Weave

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.

Darkness

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, plus Polaris, Back Porch (August 2024)

Darkness

darkness comes,
bats chirruping on
the midnight hunt
for insects

pulsing chant of druid
crickets, matching
heartbeats, and
the tiny slip and creak

of the garden sail
sounds like no monster
you were expecting,
the stars are out

still and fixed until
a glance, the look-again
shows they’ve migrated
to new horizons

moved to another sphere,
other longitudes in the
deepening blackness, thank
god for this space,

this slow-moving, untethered
rest in all the wearied
world, ever more
transfixed

on the clear scent of
the stream, softly
rolling with last
night’s rain

the dark becomes
more friend
than day with this
rhythm of the universe

coursing through
rivers of stars
above, all one needs
is to sit, be, listen

observe the silken quiet
of the moment,
the breath of trees in
the waves of breezes

let go the day
where the push and pull
of the world leaks
all over your conscience

be, rest, breathe
evolve, inhale the
thousand whispered
nutrients of darkness, night

The Club of one Kid, a solo retreat somewhere, July 2024

Rowdy

Feeling rowdy
uppity

energetic
overly-jazzed

sometimes I listen
for the school

secretary to call
down and check me

out of class
Hall pass!

Freedom.
Ambulation.

An uninhibited
walk-about

Maybe I’ll go to
Scotland or France

Sometimes I
weep uncontrollably

Though I probably
could ‘control’ it

I don’t wat to,
sometimes

I feel undone
definitely not

crazy
more like that

song where Dave
says you could

look inside the person’s
skull and see

their mind,
what’s on my mind

is ‘x’ marks the spot
just above my heart

it just keeps coming up,
and loneliness

sometimes on account
of the ‘y’ but

I’m okay with ‘z’
fantasies for now

wanting to escape
or wanting to feel

it may go either way
a spectrum of emotion

Georgia O’Keefe, Pink Abstraction, 1929

Quantum Dreams

I dreamed about you last night.
The most sweet, ephemeral vignette.
We were sitting in my car.
You were in the passenger seat.

We were both sleeping, in sound repose.
The view from the car was stunning
The sun was setting over a gorgeous canyon
Or maybe it was rising.

That’s the quantum question.
Molten crimson and fuchsia flung into the cerulean air
Reflected in the clouds over vermillion sandstone and chalky copper-oxygenated azurite.
You woke.

I stirred.
We were both still groggy from the sleep,
and the car was warm and comforting
with our shared body heat.

You turned to me and said quietly… “That was so nice.”
And I smiled.
Content.
As the dream faded, just as peacefully as it began.

Symbol of everything, Peace, solo retreat, July 2024