-
heat
quiet
among the dapples
a breeze has come
to sway the canopy
and stir
small birds
into busy
and chatter –
while leaves,
dangled
spider-silk,
twist lazily
catching light. -
waking in the rain
women have long
lost their skins to love –
whether it be fox or selkie
or leopard or bear
that let them live
wild in bramble dreams
and kelp forests
of shadowed light
as the moon rose deep
in their animal bodies.
and some mornings we wake skinless
in a soft rain world thrumming fascial,
rain fingers on our solar plexus
peeling with frogsong and
the soft drums of leafdrip.
and the world lives
seamless in us
as we live in it.
let it rain. -
inertia
will the world end
if we live this stupid –
if we wait and see
which way this
wind will blow
and if it blows,
all of it, will we
hold our breath –
wait and see
if someone else
will do something
and what kind of stupid
that doing might be too,
because there is
always someone else – right,
to do what needs doing,
until it all blows
because we have been
living this same stupid –
saving change for a more
convenient time
in our no longer guaranteed
future. -
morning practice
there is no
caging
wings of light
that rise crimson bright
to fly the gilded river
until first light cools
on their wings
and they land
wings outstretched
while their feet
taste the earth
anew. -
a prayer for rain
let night erase
these dust soft prints
walked bare to the river
among broken leaves –
let the rain
want our walking prayer,
bind it mud, mycelium
and root to the living –
let the stirring of leaves,
high in the canopy,
be the breath of our prayers
becoming the wind
that turns and
brings the rain. -
lauds
once, when the world was new
and shadows still danced
on the edge of tomorrow
and the She who sees us
could still be seen,
birds learned to make morning
from the dark of night –
singing the world into form. -
coming home
coming home
in the night
the river still flows dark
under that quiet dream sky
and we fall to that flow
as we fall to sleep
and the water reclaims us
fin and gill
and speaks us
silver ripple and quiet splash
to the trees.if there was a long night
it was dark and full of stars
and in the morning we wake
slow to the lightening world
rivermud secreted
in our creases and folds
the salt tang of estuary
coursing our veins.
-
threshold
and sometimes
the world sighs
a moment – floats
pink petals on dark water
that flows slow-deep
beneath old forest boughs
heavy in bloom. -
‘deep-delved earth’
late evening on the last day of the year
i went to the garden to clear the path
of dead wood and bramble,
ready the beds for planting.
and though it might be
this decade ends tonight
and my hands are splintered and worn,
it is still a growing moon that rises in the sky
and tomorrow is a good day for planting.