Can you imagine? Deafness where once was joyous Sound Blindness where once filtrations of color-filled light Ricocheted Can you imagine? Losing everything? If you are human, the guess is, yes But why must pain catalyze all our understanding? Is it Truly our only teacher? Isn’t the promise of Death Enough to cause us to cling to love, to Life, to now, maybe not. So maybe we go deaf, blind, Senseless Into that good night, into the dark, waiting for The dawn with breath so small we barely live, sore Respiration Reaction, all part of this existence when what we Thought we wanted most is gone, dematerialized where Reality is echoed and Chambered Oh heart, please, live, please drink the night and day as A cup of bitter sweetness, lasting but a blink A piano hammer in the abyss, hammer to string, string bing, bing, ba-bing, go, boogie, Be
Gold Nike Shoes. Oakland Museum of California. Image, my own.
Andante
It will never do to keep running Into yourself if you can’t look up, Ponder the path of the stars in The night sky, gaze with longing And new eyes, on the moon with Rapture, take in the horizon each Day and walk into a new lifetime
Light Bulb(s). Image, my own.
Honey
Honey, laughter and green curry are all the #soulfood I need the joy of bright kaffir lime leaves charged into garlic and simmered over vegetables, a meal to carry us through the ages, a gale of fascist hail and bull shit, the storm of the century is upon us, and all we can do is cook, sing, and watch the moon as it rises high in the night, silent observer of her earthly neighbors what a perplexity what a tragedy, only for a moment, all mixed with joy and delight, how will we last, how will we survive the fight join it, gear up, only history knows on this very first calm snowy night. We hunker in, we knit, we resist like life depends on it because it does, resistance can be small nearly silent until the way is clear and that same moon swims overhead as the path is lit in the quiet dark
Moon. Image, my own.
Orb
In reality In the body Black and gray White and blue softest aura Hazing purple Bold broad Moon the Clouds opaled All around Stars and sky Dappled through and Through Lord, Bless Gratitude for Ohs and glitters Heavens and Earth The glory of it All that lone Full Moon
creation is like wielding the mystery for a moment being given the chance to turn the nautilus over in your hands and awe for a few precious flashes its precise and perfect structure, wonder at being given transubstantiational power, snippet of the infinite, devotional on the unity of all the cosmos unraveled, a glittering equilibirc instant
Driftwood, grass, trees, stones. Image, my own.
Shit That Makes Poets Laugh
a couplet of haiku getting to write the word Uranus espousing astrology while being an unbeliever writing all the people you know into poems recording the natural world and wishing for more smell words—the olfactory is important, man, and so under expressioned—playing with all mediums of art– music, history, science, language, painting, sculpture, theater– being a badass generalist the fact that mostly poets read your poems realizing that everything is art, and it’s easier than you think to tell someone to fuck off trying to figure out if anyone really has an editor? (Maggie Smith, in my dreams you’re reading this and cutting and slashing, and un en- jambing to your heart’s delight.) Hearing that one of Mary Oliver’s best poems, ‘Wild Geese’ was an exercise, and experiment in end- stopped lines performed for another poet, a magic trick (hear Krista Tippet’s interview with Oliver on her unparalleled podcast *On Being*) realizing that your fly is down, thank you John Craigie trying to figure out the infinite mystery while trying to figure out american politics while simultaneously realizing that life is built on water looking up the word ‘word’ in a thesaurus realizing that you should have hidden an easter egg in all of your work and you’ve forgotten
Balance. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
Libra Season
As Libra season concludes, I’d like to invite all of us to love a lot of Libras for the next few days. Like my triple air massage therapist, bless her. And my best friend of all time, he could not be more elegant and nuanced in his approach to the world, and people who I don’t even know, and people I once knew all air signs, maybe it is the open-hearted pleasers, balancing their relationships, the “we” that Libras present, it’s that fire in me that always gets stirred up by the scale and measure, skin and bones, maybe it is the quality of the breeze this time of year that makes me fall in love with Libras, a little more each October, regardless, I breath the unruly whips of Wind and Rain, the scatter of leaves, the romance of dying with Libras in mind
Hunter’s Moon. Super Moon. Full Moon. October 2024. Image, my own.
Chap Book best is the open chap book on the soul leave it vulnerable in air
Green things and fog. Image, my own.
Lovng Hard (no i) Sussing and figuring and preparing and planning as to how to love difficult people: Drive the Bus, Like Mo Willems’ Pigeon, in the front seat Self-assured, ready Without license, but there is no playbook to love these difficult, purposeless individuals NPCs, people who have, a bit, burned out on life Who see the end, but seem to have no ideas on wellness or whole ness- are not willing or able to take the reins any longer, who are Offensive and rude Blunt without purpose Unmeasured in their Aimless wanderings through Time and Space, Pretentious in their lack of attention to others, Tough
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
Woods. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
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
Milky Way Galaxy looking into the arm, High Uinta Wilderness, August 2024. Photo Ryan Moat.
Pluto
It stands that astrology could all be bull shit But so could a lot of other concepts offered in the universe of human understanding or misunderstanding Do you really know? Do you just believe? These are two different things
Air and Space Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., sometime in 2008, and Pluto had been stripped of Planetary status. I was sad. For no reason other than “My very educated mother just sent us nine Pizzas” wouldn’t be a thing anymore. I’m not Sure what about this ninth rock being demoted
depressed me, but when we entered the hall of Planets, the original installation next to Uranus Had not been taken down yet. It was only Inconsiderately draped with a huge swath of Gray fabric. You could still see Pluto’s form Lumped with, Charon, his major moon bulbing up
Under the gray canvas. I was sad. I am woman of faith, despite my unknowing And when my horoscope explains that Pluto is finally leaving Capricorn after fifteen years, it makes complete sense to me, I’m not saying that the information is designed
For anyone else on planet Earth, but, damn, if I don’t feel this revelation like fire Like second chances, like all explanations that are explainable and can and cannot be explained Adios, Pluto. You were downgraded from Planet status a long time ago.
Comet C/2020 F3 (Neowise), Mirror Lake, Utah, December 2020. Photo Ryan Moat.
Für Beethoven
I finally get it I understand How L. v. Bthvn Knew the whole Of life and love Because he felt it So poignantly So achingly So intimately When he writes Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor (Für Elise) You can Literally sing The notes to The night music– Frogs and crickets Streams and rain Stars and bats Nocturnal rodents– Keeping melody, But poor Mozart His night music is All pomp, all praise And glory And that has Never been what Night is about I suppose Mozart Will never know
Andromeda Galaxy, M31. September 2021. Photo Ryan Moat.
Dying
it was the time of dying yet color still held, sunflowers paused grass, variegated green rest was coming the fall, the browning leaves and roots stems bore that truth the mountain, dusty gray yesterday was dressed in snow again today pinking wreaths of clouds and icy indigo striations of oncoming dusk some death is good the power of it real and raw, and magic turning over seasons the smell of fires, newly burning
Almost New Moon. April 29, 2020. Photo Ryan Moat.
Transformation
Truly time for a transformation, the season to greet the New Moon
at her best, she needs time to shed the old skin and celebrate the ruin
time to peel back old eyes from the clay of stunted vision, bright and clear
her future from the death of many miracles, the rivulet won’t
wait, it is time to flow with strength and abandon with knowing and grace
Orion Nebula. Big Cottonwood Canyon. January 30, 2021. Photo Ryan Moat.
Scire (ski:re) to know. Latin. for Starr
To know Time is to begin to understand the mortal drum of the Universe
The thrum of blood coursing through your veins, narrative in your head, bringing you closer to Death,
but to know Life is to know the thousand Drums cacuophonizing consciousness Beating,
to know to see to love to joy to song to peace
Yes, to tragedy but, to know the Infinite is to know that a star is birthed in an unfathomably incandescent act of fusion
Bed of a nebula beginning of Everything, Creation– calamitous, cataclysmic formidable, entropic where one star died, another reborn
In the End, we’ll remember this bead to celebrate one life, it returns us to our original scire– to know– all love
Refined + Rugged 