P IS FOR PILGRIMAGE

Must it always be a parade of boons
and hope-stained floats?

Smile girl, we say
to our broken sentences
throwing candy to keep us clutching

What if from time to time
we allow our words to be the sacred
wounds they point to

not mere scar tissue
but real raw and open
to the risk of infection
by terrible truths

I don’t know how to do it
but this poem wants to let it be
a slow pilgrimage of laments

until the Earth
in us has felt heard

until the River in us
has felt beflowed

until we’ve heard the iceberg
in us mourn being hit
by the unwieldy ship of us
now too difficult to carry

until we’ve felt the village
in us aching from being burnt
over and over and over
over and over…

yet even I, a talented grief-monger
can’t seem to sustain such a march
can’t open wide enough
can’t get low enough on the ground

even if each inch etches something holy
stitching together the garment
that we so long to wear
yet worry if we’re worthy of its wholeness

Language must do better than this, I think,
if Life is to be lured back

Perhaps by speaking devout words with each step.

PHOTO: Madrone Tree on ancestral Mattole land

WITHIN THE CAVE SOMETHING PULSES

I. Sip the Season Darkly

Darkness has arrived
wrapping its inky cloak
across the season
of our lives

long shadows and owls
stand tall and salute
autumn’s bright slow song
becoming winter’s march

asking us not skip too quickly
over the hour
with an eager eye
grasping towards cherry blossoms
awaiting on the other side

Drink deeply from the season,
they say,
From the cup overflowing
with the sweetness
of the fruitful darkness

Sip the season darkly
In its slow inward night embrace

Wisdom hidden from summer’s glare
may yet pass our lips
should we have the thirst for it

Until finally, the world becomes too much with us:
We go to the cave

the secret one, in the mountain
of ourselves
seeking stillness
a retreat
an inward looking

and listen for it, our own voice amidst

The Silence – can you hear it?

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II: Within the Cave Something Pulses

We’ve been here before.

Many times-as far back
as it will be forever forth

The Big Rhythm holds it all

Within the cave something pulses

We hear it even now
feel it even now
that which deepest dark cannot smother,
and even winter’s hands cannot touch

tender tendrils of our very own vine,
bearing the wine of our heart

A Remembering–Aha!

Some secret vial of our heart’s fuel
distilled for this very hour
to sip the season brightly

And the sun too misses its lover earth
and cannot too long stay away

The sun was meant for this: to shine

To not share the big love is a wounding

So in this darkest hour
The sun knocks on the nearest horizon
and announces The Return with a subtle beat:

“Dear Love, I’m Here.”

Which is exactly what we find
written on the walls of our cave:

“Dear Love, I’m Here.”

And we open our new eyes of dawn
With a first breath after the long rest

and though it’s just a whisper now
it is enough to start it all again
and again…again….again…

Artwork: Sandra Diekmann from the book Leaf

THE SKY IS BLUE

Ask me how I know the face of denial.

Ask me how I know how it feels
to own eyes sewn wide shut
with parched lips dripping tales

how the mind smuggles in denial
like a shapeshifter fumbling to find
every crooked crack
desperate to defend
some same ol’ same ol’
some story of self

ask me how I know
how denial places a hold on the heart
an act of resistance
to what is

until that sweet, sweet moment
when bright green Truth marches in
like an unassailable enemy
who is really your best friend

when denial is denied
by that dead-end darkness
on the path you’ve been treading
showing you the only way out
is to become so completely lost
you try to drink rocks

There’s only one way to walk now:

the sky is blue
you can’t drink rocks
the sky is blue
I was wrong, forgive me

the sky is blue
you can’t eat the wind
the sky is blue

the mountain is you
many ways up but can’t go through
the sky is blue
pain is here
many ways through but can’t go around
the sky is blue

confusion is here
the sky is blue
self-betrayal is here
the sky is blue
can’t grasp a cloud
the sky is blue
death stalks us all
the sky is blue

yes, forgiveness is here
life busts through
the sky is blue
everything is cracking

love is here
that’s why it hurts
the sky is blue
you are the giveaway
the sky is blue

ask me how I know.

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To be included in a new collection, ‘No Lies on the Mountain’

SILENT GROVE

Welcome to the silent grove.
It is named ‘Uncertainty.’

Through falling rain and ancient dialects
you receive the invitation: plant yourself here
and become defeated.

This is the Avenue of the Giant Undoing.

At the base of a grandmother tree
there is an altar named Deep Time.

On it rests a cloth of colorful new maps
you are breathing into existence
with each in/out-step.

You light two candles as an offering,
one named ‘Mourning’,
the other named ‘Coming Home.’

This is not the path they told you about.
This is not what you had in mind.

Yet this is what your body keeps promising,
what you heart keeps pulsing for.

Who are you to ignore them?
Who are you to refuse the silent grove?

AOTAHONARIKI: A CELEBRATION

Though no translation is possible,
a close approximation in English might be
‘A celebration in a place so dark
not even night will go there,
so silent the new moon goes there to rest.’

Where I’m from we walk barefoot
in the rain.

The soft rain. The hard rain. Even the mischief rain,
full of teeth and kisses.

It’s a way to put our flesh into the big memory
with each drop

a way to get clear and clobbered,
to cobble together the next new step as we

Sing mud almighty
Sing blood and night
Sing amidst the flood and fight
the coulda woulda shoulda light

We know what water tastes like when it’s alive.
We know what trees shout
when they are burning into the sky.
We know that Death and Life are lovers
that can never be pulled apart.

We know we will never turn our backs
on the sound of dark Decembering
and that it’s a good omen
when a covey of quail comes cruising
across the puddled path
chirping up questions

making of the coyote bush a bell tower
announcing the dark moon’s arrival.

Everything is pitch and petrichor.
Ebon and eerie.

Suddenly silence.

It’s our tradition to gobble it up—it tastes nothing
like vanilla or easy dreams.

It’s thicker than mud, richer than quail yolk.

We reach our rugged hands out to feel
the many colors of the fingers of darkness.

We let ourselves become death
and birth doulas simultaneously
as the lunatic liminality
wets our deep autumn faces
facing west, or weeping
our bodies become prayers pulsing
in this messy celebration.

If the light comes, we know
we will have we done our part.

OM NOM NOM

It’s true, I want to taste
on your tongue the sun
hidden inside the pomegranate seed
to smell on your skin your camaraderie
with wild water
Yes, I’m a bear with paws for persimmon
and your inner pear
full of heat for hip upon hip, yet hope
to touch that holy spark
that ripens only in darkness
where no eyes live
yet where all true knowing takes place—
This is where I want to meet you.
Where your war and peace slowly come together
circling ‘round the fire

In that altared space
let’s become beparadised
and speak a new language beyond words
devouring each other’s everything
like omnivoric lovers—
Om nom nom oink and ow oh wow!