“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
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
Coastal Sunset, Falcon Cove, Oregon. Image, my own.
No Phone
All this connectivity Search engines and Social media, email Severs and direct Message platforms Every app, it can Certainly feel Exhausting to be so very connected to each other, yet Barely involved with One another, Bodily, physically, Beyond productivity Trackers and fitness Bits what happens When you are Cabined away In the ferns, Sitka Spruce, magnolia, and Dogwood of the
Oregon Coast Magic as the mist rolls in from Cove Beach and you Stretch out on a Carnelian settee to Watch the fog billow In and congeal on the Picture windows and Back-bone of Driftwood lying in the Long grass Gray-white skeletons of the Ocean made Manifest to Remind that Everything has Source, spirit, purpose You put some Peace Piece, Bill Evans On the record player,
But eventually let Everything fall silent Once again because The treasure is the Stillness, the disconnect The quiet hum of the Needle across vinyl Being dampened by Swelling waves perhaps Yards away, the mighty Roll of the Ocean speaking that sometimes being Whole means being Havened away, un- Reachable, no phone, SOS, airplane mode, Out of service Out-of-office Elsewhere, gone
More sunset, i. Oregon, Coast. Image, my own.
Slow Dance
Slow dance with yourself on a Sunday morning Take your hair down and grab one hand in your other Life your spirit onto the raw wooden floor of the Little house you call home, hickory scraped by thoughtful Hands, where you live, sway to the beat of your heart, love In time to the pulse of your quiet longings, smile in self-solidarity, spin, circle, so that you see where you are, grounded, so that your heart senses that every part of you understands that you are the only one who can inhabit your soul, your spirit, your life, your love kiss your own vitality with a gentle nod, your body, your mind, your essence, well, whole, perfectly safe. Let the music take your shoulders and hips in the rhythm and stride or two, of just you, slow dancing with yourself
Beija Flora, Cove Beach, Oregon. Image, my own.
Yes
Yes to me Yes to life Yes to ocean Yes to mountain Yes to lift Yes to love Yes to change Yes to work Yes to nobility Yes to learning Yes to risk
Sunset, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
New Mythologies: Achilles
I’ve needed new mythologies For a long while now, in fact, I remember stating this bluntly When heading out for a swim Around the long arm of a lake With a friend, and it turns Out that the inception of these
Tales and tides save(d) me from both pride and envy, boredom and bliss, these mythologies had already begun to Take root in my life, some of them recently, and some Long, long ago
Achilles was the son of Thetis And Peleus most strong and noble Soldier of the Trojan War who was Dipped in the River Styx by his ankle His weakness, you know it, Because it becomes the place of his Death, pierced by Paris’s arrow
But my achilles is the only thing that Was saved when I fell free Climbing, ten feet, and my foot was torn from My ankle nearly off, but for the tendon, the achilles, which saved me– my ability to walk, to run, to ambulate, to Be in the woods and rivers, canyons And valleys
How important then, that all that was Holding my life together actually was My hubris, my weakness, my ineptitude The irony wasn’t lost on me, and how Weakness is in us all, and thereby A crucial part of every life And maybe our downfall
But may actually become our very Strength as I learned the gift of Living, of understanding difference And ability across many fractals Was shown and learned to show Others empathy in their need, In their frailty
I was dipped back into mortality By my wound, by my heel, By my maiming The weak point The place of mortality The pinch of imperfection Made into strength
Happy Day, my friends. We’re getting on toward the weekend. Thank you for reading, sharing, and general love for poetry. Even my poetry. 😉 XX, M
Just want to ask anyone who reads this post to kiss Jack Johnson for me if you see him. Oh, and invite him, Jack Johnson, to come and play at my son’s 16th birthday!
Jack, from a Mother, with love
Sometimes, you have to write love poems to people you may never meet. Here is mine: Jack, We, my people and I, Have listened to you, Jack, their whole lives. I have to say ‘their’ whole lives because I found you on a foggy day in Anchorage, Alaska. Bubbly Toes and all. A CD player in the white honda accord. I was 19. When they, my boys, were small and still afraid of Mike Wazowski. You know, Mike, he’s scary. He scares children. On purpose. One eye. My boys understood exactly what you were saying. It Is. Completely. Utterly. Better. When we are together, Jack. I don’t mean you and I, or you and me, but me and them, Jack You sang it best. And you turned our whole world Upside Down for the better. In fact, that is exactly what We’ve done. My boys and I, we’ve tried to share the love We’ve found with everyone. And, you know, I think it is working. With love, M
One Little Fisherman. San Francisco Bay, Crown Beach Tidal Zone. Image, my own.
Ocean in the Bay there is a time that is tattooed in my memory, it will never be extracted We were on Crown Beach, in the San Francisco Bay, and somehow, All of Us– Mothers and children,
Grandmothers, mothers and daughters, sons, and cousins, and grandchildren, we swam into the tide. We rocked in the waves; we laughed out loud with joy in the shift of the spray, mousse, and suds
god, that memory will sustain me until the end of my days an inaudible melody of the past so whole, so common, so elemental, so joy
More Half Moon. September 2024. Image, my own.
Oh, she knew
Oh, she knew every step in this dance
She walked in strength, threaded through the lecterns to shake
his hand, who would never have given Her the same grace and humanity
Of course, she knew, to live your life in the skin of a woman
You’d have to know, what a task, what a challenge, what a gift
Beach Walkers. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Let it Be
Let it overwhelm you the unwashed windows and dishes and uncut grass
Let it be heavy, the loneliness, the longing, the unfilled space
Let it be exhausting, to be with others and support them when you can barely support yourself
Let it be Wednesdays of barely making it. Fridays of surrender, and Sundays of wishing you could have just one more.
Let it be weary when you wish you had the energy to help one more human with their diction and syntax
Let it be a complete let-down to go to the grocery store at 9 p.m. under the too-green neon lights, the alien otherworld before you sleep
Let it be 6 a.m. and you simply cannot want for the slow coffee of Saturdays the physical newspaper, black ink and real paper in your hands
Let it be too much to drink at happy hour on a Thursday when you know you’ll pay for it the very next day, poor move
Let it be hiding from virtual bread crumbs that somehow you created and left for yourself, unanswered texts and plans gone cold
Noordwijk, Netherlands; North Sea Shore. January 2023. Image, my own.
Regret
I stood in the tide of the North Sea and I should have dived in. I should have stripped off my clothes like an overgrown baby and screamed and squawked into the surf
I should have shrugged off my care for my friend’s husband. I’m sure he would have politely turned around if I’d asked. then I’d have had to contend with the flotsam
on the beach, but that wouldn’t have mattered, half shells, stones, sponges even the cuts on my feet would have been worth it if I’d boldly yawped into the bubbling spume, a signal
to the universe that I knew, I saw what was coming next (which is a lie) but in that moment, to prove to myself I was animate, to confirm I could do anything, to beat my chest at the
edge of the world, to be alive, especially if I had known everything that would begin– days later– the layers of dreams I’d have to divest, the altar I’d have to burn
in sacrilege, the pain that would engulf me, the end This is important because now I know that my jaunt into the North Sea would look pale, naked, unfeathered in comparison to reality
and it really wouldn’t have changed anything. the tide would have rolled, salt-gray, rhythmic, unforgiving, over me as the lanterns burned brightly in the beach house but it’s one thing I may always regret
Flotsam of the North Sea. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.
Ghost
You never think That someone will pass through you Like the ghost of who they once were Like the spirit of a person you once knew
You never think That it could hurt so badly to unravel Like every color of who they were was in you Like each thread that stitched you all together was undone
You never knew What death while someone is alive feels like What saying goodbye without saying anything means What one body of pain can experience
Until you knew
Tide. North Sea, Noordwijk, Netherlands. Imgae, my own.
Comfort
sink into the folds of an oversized chaise tuck your body between the seat cushion and english arm rest your head on the soft folds of the chenille bolster, squish and knead yourself into the billows of down fill rest all of yourself in there to see if you’ll be safe from the storm
Directions. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.
Celebrate
listen, don’t you forget that even days of sorrow can be days of celebration that’s the paradox we were born for this
My House at Night. Noordwijk, Netherlands. Image, my own.
Spoon
if you bring your thighs right under the nook of my knees and the bulk of your body right into the curve of my hips and your chest flush with my back and wrap yourself around me all night, I may remember what love, and safety, and sighing in peace really feels like I’ll be home again quiet, delicious, hazy jazz you’ll quell my longing
Jazz Café Alto. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Image, my own.
Relentless
sometimes this existence can feel so heavy so weighted and wearisome so relentless
Refined + Rugged 