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Posts Tagged ‘solitude’

At the Potter Ranch

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 25, 2022| 8 Comments »


Ridgway, Colorado


On a day when the human world feels like a fist—
when it clenches and squeezes,
fierce and relentless—
I leave the four walls and sit
on an old fallen cottonwood tree,
long and silver and smooth.
There, in the center of a wide river valley,
I sit. And sit. And sit.
And the tall green grasses
and the graceful white yarrow don’t refuse me.
And the murmur of waves
and the musk-yellow scent of sweet clover
replace any thoughts, save being here.
The ring of red mesas
with their vast crowns of spruce
form a vase great enough to hold it all—
and I am gathered into spaciousness
along with dark green sedges and white butterflies,
with the tantrums of brambles
and the tangled flight patterns
of thousands on thousands of dark tiny flies.
A flock of birds rise all at once from the river
and my heart and my eyes rise, too.
A long time passes before I am quiet enough
to hear the chorus in the willows,
the bright clicking of insect wings,
the silence that weaves through everything.
Then the flickers come close
and the dragonflies draw nearer in.
And I current. I cloud. I leaf. I wing.
I leave unwalled, un-selved.
The spaciousness comes with me.

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Pulling Off I-70 Between Grand Junction and Denver

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 24, 2020| 5 Comments »

 

 

 

 

I want to linger at the side of the road

where the dark birds sing into the eddies of dawn,

yes linger in the low-angled light, in the big-hearted shadow

that blankets this bend in the canyon. Though I have many

miles to drive before I arrive, let me stay here

a while beside the river, still for a willowy moment, the water

the only thing moving. How many landscapes do I pass

without meeting them? How many worlds do I miss

as I rush from one here to the next? Oh bless this

quiet, where there is no hum of highway, no rumble,

no center line, no blur. Why do I so seldom linger,

my bones full of rush and current. In this moment,

I remember how deeply I love the stillness of rocks

that haven’t moved for a thousand years, the calm

of the dirt that has nowhere, nowhere to go.

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At the Science Museum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 14, 2014| 1 Comment »

standing inside
the life-size kaleidoscope
infinite reflections
of me
without you

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Unexpected Abundance Haiku

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 23, 2012| 3 Comments »

empty room—
through the windows
river song

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Postcard to Emily

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 30, 2011| 1 Comment »

How the old mountains drip with sunset
—Emily Dickinson

Dear Emily,

It was just as you said, tonight,
the San Juans rose and blue,
and in the shallow reservoir,
the herons dripping, too—
I did not mean to startle them
as grayly there they stood,
but on hushed feet I stepped myself
into solitude.
Wing after wing they rowed themselves
into the muted dome
till all went dim—oh dark abyss!—
and we were held as one.

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