THE LAMENT

You have no way 

of knowing

how you got here.

You have no map

to verify the terrain

that is now behind you.

Did you climb mountains,

cross rivers in a canoe?

All you have is 

what’s before you now:

an old growth redwood,

the morning mist,

and the shimmering 

green ferns 

up to your neck.

You are on your knees 

in the mud and weeping.

The feathered fronds, 

their touch, and the sight 

of them bejeweled in dew,

opens you to

a lament that has been 

incubating inside you,

opens a portal erased 

of any fear and around which 

no one is peddling certainty.

It is safe to walk through.

And you do.

You feel a great wheel 

turning around a center.

Your voice is that center.

Your song is the turning.

Something is wanting 

to move through you.

Let it. Let it pass through.

The mountains, the rivers, 

the trees are waiting 

to hear your inconsolable song.

 PILGRIMAGE

I clambered down 

the back stairs 

of my 

deck today

and was immediately 

reminded

that every step we take

is a stride

inside

one kind 

of pilgrimage

or another.

We are always

on our way 

to somewhere,

with or without

faith, with

or without

hope, with 

or without

fear—the procession

of gravel

made this poignantly clear,

as it paraded its way

across a dessert

of flagstone.

SYRUP SEASON

Take your 
voice back...

from the breathing 
forest, from the sprawling 

canopy, from the branches, 
roots, and soil,

from the minerals 
in the soil sent

as marrow toward the leaves 
and toward the sun.

Take it from late 
winter, early spring, 

from the freezing 
and the thawing,

and from the thawing 
and the freezing, 

from the sugars 
made from sunlight 

and rain, take it 
from the forest

because only the forest 
can return it to you. 

Only the forest can teach you
how a voice lives inside a living 

body, how it moves,
how it becomes sap,

and when it is time 
to be tapped

and when that sap 
can be sent 

to the sugar room 
and made into syrup.

Only the forest knows 
when it is syrup season.

THE INCONSEQUENTIAL

there is no 

red wheel

barrow, white 

chickens or rain 

water in 

this image

and yet 

so much 

depends upon 

the speed 

of a slug:

the orange 

of the withered 

poppy petal, 

the ominous 

shadow of 

the plant the petal 

fell from,

and the stymied 

stance of the three 

sad pebbles.

had I not 

slowed down enough 

to see this 

inconsequential scene 

of a tiny 

creature in transit 

slithering its slick 

evaporating trail

across 

the vast terrain

of a flagstone 

slab, I might not 

have noticed 

how meticulous 

nature is 

in the way

it arranges 

threshold moments 

everywhere, all the time,

for all its kin

and more-than-human kind.

nor would I have

remembered

William Carlos 

William’s simple, 

yet revolutionary 

poem,

and how it has 

influenced me 

more than 

I ever knew:

how the glaze 

in it taught me 

to see the beauty 

and bravery 

in the everyday 

and in 

every 

living thing.

THE TERRAIN*

Where is the terrain?

Where isn’t it? 

Everything we are

or are not

is a topography

that lives within us

or is mirrored 

outside us,

or is simply its

more-than-human 

self. There is no 

escaping the terrain.

It is an earth we must

befriend. Let us then

walk together

arm in arm

when the evening is spread out

against the sky,

loving who it is we are

and who each other is,

and the ground, 

the blessed ground,

beneath our feet—

a ground that keeps us 

upright and sturdy

instead of falling 

further into the deep

and wondrous Mystery

that is expanding

all the time.

*Please visit my new web site, Reclaim the Terrain, 

and see my upcoming offerings.

This poem was written in celebration of 

the Terrain's two year anniversary of its groundbreaking.

ANOTHER'S TOUCH

I reach out my hand

from the earth of my body

to touch the sentience 

of the world.

When it meets me

as the bark of oak

or the wet and cold

of the shimmering lake

I feel myself met, touched

by another’s touch.

It takes slowing down 

to know this, to feel this:

that the Earth is a presence

always awake, watching, and listening.

It takes slowing down

to remember that

I am the one

who forgets that

the Earth sees me, that it never

looks away, never blinks.

That it never stops 

threading my name

or yours

through birdsong, 

the whispers of leaves,

or the rippling waters.

THE VANISHING

The mountain 
will never move 

as long as the man
chases the image

of himself trying
to move the mountain.

His ministry emerges
in the moment he disappears 

into the mystery 

that is the mountain.