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Archive for August, 2023

In the Days Leading Up to His Death Anniversary

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 12, 2023| 17 Comments »


 
 
Strange how the body remembers
everything about this time of year—
the angle of light, the hue of sky,
 
the scent of almost rain,
the shape of the green beans
twisting on the vine. It remembers
 
the cool of the basement,
the curl of my hand as it slid
into his hand, remembers
 
the tilt of the hill where we drove,
the droning of bees in the sunflowers,
the brief blaze of fireflies.
 
It’s as if the shock of his death
opened every door of every sense
so I was flooded with life,
 
imprinted with the thisness of everything.
In these days leading up to his death,
life rings me, bell-like, again and again,
 
and I chime, charged with memory,
amazed how my own emptiness
is what allows for the world
 
to make in me such music,
 
so vital, so clear, so raw.

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One Irony

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 11, 2023| 5 Comments »

 
only after the rain
feeling the urge
to walk in the rain

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Mycelial: New poetry video on grief

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 11, 2023| 8 Comments »

Well, as we prepare for mushroom season in the San Juan Mountains, it seems the perfect time to share this poem, “Mycelial,” part of the Dark Praise spoken word album I made with my friend guitarist Steve Law. The album, available for free download anywhere you listen to music, honors all the way the dark nourishes us. And this poem explores the necessary, even beautiful layers of grief. I love what Tony Jeannette has done with the art by Marisa. S. White … how the veiled woman continues to rise up–like grief, like love, burgeoning out of nothing. Please watch it, comment, share it. 

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More Sunflowers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 11, 2023| 14 Comments »

The sunflowers, which came from seeds
no hand planted, now overshadow
 
the tomatoes, the eggplant,
the gardener, the beans.
 
They branch out across the pathways
and teem with bees and wasps.
 
Perhaps your heart, too,
knows something of exuberance,
 
knows what it’s like to burst
into an explosion of golden joy,
 
not just savoring the moment,
but growing more wildly into it,
 
reaching in all directions,
certain of its own beauty
 
and living to share it.

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Slower

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 10, 2023| 6 Comments »

They are beautiful, the Japanese eggplant,
dangling beneath wide fringed leaves.
I love the way I need to search for them,
how they curl and swirl like amethyst earrings,
how they hide in surprise in the low shade.
I love the way they tangle in the basket,
how they refuse to lie flat on the grill.
Some things defy a linear process,
require me to go slow, to take note.
All afternoon, I move slower.
Not once do I wish it were any other way.
 

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Standing Beside the River with Lulu

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 9, 2023| 9 Comments »


Within minutes of weeping,
we are tossing rocks
into the river, the bigger
the splash, the larger
our laugh, and we toss
and we toss in a sweet
and urgent ritual of loss.
Slipping in the mud,
it feels right we should
lose our balance. What is
this life, after all, but a constant
slipping, a constant recalibrating,
a constant learning to find
new paths toward each other?
This life, it turns out,
is likely to pick us up
and throw us into the deep
to see what happens next.
But on this night,
we pick up more stones
and toss and toss and toss.
Not one of them floats.
But we do.

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Inside It All

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 7, 2023| 11 Comments »

Beneath the masks, beneath the names,
beneath ideals, beneath the shoulds
is a thrumming, ecstatic atomic swirl,
unseen and omnipresent, inescapable
and holy—a divine blurring of being,
a realm of charge and energy—
most of it empty space. Sometimes,
I remember this. Perhaps walking
in the woods or standing in the midst
of a city’s whir, perhaps working in the kitchen
or singing in a choir, I remember
who we really are, remember
not with mind but with being,
and I’m lost in it, found in it,
alive in the cloud of it, astonished
with the sacred design of it,
elegant soup of it,
elemental swirl of it all.
How is it I sometimes
see only woman, man,
cottonwood, spider, self, other,
other, other, other?
We walk this journey
of separation together.
Oh being who is lonely,
who is holy, remember?

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Beyond Conversation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 7, 2023| 17 Comments »


There was a time I believed
we need to tell each other who we are
so you can know me, so I can know you.
 
Now, I see how words, too,
can be like little masks, little disguises
we can use to hide.
 
I don’t want to hide anymore.
I want to find the most naked words—
words with no ribbons, no sparkle,
 
no paint—and speak in the barest
of tongues. I want to speak with you
blood to blood, breath to breath,
 
grief to grief, fear to fear.
I want to know you and be known
by whatever it is that resonates
 
inside the words—
a raw and vibrant IS, IS, IS
that pulses between us
 
like a common heartbeat—
the way two living heart cells
from two different people,
 
when placed together in a petri dish,
will find a shared rhythm
and sustain it. This is how
 
I want to meet you—
two silences becoming one silence,
infinite beings, one life.
 
 

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One Fast Track

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 5, 2023| 6 Comments »

glissading down scree fields
each step forward is five steps—
wishing this for your heart

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Wilding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 5, 2023| 2 Comments »


 for Corinne
 
It is always near-freezing,
this high alpine lake where
we slide into oddly blue water,

and bare strangled sounds
tear from our throats
as if our own wildness

is shredding through
manicured versions of self.
I crave it, this scraping away

of everything that isn’t
limb-thrash and lung-gasp
and skin-scream and heart-bang

and wild uncontrollable breathing,
crave the tingling after,
the feral laughter, the way

the world slips more deeply into us
when we dare to slip
more deeply into the world.

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