(Photo by Atul Vinayak for Unsplash)

Even the dust can

Burst into bloom

On the almost May plains.

Dim brown and a sudden

Shade of green against the

Gray cloud drizzle.

A tumble weed crosses the road

Somehow, I’ve always loved them.

And I drive

Slowly (for a change)

Mom and me - remembering the

Old streets and the

New pink blooms.

Her face twinkling

Into wrinkles, and

Mine softening the lines between

Past and

Present and

Yet to come.

(Photo by Tom Swinnen for Unsplash)

It was…

The last one

Tucked back on the shelf

Looking Wal-Mart morose

Box cracked in careless shipping

But still singing to something

In me.

The voice inside me didn’t miss a beat

“Oh. Really.”

“And what are YOU going to do with THAT?”

(Eye roll) “Oh Please…”

“Because you have all KINDS of extra cash…

And so much extra TIME

Don’t you.”

It’s only 10 dollars.

“Don’t think for a minute…”

It’s small, won’t take up much space…

“Don’t you dare!”

I dare.

It’s mine.

The seduction of…

Potential.

(Photo by Pascal Debrunner for Unsplash)

It’s a different color

A shade brighter

A stronger flavor

of Shine.

It’s a “wake up and pay attention” call

To the world

Our world

And all we’ve done to it.

Still, the Sun burns the cloud away

The grass insists on greening

The dandelions raise fierce and joyful faces

They will not be thwarted

Not now, in this splendid season

Some forces still have the power to

Eclipse even us.

(Photo by anil baki durmus for Unsplash)

Suspended by

Long silken threads

The figures dance singular and

Spinning in

Separate spheres, fearing

En

Tangle

ment

And yet

Were they truly free

From each other, they would

Shatter against the floor

Destined to become the

Cat’s plaything, or a

Painful splinter of glass

In the foot of a

Tiny child.

So

Best to keep you

If not in my arms, then

In the corner of

My eye, each of us

Still spinning.

(Photo by Eric Prouzet for Unsplash)

There is a mind for poetry

A mind not always open to me.

With doors surrounded by Light

Yet closed. And locked.

Sometimes, I can hear the latch click…

And the door opens - Just

A

Crack… and

Something bursts through

From the other side.

A scent, a snatch of song

And then, just as I reach

To grab it

It’s gone. Slammed shut

The laughter

Echoes…

(Image by Diana Hauan for Unsplash)

Granite melting

What once was impenetrable

Now shattered.

The ground beneath us

Tilts into strange terrain.

The tears of our fathers

Wash into a dark ocean

That can’t be crossed

With words alone.

Hold his hand.

As he has held yours

So many times before

Watch your childhood

Sail off the edge

Of the world.

When finally

At day’s end, the

Sun bursts through the

Gray, like a golden

Sabor slicing lint.

The gull tilts his

Airborne wings and

Catches the underlight, as he

Soars into a

Relief of sky.

Finally

I can breathe..

(Photo by Colin + Meg for Unsplash)

Natural History happens

Everywhere - it’s all around us,

Whether we sense it or mostly

Not.

Even so…

That empty lot, that

Brick boundaried corner, the one with

Plastic bags spinning in the wind, like

Dervishes of destiny… even

These places have stories,

Mysteries spoken in the

Skitters of nocturnal

Creatures and the

Crevices carved in

Concrete, they hold something

Growing, searching

Moving towards the sunlight

The detritus of what we discard

Ruin and abuse remains, reimagines and

Becomes.

Even here

Emptiness is but a

Mirage and

Miracles are waiting for their turn to

Birth.

We rose in the morning to this enigma

Waving from the glass door

A gift of wind and water and

Some other kind of

Mystery…

Twenty five winters here and

Never before

A gift against the glass!

This is why

I’ve come to love winter

Against all odds, against

Aches and shivers and

Digging the car out of the snow again

And OMG not again!

You just never know

In the frigid heart of a frozen

February, when you

Least expect it, when you

Might encounter a

Gift of pure, unexplained

Magic!

It is not

The airbrushed smile, or the

Hyper electric ionized

Images of….anything really.

Beauty is the

Spirit of Life

In a broken song

Beauty is

Strength and resilience and the

Refusal of despair, or

Boredom

Beauty laughs

In the face of the bully and

Cries at the sweet scent

Of a baby’s hair.

Beauty waits

Patiently for us to

Notice it in all things

Yes - All Things Everywhere.

Beauty can be

Momentary, but also

Eternal. Fragile, yet

Strong as stone

Beauty roars

Distant as the ocean and

Whispers close as the

Dandelion

Under my shoe.

(Photo by Luke Jones for Unsplash)

There is no scale, no balance
No answer to the question
“What did I do to deserve this?”

Good or bad

“Deserving” isn’t the point.

Look at the World
At the agonized masses…
The question has no answer
Because it’s the wrong question.

A better one, maybe, is
What can I do?
What can I change?
in my circumstances
My awareness, my
Being?

How can I best use what I have
To protect those I love?

To strengthen my community?

To help heal the pain all around me?

To deepen who I am?

(Image created in Ideogram)

The sparkle on the skylight
Shapes itself
Into an softly rounded oval.

The morning sun kisses it golden, but
While it may enjoy
How the light illumines
Its pristine shimmer, the frost
Will not melt.

Frost waves its brittle wand and the
Skeleton trees beyond are blanched even whiter.

Frost smiles in sparkles,

Licks blue lips

An egg alight,

Hatching

Cold

Emptiness.

(Photo by Honza Resnik for Unsplash)

An enemy…

Or so we are taught. And

Surely, they are vicious in

Winter hunger.

As are we.

But they are also

Playful, loyal

Loving parents, they

Do not kill for the

Thrill of it. They do not

Smash windows and

Remove mothers from their

Crying babies. They do not say

“This one is prey because they are the

Wrong color”.

We do that.

We have trapped and

Poisoned and

Shot the wolves for sport

Now, we have become the

Worst of the Wolf.

In Winter.

(Photo by Chandler Cruttenden for Unsplash)

Rain will announce itself
A gentle swish against the window or
Hard nails on the roof
Thunder shaking us alert
Like dice in a cup.

Sunshine will brighten a room
And sometimes dance with cloudshadow
Even without me looking out the window
And the burden of thought
Lifts, for a bit, with the light.

Snow does not make itself known in sound.
Snow dances to music only she can hear.

I turn to the window
Gray morning has vanished
Under fine white dust
Falling straight down
Into silence.

When even the beauty of the World

Seems hollow

An emptiness filled only with

Echoes of what once was…

I find a deep and restless yearning

For rescue of my senses and

My sensibility to corral the

Senselessness.

I know

The answer lies within, I know

We are each other’s keepers and

I get that no one else is

Going to fix this

And yet….

The being in the

Mirror doesn’t exactly

Look up to the job.

I can’t and won’t ignore

The trumpets.

I can’t and won’t pretend

This is not happening, I can’t

And won’t look away from

What is disappearing all

Around me.

There is a new kind of beauty

In human resolve to

Push back against a

Tsunami of Fear.

We are the Magic we need.

And we need it now.

(photo by Bernd Dittrich for Unsplash)

They step softly

Everything about these two

Exudes softness

Brown fur over hooves

One shakes soft snow

In a shower of sparkle

Yes they ruin

My hostas in summer

I fight them off

With peppermint spray

I’ve given up on tulips

But here in deep winter

I watch with softer eyes

As they glean

The seeds scattered by

Careless jays.

Velvet lips slip

Over and over seeking

What sustenance they can.

Now, one turns to the other

Her doe eyes gesture to the woods

And with delicate precision

They move on.

The prints they leave behind

Will be frozen solid

By morning.

(Photo by Matus Karahuta for Unsplash)

I am becoming

Ever more grateful for

What I’ve so long

Taken for granted…

Health, safety,

Freedom.

By this season of life,

I’ve known illness, fear and now,

Freedoms shredded to bits.

I am becoming

Someone who knows the

Surprising Joy of

Simply stepping forward

Out of safe shadows

Without knowing what will happen

Just quietly, or even, sometimes

Loudly

Showing up.

Raising a sign, a voice,

A fist.

I am becoming

Someone

Almost…

Brave.

(Photo by Alex Harwood for Unsplash)

The glitter is spent

Wrapping paper scraps

scamper in corners, the

Fractals of frivolity.

We’ve caroled and consumed, we’ve

Cooked and caroused. Now

A blessed quiet, just

Still enough to hear

The whisper of Peace.

The wheel of the year turns and

Slow burns to ash

Compost for another chance to

Be who we still have faith that

We can become.

You at 6 or maybe 7

This time of year

Excitement building with

Each snowfall

Each carol on the wind

The red and green

Everything - all pointing a

Sparkly sugarplum fairy wand

Toward one amazing morning!

Your dad and I

Slow to get in the spirit, already

Tinselled out by early December

Yawns and eye rolls and sick of shoveling

A whiny chorus of “Do we have to?’s”

Yes we did. Because

You Were DONE with the

Big People In Charge.

You tugged on your green snow boots. your

tiny red mittens, your

Plushy Santa hat and you

Marched into the garage and

Grabbed the bag of colored lights and

Wrestled it outside and

Hurled some Christmas

Onto the bushes and the

Car and the

Mailbox and the

Dog.

We Big People sighed and

Grumbled ourselves into

Boots and gloves and hats and

Out we went to collect you

Peeling the lights away from

The car and the mailbox

We sent you inside

With the dog for cocoa and a

Christmas movie, and

We did the damn lights.

We’re parents. Sometimes

It takes us awhile.

We whine

But we love you, so

We show up.

(Photo bby Dmytro Glazunov for Unsplash)

Tree Lights

I remember, long ago, a

Giant pine tree in

Our front yard alight with

Big Bulb Christmas lights

We all had them

They were all we had to choose from

And that was just fine.

I liked the blue ones best

Even those with a few spots of

Color worn away, like

Tiny stars in their own

Blue Christmas universe.

I could stare at their beauty

Against the darkness of the tree, against the

Darkness of a winter night

Against cold loneliness

Forever.

Now, these days

Our neighbors on the right

Deck their halls and

Trees and bushes in

Tasteful white

With a lovely white

Sparkly reindeer

Twinkle twinkle.

Those to the left of us

Hang glittering balls of

Brilliance in their patient maple

They wink in shy pastels

(Nothing too risque)!

And then there’s us

In full-on Trailer Park

The orphan strings from a

Dozen Christmases

Some garish balls with

A few lights out, loudly

Blaring shameless color and

No Apology.

Each year we win for

Tackiest Display, we are

Undefeated in the category!

As for me

I still kind of ache

For a string of those old Big Bulbs

(with a few extra blue ones)

Antiques now, I suppose, and

Not up to safety code.

Just like us.