grass

Absaroka Mountains, Paradise Valley, Montana. May 2025.

On Wednesdays

And sometimes, on Wednesdays,
you feel altogether less than.
Less than creative. Less than
bright; less than enough. Still
there is this desire to burst some

seal in the universe to say what
you feel. And you determine
to send the man you love a letter
because you are also reminded
by your intro to writing classes

how powerful our interactions,
entanglements with the natural
world really are. Reliving our
gorgeous weekend in Montana.
Wide skies, iridescent light. The river,

carving out its channel, hosting
bobbing rafts of geese, the
swift water constantly breathing,
caressing, quick-tickling its banks.
Feet, pinked, cold and smoothed

by silt and stones. The mule ears
sunshining in bunches on the
low slope of each sky-grazing
mountain range– Absaroka, Crazy,
Gallatin, Tobacco Root– still white-

tipped with winter, now green-
black with pines, avalanche lines
and juicy jade undergrowth
all silently worshiping Spring,
new whorls of love made daily

Yellowstone River, Paradise Valley, Montana. May 2025.

Deluge

Spring, you may wander through my
soul in infinite spectacles of rebirth,
interrobangs of golden mule ears
apostrophes of purple monkshood,
little ellipsis of mountain service berries
punctuating each hillside and long
top-frothing grasses, mountain oceans
in growing breezes, a cloudy sky meant
to cast angles and halos, one
moment warm and the next a
whipping rain, a deluge,
steady then soft, pelting then gauze,
a corporeal mist clinging to river beds,
mountain roots and renewal

Skin
shedding
morphing, learning,
lose, grow, shift, change
a year for becoming strong and centered
snake

Blindness
absolute blindness
creates false hope, fists clenched and
clinging old, wet sand

Sight
when the grief subsides
the soul is filled with blinding
joy, internal sight

See
did you want to drive
your military complex
around on the street

Absaroka Range, Paradise Valley, Montana.

Stairs to the Coast. Oregon. Image, my own.

October Bowery

when fall begins to crystalize, like any change,
the first real storm front moves in,
the leaves which scudded about yesterday
are frozen to the sidewalk, gathering in
browning-yellow scrolls, little edicts of
what is to come, they thaw and scatter
again across streams and gullies where
the thin water still wants to feed the living
thing before being silenced in ice, or
leave monochrome sepias on pavement,
the Hunter’s moon, high and bright illumines
the grass, reedy wisps along the midnight walk,
the dusty path where the air cools, snappy,
crisp, that breath of winter’s coming, flora seized
red in its death, clinging to branch and vine,
each day more dried and dead, ruffled and flurried
by immediate breezes, sounding like Japanese
paper fanfared by a round and excited toddler,
portents of the next season soon to fall
in golden droplets of summer’s dreams
the ocher aspen leaves, in sheets and
flakes of fiery autumn light dazzling and
freshly disconnected from their source right
before they meet the dust and decompose

Sun, Sky, Beach, Life. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Strength

Growing is a season of its own, one of loving kindness rooted in faith
one of far-seeing vastness, while standing in sacred spaces. For whatever waves,
winds, and ways that will ever-continue to toss and take their course, stand
in your gifts and rest in fullness, plentitude. Delight in bounty and abundance.
Move from ire to the rich roundness of the good in all living things–
circles of true compassion and empathy which connect all creation– human,
animal, plant, living, all animate with atoms as the entire universe speaks the
soundness of its existence, the tenor of being, the voice of living and the lived

Ocean, Tide, Tree, Coast. Oregon. Image, my own.

Point

when i am in my
brain and heart i realize this
is the goddamn point

Conscious Living

What is it to be alive?
In the rich, abundant world
A sterling jay’s deeply
Decked sapphire feathers
crested head
nestled in the magnolia bush
outside my window
the air as thick as dew,
yet moving as if on an
unheard music suspended
by the wind’s unseen breath

and ocean spume, spurl, churn
TO be part of Earth’s respiration
tide, current, wave, flow, coast
where Earth’s breath meets
land-sand, rock, tree, stone
every piece of physical
particulate of the confirmation
of all alive and breathing
beings, being moved
smoothed, rocked, waved, rolled
over and over in the sea’s bosom

Stones and Seal Carcass. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Ocean

I used to think I wasn’t an ocean
person. But these rocky, cliffy,
craggy knobs of sea-shorn trees,
smooth stones and crusty conglomerates
crab shells, jelly-fish skeletons, strips of
kelp carcass, and clings of driftwood
really wrap me into the rhythm of
the tide