoning, the promise and
Possibility of new– growth, change, revivification
Glittering diamonds of momentary snow still

Hold winter’s mystery. We do not know what
We will be when the new buds come, but only
What is– this moment, this tree, this
Possibility of everything, anything
Makes our heads spin and swim

Bounded by our humanness, mortality
Consequence, but dazzled by all that is
In us– the roads we’ve wandered, mountains
We’ve scaled, journeys taken and joyed over
And travailed. So much unknown

It still feels like the owl is a good omen
Round white face, deep open amber eyes, wide
And night-visioned, all the flecks and freckled feather
patterns of each wing spread against dawn and dusk
Gifts that portent deaths and lives to come

No Name Saloon. Park City. Image, my own.

Shoes

When your shoes wear
out
run like hell through
tulip fields
Take off
to the mountains
Climb every geologic
Formation
Just to
Prove
You’re alive
You can
You’re not dead… yet
You still want
To spend that
moment with the crickets
under night’s blackness
only the stars
know you’re there

When your shoes are
worn out
you take your daughter to
the gravel pit
and train
your camera lens
on the North Star
tripod so still
to prove
you know
where you are going
even though you
Don’t
you depress
the shutter
let the sky bleed in
for hours
and all you are left with
is time

No time left
But you have those
Shoes
to remind you
to keep you
on your journey
Home–
Through–
Around–
To–
To that time
When the cosmos
smudged its glory
across the lens of
your camera
Film
Still
the most sure sign
that the stars
will fall in
to center
North
Balance
bringing these stars
to you

Autumn Sunset. November 2024. Image, my own.

Question(s)

For all those who question:
Borders
Boundaries
Countries
Alliances
Allies
Friends
Enemies
Economies
Lovers
Children
Fools
Frauds
Race
Place
Faith

I love you

Winter Dandelion. Acrylic on heavyweight cotton paper. Margo Elizabeth Glass. 2024

Night Guide

When Ursa Major dips so low
In the Northern Hemisphere that
Only her two guiding stars are
Visible in the deep of darkness
Black, the seven sisters start to rise
Pleiades, in silent winter’s night as
Cassiopeia, queen, stands out above
The calm chill also pointing her way to our
Closest cosmic simulacrum Andromeda
The stars are there, uncaring and seemingly
Cold, distant even impossibly far, and yet
Known, seen, perceived though the crickets
Haven’t made a sound, the air, nearly
Incorporeal breaths of rest, sleep,
A thousand dreams take flight

Moon, Venus, Timpanogos. Image, Steve Olpin.

Jack Johnson

| 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

Lithograph 19. Paul Klee.