FLORILEGIUM FOR THE FUTURE

I want my days

to be like gardens

where I collect cuttings

for lithographs

I will make.

When I am gone

and in the ground,

please, now and then,

open the book

of botanicals

I’ve left behind.

Leaf through it.

Share it with a friend,
a stranger,
and remember me.

FINGERPRINTS

In the clouds,

the surf and sand,

the driftwood

along the shoreline,

the flight

of low flying gulls,

the wind in the shorepine

and beachgrass,

the rain streaking 

across the windowpane.

Pause long enough

to see 

the pattern

each is tracing.

Then look inside.

Find the joy and gratitude

life's bestowed

upon you.

God's fingerprints

are on everything.

THE ROPE

What I hold on to

that keeps me climbing,

prevents me from falling,

and leaves me dangling

somewhere in between.

Taught attention.

A false sense of

discipline.

The grip I bring

to anything

I grasp at.

The braid and strand.

 The binding 

that tethers will

to way—

twists obstinance 
into being.

Cordage
made of fear.

The hauling and the lifting.
The busywork
that distracts and ensnares,
and, for the life of me, 
I can't let go of.

BRETHREN

An oddity of nature.

Standing in a stand of giants.

Frosted in an unreal glow, a dull glaze

that could be faux snow

or sunlight’s dappled brushwork,

but is not. An albino

redwood, a dwarf tree,

is what’s there—a startling 

anomaly in this forest.

Does it think: I am not

like the others,

grand and evergreen?

It does not.

It is simply a tree among trees.

A brother among brethren.

Nature has so much to teach us
about how to be with ourselves
and our own kind.

MUSK

Story permeates our beings,

our very bodies.

In other words: how we

hold and carry ourselves

in the world

is no small matter.

What we tell ourselves

about ourselves

is an attitude, an air  

we wear like a musk.

It is in us, on us, and all around us.

It perfumes everything and everyone

we come close to.

It is how we attract what we attract

and repel what we repel.

If we remain suffused

in our state of nonchalance

we might as well go about our business

like skunks in the night,

scavenging for our next meager meal,

while the dark keeps getting darker.