LIVING MYTH*

I want the wild animal
not the pelt,

the mystery

not the allegory.

I want to hear 

the story spoken

not read from

the pages of 

a dog-earred book.

Myth knows 

what it is.

It doesn't need

us to tell it

how wily 

it can be or

how it doesn't

play nice, now 

and then.

It knows it is

the dreamer

and not the dream.

Yes, it is the one

that left snow prints

in the sand. 

It is the one

that moved 

from village to village,

from mouth to mouth

century after century

taking us from rupture

to rapture, from terror

to transformation,

from grit to wonder

again and again and 

again. Myth is our most 

treasured possession,

our best worn-out

hand-me-down.

It moves us from

seeing to beholding.

It lures us into 

and out of time.

And, when we

are lonely

it will urge us

to trade in our I 

for a We, so a bigger

story will work us.

It returns us to

the wide and wilder 

world of soul

that lives outside us

in the mountains,

in the birdsong, 

in the rivers

and tides. 

Everything 

out there is 

what tells us 

who we really are 

in here, in our 

secret inside flesh.

In the mud and breath

within our bones.

*Inspired by Martin Shaw's, Liturgies of the Wild

HONEY IN THE HOLLOW

Bear's been here.

He found 

the honey
in the hollow.

He is resting now

in his cave

of introspection.

The truth

of what he knows

moves through him

like a creek

cascading

through a forest

or into the eye

of Dreaming

itself.

Bear's hunger

is slowly filling

with silence,

a silence

as large as a lodge

of golden light.

THE GASP

The whole story held its breath

when the deer struck the earth

with its hoof. The listener 

at the door next door  

wept when a young beauty 

couldn’t wake her lover 

with wailings and musky tears. 

Lonely dieties, lit by lightning, 

no longer remember

a midnight tundra or a bush 

in thought. Turn me into 

a lamp, why don’t you! Steal

my light from the sun.

My forgotten footprints

are a mimicry of invisibility 

that will bluster any moonlit suitor.

Hide time in hidden hibernations,

under animal skin. Gambol with

my grief at the edges 

of adoration. Rupture 

the consequential into new 

constellations. Wriggle metaphor 

into the rhythms of startled frost.

Forget all my nephew’s names,

so that your velvet nuzzle will

cause my plumage to enfold

all the directions 

before catching fire.

IN SEASON

I am putting down

what I've been carrying.

I am letting the edges 

of my being relax, soften.

I am holding on to nothing.

I am letting last year's learning

dissolve into knowing.

I am letting seeking seep into being.

I am letting doubt decompose into trust.

I am allowing innocence to seed into maturity.

I am letting numbness winter it way to compassion.

I am shedding resistance.

I am pruning myself back. 

I am going dormant.

It takes all the seasons to become bare.

It takes opening to loss, to grief

to fully feel all the emotions

that live inside the terrain

of what it means to be human.

I am taking this season

to remember who I am again.

SETTLED

We land

where we land.

Nature's miscellany

does also.

But when it does

it is free

of complaint

or regret. It,

unlike us,

will just sit

settled and glowing

in the embrace

of a sunny

winter's day.

INTENTION

Tug on the thorn
and its spell

is cast.
The rose will

catch fire
but the blossom 

won't burn.
The flames

are now
the flower.

STAIRCASE

limbless

it will

still wind

its way

from winter

into spring