Stars swirl in a midnight sky as
The forest tiptoes through darkness,
Aware only of itself.
The owls have returned.
Their voices in chorus give life to the darkness.
A fox barks back to them in welcome,
His winter loneliness forgotten.
(4/7/16)
Category: peace
Silent April Snow
The early spring silent snow
Fits my mood.
It is a white dusting of truth
Accentuating every little branch and twig,
Making every little lie all the more obvious.
The silence into which the April snow is falling
Seeps through my eyes and into my heart
As if to smother and quiet its
Telltale beats.
It comes as blessing and a curse by
Prolonging the inevitable with maybe that one last chance.
But I know the sun will come out and
It will all be just a memory …
Once again.
The Stones Will Remember (March, 2017)
| Evening shadows shift
Through broken windows.
Chimney bricks slide down the roof Puddleing under the lilac bush.
Weeds spread into the driveway Reclaiming it for themselves.
When was this house built? Was it ever new?
The yard and doorframes bear witness To the families who grew here.
Long forgotten toys and broken swings Hide beneath the matted field grass.
A broken clothesline flaps in the gray autumn breeze and Sprung clothespins mold and rot into the ground beneath the broken posts.
Feral cats are now the only life that calls this old farm home, But birdsong still fills the rafters of the barn.
The barn that once held livestock Sits shifted on its foundation,
Listing and leaning to the south, Away from winter’s fierce winds.
The stately oak gracing the front yard is rotten and broken, Its fingers through the house roof.
Where did they go, the people Who called this place home?
When the last one left, Why didn’t they clean out the house?
Why not take the toys? Close the windows? Lock the doors?
Did they not know they were Never coming back?
The windmill out back has long ago Crashed into the apple orchard,
Breaking in to pieces as it fell and crushing the trees it had stood watch over all these years.
But in man’s absence The apple trees continue to produce.
The lilac bushes flower every spring in spite of Not being “cared for” in over 40 years.
The forest is slowing creeping back in to fill the void Left when the field was abandoned.
All that remains of the people who once called this spot of land home Is the family graveyard,
Where stones are carved with love and care, Preserving for all time the names and dates of those whose lives began and ended here.
But the lilacs don’t care about being preserved, The Oak is beyond pride and the buildings are slowly returning to the soil,
Just like the bodies beneath the stones. Another 40 years and the stones will be all that remains.
They will be all that is left to tell the story Of a time gone by.
The story of a house built to last a lifetime, a barn crafted with pride, The story of generations of a family who lived, worked and died on this land.
A story only the stones will remember. |
Wisdom at Midnight
Last night, at midnight, an Owl spoke in the forest,
And I understood.
Listening I realized how a perpetual misunderstanding was coloring my thoughts,
But not the owl’s as her knowledge is deep and colored by nothing but the truth.
As I lay alone in my bed, I felt the darkness soothe the forest’s heart and hoped, but
It could not touch my disturbed soul.
I couldn’t see, I didn’t know what was next,
I felt suffocated by the inky blackness while
The forest mother was at peace and
Sighed in contentment.
My only peace now will come from learning from her.
To accept her invitation to surrender my will and lay down in her gentle softness,
To use a layer of her leaves as my bed while
Her twinkly night sky becomes my pillow.
I will trust her to protect me, to hold me close and
Put me to sleep with her lullaby of star-shine.
I know its the only way as Her wisdom is deeper than mine, dependable,
Greater than me, and more than just a beacon in this perpetual darkness.
Tell me, did you hear the owl’s wisdom at midnight too?
From The Inside Out
When I take the time to look inside, instead of outside,
I find miraculous things. Things I never have seen before,
Feelings I never have noticed and rules I never have followed.
Oftentimes they are the feelings and rules I have imposed on others but never followed myself.
Others whom I say I know well and in my arrogance convince myself that I know how they think,
And feel but in reality, my assumptions are baseless and I realize
That it is only me who I can ever know…
But only from the inside out.
The Single Second of Midnight
The Deep primal sounds at midnight are
A gathering of voices in the dark.
The language is unknown
But the meaning is understood.
Darkness hides the players
But not the play
As it is a script followed
Since the beginning of time.
The cast of characters remains the same with only
The players changing.
The truth of the story portrayed is undeniable, and
Is perfected in the casting of souls when the sounds of their voices gather and
Eternity resides in the single second of Midnight.
3/1/18
My Mind
My mind has become my enemy,
One that shares this space inside of me but cares not for my well-being.
It turns night into day, lust into love, wants into envy,
Truth – my truth – into lies.
It whispers in my left ear, words
My right side, it knows, will reject.
In the beginning, my human beginning, my mind
Was my friend, my ally, my confidant, but no more.
So I spend my time sitting and focusing on my
Return to that initial, eternal being,
And when that process is complete,
My mind will return to its natural state as my life navigator and soul companion.
Its taunting will stop, its search for drama will cease,
Its creation of a hundred hurtful scenarios a day will end,
And once again, as it was in the beginning,
It will become my friend.
It Waits
It waits with patience hands
Outside our knowing, waiting to be let in.
Its story is always the same,
Its truth dependable but not always what we want to hear.
There is no hypocrisy, no deceit in its soul.
It is the soul that fills the void, that encompasses the eternal.
It exists in rhythms of time, tides of dependability,
Cycles of freedom and seasons of hope.
It can be ignored, but never escaped and so it waits,
In beauty and joy, in bliss and acceptance, in love and peace,
For us to wake up and realize it is but a mirror of ourselves,
The face of our existence, the light in our souls,
The essence of our being
Before we were born.
Wind-Song
It is almost gone now,
Sadly diminished.
Only the hard and tough oaks
Remain to carry the song.
They sway less and less as
There is not much left to catch the wind.
But the wind still blows, it comes in waves and churns the ocean of trees.
One tree after another reacts to the wind’s hand, its push, its power.
Some bed in a flurry of dancing of limbs,
Some hold their ground, refusing to bend to the will of the wind.
The wildness of the wind comes in stages,
Craziest at the tree tops,
More subtle midway down with only a modicum of movement
Just feet above the ground.
I’ve often wondered if their roots feel the pull and tug of the wind.
Are they dying to let go of the earth and fly away?
And when the leaves have all fallen, the wind’s song fades completely,
Losing its soft voice.
The summer’s soft song is replaced by the harsh clacking of naked branches and
The howling of frozen limbs in the dead of winter’s endless nights.
I hate to see the leaf song go,
I will miss is warmth and rustling.
But I will hold its song within,
Deep within, and sing it to myself in the dark time to come
When all in solemn stillness sleeps.
November Silence
The color outside my bedroom window is gone.
Yet evergreens stay to remind me of life’s continuance, always existing just below the surface.
The trees are stark silhouettes of gray,
Each branch and twig evident and asleep.
There is a new silence in the wood.
It is a soft, comforting, sleeping silence.
A hush of reverence,
A soothing of soul.
Awareness hangs liked smoke among
The naked branches.
It is an awareness of belonging, of no doubts,
Of confidence in the being and faith in the belonging.
And so they stand, the trees, in winter’s silence,
In perfect harmony with their place and mine.
Each a witness to the other and
Both a witness to the One.
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