Westwood Hills Park Loop; Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.
Jazz
jazz, how something jazz something so messy so seemingly unkempt and chaotic brings jazz something so messy so unkempt and chaotic, disordered blooms jazz so unkempt and chaotic brings subtle peace jazz brings calm clarity to the mind to the being jazz
Napa Valley, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.
Lonely Place (II)
I’m still alone in my anxiety, in the pit of the stomach of the thing
Why does it take humans constant living to remind them that they are alone and together all at the same time?
being alone being lonely being human
are they the same thing?
Am I still sitting at the table by myself? Or is that just my childhood imagination talking?
What does it mean to be truly intimate with someone, in that you you can call and text and still be alone
you can have sex and still be alone, still remain disconnected
you can be married to someone and still be walled out or wall
Maybe I’ve built too strong and well against vulnerability
The horns at sunset. Westwood Hills Park Loop; Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.
Noted: I noticed the quiet omission of those three words when you said goodbye
Eventide. Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.
Space
What does it mean to need space, to take up space, to be in space If we look at all of the bodies surrounding us, antithetical to room, In definitions of space we might see blackness, bed covers, a field, Yogic bodies in goddess pose, scientists from my planet on a vessel, Artemis, a vehicle, the goddess of the hunt, she blasted them up into The heavens, the dreams of generations of humans went with her Astronauts in first grade classes from the sixties until that the final Countdown from the Kennedy Space Center in twenty twenty-six Imagined that moment, enraptured by the darkness, a new pitch and Moment of aloneness, closeness to mortality like very few have lived Our utter contrast, a bluegreenwhiteorb, pure pith and circumstance Twelve months, our orbital timeline around the sun, twelve moons, of Waxing and wanning, newing and fulling, shifting and pulling oceans It’s hard to know what will come of this push and pull in the end
Wyeth grasses. Westwood Hills Park. Napa, CA. Image, my own. April 2026.
Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, February 2026
Align
-In celebration of Planetary alignment And love and life
Sometimes, like today February 28th All of the planets align
You commit to your Own wild adventure, You break sonnets
Into sentences and Receive messages From the sea, the
Oceans of desire Swell and calm And swell again
The foam of ancient Seabeds, laid down In marl of
Seashells, an intimate Mixture of calcium Carbonate and clay
Prehistoric alluvials, A vast bed under the Broad blue sky
Where water, once Abundant, La Mer, is Friable through fingers
The rise and fall And rise of each breath Rolls heavenward
Yet, now, all That undulates on That vast range
Are block horsts from Earth’s basement, Deepest oceans of
Molten waves, Mountains upon Mountains mirror
Wave upon wave The blue sky, Everything Signifying everything
The eons old lake, Long gone, becomes The background
Of our days and Nights and days As the full moon
Wanes and waxes Another quantum wave Of space and time
Between Fish Springs Range and Thomas Range, Pony Express Trail
The Lonely Places (I)
I used to say that my family came from all the lonely places That somehow, my diaspora got together and agreed to live On vast plains of prairie, and in dry canyons and deserts We moved with our own rhythm to the far north and Set up tiny claims on sweeping vistas of the American West, the lonely places– unwelcoming, sparsely inhabited
So as we drove yesterday across basin and range after Basin and range, I could understand some of the longing That knits the heart to space that confirms the lonely insides Always looking out, through a window on the barren world Where with delight a dusty coyote sprints across your path, Downy woodpecker, her black mask, lights on a cottonwood branch,
There Earth’s bends, striations, upheavals, and rich history Sit in blocks, and rocks, and mountains which carry our Eyes beyond the present, forward and backward in time Fox trots in and out of sage lanes and sand loops across the Lonely, bereft, solo, alone, solitary, single, unaccompanied, one Landscapes that require a yearning which cannot be quelled
Sevier Plateau, February 2026
Feminine
we are left fighting against softness in a world so desperate for peace
we’ve left her circles behind to find that tech gods of degradation
blight the entire atmosphere, each system breeds another fall and
trapped in arrogance and ignorance we’re ripe for tragedy, collapse
cycles of seasons wind-songs and river beds all speak her name, whisper
too soon, we sold her sources, strength to greed-gutted rulers, monsters, thieves
we are left fighting for softness in a world so desperate for peace
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
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.
In the eleventh hour, your girlfriends come to hang the final doors in your soul.
They know it is your funeral, your wake. The death of so much you have built and known.
You know that’s how it will be when you die–literally– or you pray, or wish it to be so, women and men surrounding you.
Understanding you need to build this one last thing before this death, they come with drill bits, and toolboxes,
and dirty jokes, and Beyoncé ballads. You’re *Drunk in Love* together in the night.
They come with highly absorbent towels and borrowed vacuum cleaners because they know
you need to laugh and cry at the same time. They do the same. It’s no coincidence when
you look down at your watch, it’s eleven twenty. And then you clutch your heart as if you could offer it beating
out of your chest to show them how much this grand act of love matters.
In the eleventh hour, you call your guy-friend and desperately ask him for a recommendation for a plumber.
The upstairs faucet won’t stop leaking, like your eyes, broken, and you call him again when the plumber tells you the only fix
is to drill through the wall behind the tub to replace the valve. Your friend gives you the okay, and the world is made right for that moment.
Another friend, a man, gifts you a ring, a broken piece of turquoise healed with gold, Kintsugi. Mixing Urushi Laquier into your internal joinery.
Another tells you to drink the good wine and offers you a bottle to catch all the confusion, upset, anger, chaos, tumult, of these tender days.
Another wraps you up in Spring in Seattle. God-parent to your sons playing super-smash until dawn.
In the eleventh hour, your friends, who are no longer young spread the table with salmon and homemade spice chutney
for a feast to last through the wind. They don’t know you’ll go home to silently sob at their magic on the shower tiles.
Your girlfriend jumps on her bike to ride with you through the rainstorm, sunshine yellow cut-leaf balsam root punctuating each meadow.
The rain, the sun, the rich smell of the greening earth make you laugh with joy, woop with pleasure over the berms
Revel in the living of it as they’ve each given their day, their night, precious moments of their one precious life, to be with you, to cradle you,
to eat *Thunder Cake** and salty tears together. It will never be final or forgotten, this Gift. The fact that they knew
and understood the challenge and all stepped in with Windex and mops with arms outstretced
Ready to hold you as your once-life died and you were made anew. You, free entirely
-MM
“In the Eleventh Hour” has to do with ambiguous grief and the power of others to help heal us in our deepest darkness and pain. You see, our society honors and marks certain types of grief, specifically the death of a loved one. The death of a partner, parent, child, sibling, or close friend presents the mourner with its own unique fire, dragons, daemons, and oceans of grief. 🌊 But some griefs in our culture do not have specific metrics or physical markers. These bereavements may be losing someone to dementia, substance abuse disorders, divorce, familial estrangement, watching someone slip away in mental illness, or leaving our religion or faith origin. When someone dies, we generally mark their grave. But when someone miscarries a baby, we often don’t have ritual to mark that grief event. The same goes for things like childhood abuse. When you grow into an adult after this abuse, who is there to mark the unimaginable path you have trod out of the way you were treated by those who were meant to be your protectors not perpetrator(s) of your worst nightmare?
I’ve found that grief is holy, sacred even. Whether you experienced an ambiguous or more direct loss through death. Human opportunities to walk through the circles ⭕️ of life and death can both teach and strain the body, heart, and soul.
When I got divorced, I sat down with Google to see if a human really could die of a broken heart. 💔 That is how bereft, how torn and sad I was. And it turns out, yes, sure enough, you can die of a broken heart. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy syndrome is the term for this condition. Your heart, in essence, cannot withstand the excess adrenaline caused by a stressful grief-induced event.
All grief has the potential to break our hearts. But, in fact, not a lot of people literally die from this condition which means that a whole lot of people who have experienced deep, great, wide grief live to tell about it. One thing that saved me in my grief was the net of love, care, catching that my family and friends spread out under me and my family. “In the Eleventh Hour” details that love.
*So worth a read. Thunder Cake, by Patricia Polacco.
*Also important in this conversation, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong.
Refined + Rugged 