WHAT THE OAK TOLD THE CICADA

Be at home in the heart,

who cares what extends beyond your brittle hide.

Home gives space for light,

lets it feather the soft unformed.

Be at home with the hunger,

who cares that we tremble.

Home makes room for mercy,

lets it cushion the sharpest edge.

When you go

follow warmth,

the ochre,

the golden rod,

each umber and ecru,

the endless green,

the lavender and rust.

These signal our songs

and bring clues for what twines

the plucky hours of July with November.

Be at home for the peace,

join its long name:

Grasshopper

Phoebe

Rosemary

Mother's milk

Alabaster

First light

Gibbous Moon

Waterfall

Morning fog

Lemon balm

Black dog

Red tide

Oak pollen

Boney night

Dandelion

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2020 Pandemic Journey Day 44

May 4, 2020 Today’s idea – What has the fog of our modern conveniences begat? I read an article last night published in 1950 by Berton Roueche’ titled The Fog . In October 1948, a toxic smog settled on the borough of Donora, PA. This town is tucked away on a meander of the Monongahela River in the Allegheny Mountains. During that time, it was home to three huge mills, a steel plant, and a zinc and sulfuric acid plant. The towering factory stacks of these industries pushed out thick plumes of coal smoke all day and all week. Also, given the town’s proximity to the river, boats and trains added their emission to the cocktail. To seal the deal, Donora sits in the topography of secluded bluffs and hills that allow for little or no wind to carry the smoke and fumes out of town. So the place was known to be a smutty, smokey mess, tolerated by residents who referred to the sulfurous stench as the smell of money. On this weekend in October, a thermal inversion put a tighter li...

Covid19 Journey Day 20

April 10, 2020 Today’s idea – Maybe we’ve needed this for a long time. To be stopped so we could take a long moment and assess what is alive in us and what is mere rote living, what is unnecessary and what really matters; what we carry by empty habit. To know that busier doesn’t make us more worthy- a good work ethic is not to be confused with constant motion. We’ve needed this to learn how to be together as family again, to sit together in conversation, to listen to one another, to play and read together, help solve problems even do homework together, cook together, sit around a table again. And to say to each other, here are boundaries, this is okay and that is not okay because we do that for the ones we love. We needed this to understand that isolation can be hard on some people sheltering in place, the abuser with the abused, those that must shelter alone, those who need consistent home care for a chronic illness or condition, the family receiving h...

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.

What the Muses Leave Behind

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