Crossing Over

A way to learn love.
To be brought to the end
of our known tolerance
against our will
and choose to stay with
or go through. To walk
the tightrope of the impossible
and cross over
into unknown land. To embrace
what we did not know
we needed
with our whole selves. To become
someone else, transformed and awed
at this new being
in our keep.

© 2014

Scribe of Sands

Sand, stones, salt, shells.
Where I belong, in the dunes
rearranging the world, carrying
elements here and there, listening
for the music of relationship.
Where else should I be,
but asking questions with fingers
thrust into diatoms of silica?
An infinity of pulverized bodies
speak to my nerves
through the silence of eon’s
glistening millennial light.

I am a scribe of sands, these hands
related by tribe, by species,
to those that painted a pride
of lions on cave walls
at Chauvet, 35,000 years past.

What we each do, according to call,
husked of ambition, to bring life
back into balance. How we each pull
on the sheets of horizon, to remake
the bed-rock, to right the rock bed,
that it may offer carbon to the trees,
that they may offer oxygen
to the birds. Tonight,
a cougar paints with paw-prints
in these same deep hills of sand,
in the darkest spaces of night,
stalking these same dreams.

© 2013

Belonging

One day soon, my mind will fly
back to sky. The birds will sing it.
My body will bleed back into earth.
The ground will drink my reds and browns.
Imagine the relief, not trying
to hold the colors together.

Our bodies belong to earth,
our minds to sky.
Nothing really belongs to us.
Everything just is
and teaches. We borrow
and will give it all back.

Start now. It will be easier.
Re-collect the memory shards
from when we were shattered
into existence, when we came
into curled wet leaves, howling
body bundles touching down.

© 2012