“Astronomy for the use of schools and academies.” Joseph A. Gillett (1882)
Oceanus Procellarum
His eyes the hue of all Earth’s oceans tossed In tumult (spume, spray) churn infinitely Her heart, the oceans of the moon, ensconced In basalt magma mares laid anciently He senses love and feels it coursing through Her ever-present depth, the seat of grief Conditions both are now accustomed to By life’s relentless quest to find relief Yet, love and laughter fill their atmosphere A world where they alone can live and be It saves them from an epoch of disaster– A home, a space, a place—this you and me New woven in this moment learning how Their love gives import to the here and now
Sunset over Utah Lake. (February 2025)
Sea of Scorpio
Darling, I haven’t yet told you How beautiful your eyes are Like the ocean’s depth, a sea Moved by primordial currents, dark, Yes, below the surface, but there Beautiful, almost infinitesimal Flecks of ochre, golden troves, In the rippling rich blue that Remind me of the entire universe Contained in that chasm, which Is to say soul, kelp ribbons Amber stones, acorn barnacles, Brittle stars brought to surface by Maelstrom. Sign that all the Depths you’ve fathomed where You learned through excruciating Joy and wracking gladness, an Abyss rife with life and pain, Eternal you, there laid bare Inside your beautiful eyes
each stalk of grass is hollow and barren this time of year skeletons of viridescent pasts like raw leafless trees memories of living and of dying the pulling back the cocooning of life in silent night, darkness chambers, interiors of many plants and animals teaches us all about the death and the rebirth of life, light so that we won’t fully despair
Deer Creek. Image, my own.
The Return
the light returns this morning with the owls they call from tree to branch, as sun
pinks surely over the charcoaled horizon kilned through night, and sealed in the new, cold light
of this winter morning where I’m aghast at the magic, memory magnificence, majesty transitive verb
of the whole thing where I am present when the light is seven minutes old and each
photon graces my retina with the reminder that the light always returns until it doesn’t
until the whole sky is bathed in numinous halogenic possibility the presence of the now
as the light returns may we remember the power of the darkness the importance
of slow, intentional rest, the rejuvenating properties of sleep for a world that simply needs to listen to
the magic of the intransitive verbs of owls
Christmas Windmill. Image, my own.
Dark
Enfold me in your blackness, I don’t want to be afraid of the dark In fact, I want to embrace my shadow Shadows of all that I thought would Suck the marrow out of me, but instead Offered me a respite, a resting place A hallowed breath of solace and silence Dark, the thing that so much incandescent Luminosity is meant to fight, to ward off, as Humanity wilts under all this light
Tamarisk and Gray Skies. Image, my own.
Space
Maybe the most surprising thing about poems is that they take a fair amount of space and time The words are often all there, waiting on the lip, the tip of consciousness, but flow takes room Takes open-ended realities, wide skies like altars in the arcing air, vast closenesses and distances Which the heart contemplates, the healing place, the hell, the compassionate lengths to which a Human will go to tell a truth, a peace, a playful nothing, a love, a life, a poem
The Road. Image, my own.
Don’t Die
when it began, I’m not quite sure, but as of late my son has a new post script for nearly every exchange, “don’t die” he tells me as I start the engine of the car, “don’t die” he encourages as I head off to work “don’t die” when the rain is falling in sheets that darken each atom of exposed earth, he must understand something about the nature of life
Beloved and Time. Image, Aubreigh Parks.
Celebration
sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the light minute by minute over the horizon, moment by moment in our children’s eyes. Sometimes the celebration will be the sleep, the forgetting, the separation and the longing which brings deeper communion with the divine, the place, the way, unsure, the path, the journey, one precious step at a time. Sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the self, the yearning, expanding, nearly cracking open of your sternum with the enlarging, ever-beating heart, the lungs full-burdened with life giving nitrogen plus oxygen, exhale the heaviness and grief, inhale, close your eyes and let go
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
A torche glitters in her hand, a brightly whishing brand lighting the ways– a choice, the path you take, the path you don’t, all paths you leave behind– they are equally lighted by her candle, paths you can see now and will never be
revealed again, in the flickering breath the shadows cast into the recessed flume, the light loses its brilliance, the gravel of the third way spooled out along the straighter path, and the second road banking darkly into the far side of some
gray and dusty landscape which even the brighted stars cannot now expose, So what does this goddess of the dark night and her burning wooden beam divine, does the curve of her hip signal some portent, message of direction,
no, the way, the path, the journey will not be signaled by another, you must choose, you must contemplate, intuit, and define your bounds your path will be yours, after all, your own, so you must own your choice
wavering again, the flame whispers from some fate-wind ahead, some ancient breath of the beyond, you grip the paper of your healing in your pocket and take one long breath, exhaled in the rising chill, a mist
spurled ahead, looking up into the star-strewn night the weight of the choice comes softly on the shoulders of the traveler, an unseen cloak, take a small but firm step toward the flume, the future
Canemah Bluff Nature Park. Oregon. Image, my own.
Clay
Molded and molding, shaping, shifting, pressure, smooth tension, long lines a steady firmness, spirit of water, sunlight, earth, release, become
New Moon Amulet. December 2024. Image, my own.
Talisman
Can any thing be magic? Any blob of gold or Pressing of silver, can An object, an item, a Pinecone or umber fleck of Bark be imbued with Power or general chemistry That brings transmutational Ability, alchemy, divination
Canemah Bluff Nature Park. Oregon. Image, my own.
Some grief never leaves
And I know this because of arthritis Some grief is permanent, the relationship With a parent that you’ll never have, the Child who never entered your life, the Star that never rose in its proper place There will be some things that leave Mortally permanent scars, situations Which will never be shifted into Redemptive tales. Some scars Will ever be with us to remind us How pain and grief bring understanding Gained in no other way,
Starlight street at night. Fukuōji Kazuhiko.
Journey
It began to ring true Several steps from where The grief began, the opening of the way, the continued rock and slosh of the water Eyes opened on a world And existence that was nothing Like what tiny kernel of promise In life began as. Nothing like the seed of the idea of the life you thought you’d live, the contrast was searing and startling at first. But then, by gradual degrees, it became whole, sound, founded, and sacred opportunity
Refined + Rugged 