Autumn Equinox

there is this balance,
this even-keeled consciousness,
an equanimity of the breath
in the air this time of year,
the night and the day coming
into equilibrium, living and dying
reflected in the vegetation,
the need for both action and
rest, moving and pause, all
things in their time and space

Evolve
-for the elders who’ve shone
a light along the way

I’ve been watching the course
of Life more closely as
I’ve neared ‘halfway’

I’m totally clear, I may die tomorrow
of a fungal infection brought
on by an errant hang nail

This year, I started to see
and understand some parts
about this journey called life,

Facets that had never been
open to me before,
that had never been revealed

In youth. I began to witness
the power of personal
human evolution.

I’m sure I’ve seen it displayed
previously, but now, it seemed
closer, more raw and real

The strength, the peace,
the solidarity, and grounding
that some humans

Offer themselves and others
when they choose to live
with their arms stretched

Up to the divine, when
they’re moving forward in
purpose while trusting the

Siren song of the universe
to guide them to good ends,
and over hard roads, too, don’t

Mistake. I don’t think that
living this evolution is simple
in any way. To allow the

Lessons that life has offered
you to be inculcated into
your core, this isn’t a flat

Path, rather peaks and valleys, I see
my mother who pursues her
passions like watercolor and arts

Grant writing without
prompting or celebration,
and steadily understands

what she loves, what she
holds dear and then lifts
up those elements of her

Life, tending to her own
garden of desire, she invests
her best self in her and us.

All I’m saying is that for a
very long time I felt completely
perplexed with the recipe of this

thing I was witnessing–
evolution– my septuagenarian
friends, were practicing this

Art of living with purpose, too,
with love and with a fair dose
of spicy ironic interjection

Swimming every day,
hiking all over the hills
and valleys of our home

They were another of my
sign-posts. And my uncle,
who spoke the eulogy at

My aunt’s celebration of
life, a woman who also
lived and gave her life over to joy,

He has also chosen
to live in the miracle of the
era of man, to let life

Be the ocean, the teacher, and
he became the student,
he’s allowed those learnings

To become part of him
in the way he loves his
children, the way he acts

In community, the way he carries
the knowing that life will always be
a question, a universal

Query that we can only answer
by living more truly, more soundly,
more surely in verity

To that Flame that was lit within
us at our birth, the miracle of
existence realized, we evolve

On Being

be who you are and
who you can be,
and meet those two
verities inside yourself
with loving kindness
and compassion and
let it be enough to
experience the joy
of living as you see fit
as you love yourself

Steady in the Fall

the sun and moon
move into equilibrium
waxing crescent to quarter

peloton of geese ride high in
the wide blue sky, calling
and answering back, headed south

flowers still bloom, delicate violet
saturated yellow, vibrant magenta,
as grass fades, sepia to umber

fully bronze dragon fly the size of
a silver dollar flickers past in the sun
chased by a saxe blue fly the same size

grasshoppers bunch on mustard rabbitbrush
in the sway of breeze next to dark-chocolate
velvet cattails, stalks steeped in pond-water

cooper’s hawk cries from the brush
high and free like an alter ego
finding the next rodent in the undergrowth

the air takes on the rush and pulse
of crisp wind as the sun’s rays angle
longer, cooling field, flower, and fly