A Settling Mist

Outside -

a settling mist

falls so familiar

and so fair.

It is an imperceptible

blanket of content

morning rapture and

warm glow release

that holds me in

this place as if

melted in my own

bed at home - with 

Glinda; the boys

moving slowly

in their rooms

to greet the day.

It is here -

with a book

of simple words

and a cup of

coffee - I am

able to bring that 

outside air and 

bliss inside myself

to grow.

It is a full surround

gift of words and

notions -

slowly

trickling over the

rocks of mystery

and manner that

pulsate out from

the timeless beyond

and back.

This day

holds no special

claim on the life

that moves within

this sack of cells;

it is the scintillating

strand of poetry

that impresses itself

in me and back -

always back -

through time to

all their hearts 

and pens.  It is not

just Bly, and Hass,

Shihab-Nye, Snyder,

and Stafford

that glow; it is Frost

and Whitman, Shelley,

and Satho, Basho, 

and Issa - the

whole damned lineage

of word craft sorters

and impression laced

builders that shatter my

isolation with light.

Light creeps in slowly

and replaces my me

with a they that falls 

lusciously over the

rocks of time and

sings a melody of

infinite meaning and

a camaraderie of

of all that unites

us beyond our skin.

How Can This Place

How can this

place, this same

one spot that

carries itself

across the landscape

of extended time

and incremental

turnings of space

hold anything

like meaning and

a sense of indicated

preference.

How is it my

heart stills and

my every cell

relaxes when I

pull into the

treacherously steep

driveway of our home?

Why does the

soul shift toward

calm simply grabbing a

carved oak railing

at their home –

climbing the carpet-less

stairs that echo each

and every footfall

up the center of the

stairwell of three floors?

When did the niche

of moss covered rock,

along the waterfall of

that stream weld itself

to homeostasis;

and, give shear release

of tension gathered

under the skin and the

follicles of every strand

of hair?

The Pleiades

could better stand

a chance at answer

than I. The Ocean

could more readily

explain return.

I do not find the

wherewithal

to suppose I could

speak such

mystery and mirth.

I can lean a bit

into the bliss of locale

by learning to sense

what way the places

I inhabit leave me

to feel. It is there

I can steady my

gaze into to

chasm of the

eternal fields that

occupy each atom;

and align myself

with the

universe of all

arisings that

live in every

here –

along the axis

of all our

nows.

The Heart of the Mountain

There is a stream
that flows from the
heart of the mountain
to my heart.

There is a wind
that blows across
her hills into me.

I can stand here
a thousand, thousand
times

and never
feel the
less for it.

She fortifies me
as a sister does,

knowing we share
the same blood,
the same toils,
the same heart.

Knowing we hold
the pain of all
existence

in our hearts;
softening us to
the core.

She takes the
dead and dying
and gives them
a place to give
up their hold

on all they
have known
to be living.

She tenderly turns
their bones into
tendrils and roots
pushing life back
out above her
skin.

There is a stream

that flows from the

heart of the mountain

to my heart.

Ciao!  

TJM+

I Know

I know what is
written on the underside
of the rocks.

The rocks that sit
on the bottom of the lakes,
that lay scattered
throughout the creekbeds
on all the earth.

It is stillness.
It is love.

Quietly clinging
to the surface of
the stones
stillness and love
call out to us

asking us to
take them in
make them a home
shelter them.

Can I find the
space in my ladened
heart to hold two
more things -

two things that will
set me free.

I reach into the
pool of life's
waters and I
gaze on the gifts
of the deep.

Today they are
mine.

_____

Peace,

Tom +

image from Sturgis Creekbeds

High Rocks

The earth is
held together
up here with
cedar roots,
with hickory roots
and the constant hope
of no rain.

The red-shale soil
loves to wash
itself,
down
to the ravine below
becoming silt for the Tohickon Creek -
the Deer-bone Creek.

The dirt is
made up here
with the slipping
and the sliding of rock;
on rock;
stone against stone
and rain on earth.

The pounding and the force
makes dirt of the stone.

Creeping along in
the fingers of the rain
the dirt is grabbed,
the dirt is pushed
along the roots that cling
tightly to life
and to the vertical growth.

The earth is
held together up here,
by cedar roots,
by hickory roots,
and the constant hope
of no rain.

River Bending - Let's stand-up against Toxic Fracking

I hope you will read and consider signing on to my petition on Fracking and its toxic impact on the Delaware River.  I am working to collect the artists from along the Delaware to use their craft to impact the movement.  Here is a copy of my poem, "River Bending" and the link for the petition is after the poem.  Thanks.  Happy New Year.

River Bending

We are not here

long enough

to watch the river

change her shape.

But she does.

I have felt it.

We can see her swell

and dry, but we do

not get to see her

curl and cut and

grow old. She is an

old thing. She goes

back a thousand,

thousand years.

We cannot see all the

changes, but we can

feel them. They are

in there.

Won't you sign on to our petition today to let lawmakers know we are not taking the recklessness of Fracking lightly.  

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/save-the-delaware-river

Sad Oak

I have stood here

for decades, for centuries.

I have felt that river wrap

her arms around my roots,

around this dirt

and then recoil - curving

and cutting in straight and

crooked lines.

I have watched her children

come and go.  I have watched

the First People - the Lenapi -

plant fish from her banks and feed

off the wild berries that push up

on her shores.  I have watched

the General and his men push

off from her edges and travel

by night to surprise their own

countrymen - foreigners all of them.

I have watched the farmers take

silt from her banks to till into

their crops, learning the craft

of fish planting from the naked ones.

I have watched the new ones

dump hot colored liquid into

her blood and make her cringe -

giving up her harvest of fish.  I

have watched these new ones

tame her and prod her with

concrete and asphalt, thinking

they could persuade her from

the rising she does with such pleasure

and rhythm.  I have watched

as the people have forgotten to

make offerings to her - asking

her blessing; forgetting to enter

her with love and abandon.

The turkeys, they have pulled back.

The deer have all but stopped coming.

The naked ones are gone altogether.

What will happen to her?

Of late, she does not smile

when I throw my acorns to her and

drop my leaves on her.  She used to

laugh when I tickled her with my

colored and dying hair.  Now she is silent

and I fear for what will come next.

My roots - my own roots - who have

clung so simply to the dirt that is

her banks, have soured.  Pieces of

me die as I drink her poisoned draught.

I am dying from her, from the one

who has been my life, my sweetness,

my health.  I am dying from her waters.

That she does not talk to me

has made me sad.  Where has she gone?

What has become of my thunderously

tender Delaware?  Why does she

get so very bone dry?  Why does

she not laugh as she lifts the debris

of life, carrying it to another place,

to another people?

I miss this woman, so strong

and so soft.  I miss the caresses

she gave me.  Her silence has

deafened me and I do not

care if I go on to see another people.

I do not care if I grow another limb.

Her silence has made me still.  And,

it is not the stillness I enjoyed after our

sister wind had forced me to swing and

dance and clamber.  It is the stillness

of being ill.

I have watched so much.  I have

watched too much.  I too must grow

silent, grow still, grow sick

and die.  My time has come and

I am sad.  I do still hope

that the naked ones will return.  I do

still hope that someone gains their wits

and cleans up her banks and makes her

waters pure to drink – again.

Stones and Moss I

I am captured by the stones.

The way they sit there -

piled and scattered -

in and out of relation

with each other.

The mosses can fold themselves,

if they like,

over the stones,

making mortar of themselves

for mounds of shifting rock.

They hold me, too.
I sit here,

among them,

and am unable to move;

sucking in the sun

and the rain

and the water

and listening to time pass with the moon -

Wondering how it all has

come together.

Have the rocks

and moss themselves

been arranged in such a pattern,
or do I, in my seeing, arrange them

in what appears to be a pattern –

even when scattered loosely

like debris. Do their forms exist in

any real way other than the way

I think I see them.