travel

Montana

| Megan
Absaroka Mountains, Paradise Valley, Montana. May 2025.

On Wednesdays

And sometimes, on Wednesdays, 
you feel altogether less than.
Less than creative. Less than
bright; less than enough. Still
there is this desire to burst some

seal in the universe to say what
you feel. And you determine
to send the man you love a letter
because you are also reminded
by your intro to writing classes

how powerful our interactions, 
entanglements with the natural
world really are. Reliving our
gorgeous weekend in Montana.
Wide skies, iridescent light. The river,

carving out its channel, hosting
bobbing rafts of geese, the
swift water constantly breathing,
caressing, quick-tickling its banks.
Feet, pinked, cold and smoothed

by silt and stones. The mule ears
sunshining in bunches on the
low slope of each sky-grazing
mountain range– Absaroka, Crazy, 
Gallatin, Tobacco Root– still white-

tipped with winter, now green-
black with pines, avalanche lines
and juicy jade undergrowth
all silently worshiping Spring,
new whorls of love made daily

Yellowstone River, Paradise Valley, Montana. May 2025.

Deluge

Spring, you may wander through my
soul in infinite spectacles of rebirth,
interrobangs of golden mule ears
apostrophes of purple monkshood,
little ellipsis of mountain service berries
punctuating each hillside and long
top-frothing grasses, mountain oceans
in growing breezes, a cloudy sky meant
to cast angles and halos, one
moment warm and the next a
whipping rain, a deluge,
steady then soft, pelting then gauze,
a corporeal mist clinging to river beds,
mountain roots and renewal

Peets Hill, Bozeman, Montana. May 2025.

Skin
shedding
morphing, learning,
lose, grow, shift, change
a year for becoming strong and centered
snake

Peets Hill, Bozeman, Montana. May 2025.


Blindness
absolute blindness
creates false hope, fists clenched and
clinging old, wet sand

Sight
when the grief subsides
the soul is filled with blinding
joy, internal sight

See
did you want to drive
your military complex
around on the street

Absaroka Range, Paradise Valley, Montana.




Celebrate

| Megan
Timpanogos and Half Moon. Image, my own.

The Death

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

Timpanogos Sunrise. Image, my own.

Weave

| Megan
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.

Journey

| Megan
Trees in sun. Image, my own.

Hecate

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

Gather

| Megan
Observatory. November 2024. Image, my own.

Gather

So here we gather
On this bright and
Dark day in the Fresh
World, to see if there
Is a turkey of love
Between us– siblings,
cousins, lovers, parents,
Friends. And there it
Is– LOVE– carved out
For us in some miracle
Since the creation of the
Cosmos scuttled us
All together on this blue-
Green blessing of a planet
Quantum journey, accidental
Adventure, maybe in another
Life we don’t know one another
We haven’t stood witness
To one another’s joy and
Pain. But here, now
We are the people we
Know and love because
Of particles of song shared
Between us, and mud
Fights on Thanksgivings
Long ago, and stories that
Have connected us all
Bringing us to this
Moment– to Gather to
Settle softly into miraculous
Gratitude. Thank you
I love you. Forgive me, I forgive
You. I love you. All love.

Art Center. November 2024. Image, my own.


Other Ghosts

So now there are other ghosts
The angels of the past have
Come to comfort and protect,
To bring peace and stability
I don’t know how I know, but
Others feel it too, they enter
They awe, I feel the ancestors
In the daily spirals of
My existence, the soil of
My backyard, the song of
The trees and birds in the
Ancient ash. Many others
feel them, too, and tell me
They are near, they are
Present. I know that I am
Not the only one who has
Ever been separated from
My alter, my shelter, my
Building, my dreams torn
For a vision of the future
I could not ascribe
I’m learning each day
That each ancient has
Been sent as a guide
The present and the
Beyond, they’ve become one

Fall-Winter Bridge. November 2024. Image, my own.

One

Of the most powerful
Things happened to me
And I can both be humane
And protect myself against
Smiling scoffs, unkind people
Who would make a mockery of
Pain, I am so glad that I can live
My life wild and free, I was
Given a second chance at
Love, at happiness
You too?
I will never take that for granted,
My joy– that joy will go on to
Fill me, myself, my people
And all the rivers of song

Community Garden. November 2024. Image, my own.

The “Last” Great Thanksgiving

That’s what the menu read
And then they were all gathered
In one place—humans—with the
Most similar genetic makeup of
Any group of sapiens on planet
Earth. Siblings. And it was good

Woods– lovely, light, dark, deep. November 2024. Image, my own.