Today, for a time, I am more red rock cliff than river.
I sit and do not do.
Perhaps some part of me crumbles.
I do not resist the crumbling.
I do not resist stillness.
I am weary of resisting.
So weary that today
I promised myself
I would make time for nothingness.
What pleasure I found in not rushing,
not rising, not streaming, not traveling to,
not coming from.
Why have I put off, again and again,
the chance to be intimate
with nothing?
Yesterday, when I heard myself
tell a friend my experience of nothing
is what I think God is,
then I wondered why I fill my hours
with so much everything?
So today I cliff. I rock wall.
I sandstone. I canyon.
I sit still and undo
and meet the great nothing
that holds up everything.
Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canyon, cliff, nature, not doing, nothing, stillnes on March 26, 2026| 10 Comments »
Almost Effortless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, contentment, grace, nature, peacefulness, seeing, tree, walking on January 2, 2026| 4 Comments »
A humble contentment.
Because blue green spruce
by the creek bed.
Because ancient red
of sandstone cliffs.
This almost forgettable moment
not forgotten.
This small seeing.
This ease in being, unearned.
Because the tips of the spruce
are more silver, softer.
Because afternoon mist
somehow mingles it all.
Because sometimes when I try,
I cannot feel the connection.
This moment when trust is.
This sinking of my foot
into slick, wet earth.
This small thing.
This everything.
Call and Response
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, friendship, moon, nature on August 11, 2025| 2 Comments »
for Cindy
Are you there? she said
as she came to my door.
I’m here, I said.
Are you there? she said.
I’m here, I said.
Come, she said,
and we walked to the field
where behind the ridge
the glow of the moon
had begun to appear.
We whispered as we waited
for the moon to rise,
whispered of dreams
and legacies, until, at last,
the fullness had rounded
into the sky,
and we said goodnight,
both of us knowing
we’d witnessed a miracle—
not the miracle of moonrise,
though that, too,
but the alchemy of two hearts
choosing to meet
the world together.
What’s Really at Stake
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cascade Mountains, mountains, nature, pine, scent, trees on February 22, 2025| 2 Comments »
I like to live in the scent of pine
on a thaw-some winter morning,
viscous tendrils of tree perfume
thick in the air, scent of evergreen,
yes, but a warmer scent, too,
like honey, like vanilla, like must.
I like the way the scent lives in me
as I move through the tussocks
of snow. I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here
in the moment. As if I, too, might remember
how surely I depend on this earth,
how surely it depends on me.
One Unpronounceable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged naming, nature, river on February 7, 2025| 4 Comments »
the river decides
it’s discovered me,
renames me after itself
For This, I Walk Outside
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged life, nature, outside, service, stellar's jay on November 8, 2024| 9 Comments »
Not to escape the world,
but to be more wholly in it.
Sharp cold stings my cheeks—
not like a slap, but like the thrilling burn
of whiskey as it blazes down the throat—
the kind of wild aliveness
that brooks no choice
but to wake up to life,
to champion it, to know life
as the most wondrous thing
even as I steep in the ugliness
we humans commit.
This is what life asks of us.
I walk outside to be more wholly here,
here the way the Stellar’s jay is here.
Even on the coldest day,
its every fluffing, every peck, every head bob,
every flight is in service to life.
It’s never confused about its purpose.
I want to be in service.
Outside, everything is teacher:
the cold, the snow, the bird, the day,
this fallible, fabulous human race,
this improbable, beautiful planet in space.
To serve life, I must inhabit it wholly
and be inhabited by it, too.
As if it all could end tonight.
As if it goes on forever.
We Are Told to Make Our Own Way
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brooke McNamara, follower, friendship, leader, nature, path on September 18, 2024| 10 Comments »
But also, I consider the importance
of following, as today
when Brooke guided me
through dense plots of homes,
past tall dead trees
where red-tailed hawks
like to land, then down
through the shrubs
on the thin dirt path
to where we crossed the creek
on three rough stones
only to climb into a park
of manicured grass,
and I was aware of how good it is
to be led by someone I trust,
to see paths I would never
have found, to wander in fields
full of someone else’s stories.
How grateful I am
for all who have led me
through the fields of their hearts,
beneath the branches of their losses,
into the alleys of their wonder.
How grateful I am for the times
the journey was made possible
because someone extended their hand
and led me toward exactly what
I could not have known
I longed to move toward.
for Brooke McNamara
In Common
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, dusk, friendship, nature on August 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »
for Holiday and Christie
In golden light we walk
beneath the slippery elm
and the hackberry tree,
and the air is warm
and thick with the hum
of winged things. If our lives
are made of a collection
of moments, it thrills me
that we are now all three
made of this: the slant light
of summer, the lavish green,
the thick warm air, our honest
laughter, and the brightness
that gathers to greatness
and flares just before the night.
Self-Portrait as Sedge Meadow
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, nature, water, wetlands on June 28, 2024| 4 Comments »
After years, grief now grows in me
as honestly as sedges grow
in the wetlands. As necessary
and as benign as fresh water.
As generous as the scent
of rain. I would not wish grief
away any more than I would
wish away the blue heron,
which is to say I now see
grief is an essential part of my biome,
how without it, other parts of me
would perish, how natural it is
to be saturated as I am by tears,
how abundant grief is, how alive.
Recess, Second Grade
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, childhood, grass, inner child, nature on April 28, 2024| 13 Comments »
Past the blacktop, past the swings
a girl has wandered into tall grass,
dry and golden and high, and look
how she tucks in beneath the seed heads
and makes in the stems a nest,
lies on her back and looks up at the sky.
She can hear the screams and squeals
of other children as they play.
But here she is daughter of silence,
fallen angel of sunshine. There are wings
inside her breath. What does she know
that I have forgotten? What does she
love that I now squint to see?
Where does she still live in this woman,
this wanderling who was me?