Merroir

If I wrote “merroir”,

dear reader, would

you look it up or pass

over the brine and

move on to the next 

line, searching amid

the sand and kelp for

hints and suggestions.

Or, what about “terroir”?

Would the harshness of

the “t” stand against the

“m” and push you to

grab the OED, rifling for

meaning across onion skin

pages of wisdom and time.

For either, let me just say

this, that the place of a 

thing is always considered

and discovered in the thing

itself.  It should never be

a surprise.  But, can the 

nuanced notes and finishes

be deciphered to reveal

meaning and context,

influence and radiance of

just where the place has

lovingly rubbed itself off?

Tell me, dear reader, where do

you look for the meaning of a 

thing; where do you uncover place?

Shadows and Funky Days

Shadows lay themselves across the limbs and branches of the trees.

Darkening the purpling stand already fresh with buds awaiting spring.

My heart goes still watching clouds, casting shadows on the hills.

How quick the hollers cold become when fluffy  silhouettes hide the sun.

That I could see so clearly from afar the sweeping objects covering my light.

That I could hold those days as artistry of how the heart feels its own landscape.

Most often things just suck or have an ambient malaise dampening the longed for joy. 

These inescapable days of disarray, of drafty and somewhat solemn isolation,

are the fodder that feeds my soul to climbing up upon the mount of the mundane

to hunger with my eyes and with my soul for a brightness to shed upon my own understanding.

A FRESH MORNING POEM

 Just below the ambient thrum of

of our discourses and conversations,

our words are coming together to

form the structures of our beliefs.

A wall here, a door there, and yet again

a window to the sea.  Ways we allow the

coming and going of all sight, and sound,

and bodily movement away from and toward.

This subterranean village is always with us

as we glide through our days.  One day it is

our hearth and sanctuary, another it is our

fortress and limitation.  Always there - under.

Dig deeply and find your Skara Brae.

Twisted Trunk

 Did he feel the

anguished twisting

lo those many years

of angst and wind;

torment and despair.

If he had been a

person, we’d have 

never heard an end.

Yet, the change was

daily and long, tedious

and unending.  His life

silently never the same.

Sitting Here

Sitting here in the

cool darkness of

morning, I fold my

memories back over

themselves, like a

bolt of unwound

linen or a batch of

Turkish taffy.

Watching each layer 

settle into itself - over 

and over onto the whole - 

captures me with comfort. 

I realize, without this pause 

I would have missed the rich 

hint of how a weave comes 

from combinings, how a treat 

comes from stirrings.  Across 

and through again; around 

and yet around again.

Sitting still reveals the intrepid

motion of life across life.  Warmth.

Again, and again, and yet one

more time again.

Contentedly Familiar

I come to where the dark

brown dirt and smoothed 

pebbles reach toward the

ever changing water.  Rolling

and lapping again and again

the moisture darkens the land;

earth and stone feed the river.  

Hints of an endless familiarity

are tendered; in both directions.

That familiarity is mine, too.

Each time I approach this

solitary place I give pieces

of my me to that rolling and

lapping.  Being here is being

me and I am somehow that -

in the contented stance I now 

hold myself I realize I am home.

When I return, I am more this

place and it me.  And more so

the next time.  A cavalcade of

synergetic mitosis. I become

the thing that is becoming me.

Axon becomes dendrite and is

myelinated again and again and

yet still rolling and lapping again.

Only Stay

 Pull up a log

and sit still long

enough to hear

the endless clicking

of the millions of

fallen and browning

leaves that lay strewn

upon the wooded

forest floor.

Tell me from

where it comes.

If you might.

Is it the crunching

of tiny bugs

looking for food?

Or the rise and

fall of each on

each in the

gentle wind.

As for me

it is nature’s

simple lure

to draw us in.

Stay.  Only stay

until it no

longer matters.

Stay.