Skip to main content

Yule 2010

We’re diving into deep night again,
into a velvet star speckled pocket
lusciously cold as a watercress pool,
edges laced in frost.

We can’t help but fill it
with gloomy news of
economies kaput, mothers murdered,
insurgent storms.

All set a perfect stage
for this longest night with
shadows, shadows everywhere -
even the moon eclipses.

It’s a firefly called hope,
napping in the bottom
of Pandora’s golden box
that sustains us now.

We are preserved for summer –
for farmers’market
and mayfly hatches
and Perseid showers.

So today let winter hold our sadness.
We’ll feed the fire,
sing to children, stir the soup.
Tears and worry ride better

on the dappled gray fog than on our hearts.
When Earth bears everything
the January skies
can bleed spring again.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.

Covid Journal Entry 14

April 4, 2020 Today’s image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year.   We are an international population: seven from the US, six from Vietnam, five from China,   four from Morocco, one from the DR and two dogs/three cats.   We share four large buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping by during the week to work in their offices.   We have had little or no contact with them so far.   Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service, UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages.   It’s Iowa and the gove...

Eden

"..to be wild and perfect for a moment.." - Mary Oliver Before words, perfection dwells ubiquitous as spores on the wind, roiling over and into each molecule and moment. This little planet has emerged out of miracles five billion years. Chaos hones its lineage of mud and sun. Before words, every kaleidescoping morsel of matter enters in beauty right here, right now heartbreaking as an autumn morning, cocooned in a worship of mother to freshly born. Perfection is tragedy, perfection is harmony, perfection is lost and found. Before words, balance spans ebb and flow, underpinning what stumbles, what stands. Perfection fills a moment and moves on. Bloodhounding its trail, tongues wag and follow ever vigilant; stretching cheeks and cerebrum reaching, reaching - never quite here.