Entanglement

I’m grateful for my daughters I’m grateful for my dog I’m grateful for my home, my health, my job That’s easy gratitude, that’s a constant, a given Let’s go deeper into gratitude  I’m grateful for my mistakes  I’m grateful for my hardships  I’m grateful for pain and suffering and darkness  That’s better, flip side, but still too broad Let’s niche down Get really specific  I’m grateful for the sunrise. First light, before it breaks the horizon line, when colors are still muted, waiting for rays of golden sunshine to reveal their splendor, when there is an anxious stillness preceding the imminent explosion of life all around me, when nothing is more important than greeting the day and honoring all of its potential.  I’m grateful for dew kissed blades of grass where tiny toads shelter in July summer heat, hopping away in perfect sync and in every direction whenever the dog bounds into the yard—her nose not nearly quick enough for so many little jumpers. It’s a...

  "Are you ready, my love?" he asked softly. She opened her heavy lidded eyes, lashes damp against the rough cotton pillow, the hint of a smile on her lips. "Yes," she whispered, closed her tired eyes and nodded imperceptibly. "Then, let's go," he said, gently taking her hand. "Wait'll you see the view!" Author's Note I love a writer's prompt with a image. This one asked for a poem. Love, in all its forms, is poetry. This scene instantly came to mind—a husband, passed, comes to collect his beloved in her final moment. Free from their earthly confines, they take a stroll among the stars.  I hope you enjoy. How would you interpret this picture? Drop a comment, or poem below!

The crows’ caw at dawn drags me from my half awake haze. Just five more minutes, I whisper. As if on cue, their anisodactyl feet begin an impatient march across the roof while they wait for peanuts.  The morning air is thick with humidity, cicadas drone from every unseen nook and cranny in these venerable woods. At night the tree frogs, crickets and katydids take the baton in this never ending symphony. Unmannered raccoons crashed the bird feeders overnight, tossing everything like a SWAT team raid on a drug kingpin’s den. Squirrels got nothin’ on raccoons.  The wildlife here is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my own backyard—barred owls, a great horned owl, sharp-shinned hawks, red tailed hawks, a cormorant that shouldn’t even BE here, deer, horses, possums, raccoons, rabbits, bats, turtles, and recently, a four and a half foot rat snake that nearly gave me a heart attack when the dog found it and wanted to play.  There’s a wildness here that walks the line ...

I’m a feral child of cut off shorts, skinned knees and barefoot summers, of afternoons wading knee deep in icy cold creeks winding through backyard suburban forests, of doing backflips on the trampoline until my head hurt and then sunning myself like a reptile on the warmth of that black nylon, staring up through a canopy of gently swaying trees, dreaming of a boy, and what his lips might feel like pressed against mine.  That feral girl still lives under my skin. She stands with me on Ostara watching winter’s last breath blow mighty, gusty winds through the trees. She feels every buffet and tendril of white hair that whips around my aging crown. I feel her childlike wonder of the world around me. We feel One with all that is. This is our happy place, where we feel seen, and free, and loved beyond all comprehension. Where lifelong traumas and wounds no longer exist. There is only our feet on the ground and the wind against our skin. In these moments, we mend what is broken.  I ...

Coyotes yip and howl just beyond the tree line beside the house. They are close. We all pause to listen—the dog's ears attentively perked. The sound is haunting, primal and oddly comforting somehow. Is it a territorial display, a role call or are they simply bonding in the waning light of the most recent full moon? They've been there the last two nights, so probably not celebrating downed prey—at least I hope not, there are a lot of cats around here.  We're in a new house, surrounded on two sides by woods filled with pine trees, Leland Cyprus, redbuds, thorny locusts, Chinese privet, two huge Bradford pear trees in the back yard and a horse pasture that can be seen through the trees in the back. It is literally a little slice of heaven on earth, well, for me anyway. All this nature is a serotonin goldmine.  A possum living in an abandoned squirrel's nest in a tree right on the fence line, peers its little face over the edge, and watches me quizzically one morning just b...

Everybody here’s got a story to tell Everybody’s been through their own hell There’s nothing too special about getting hurt But getting over it, that takes the work -Duck and Cover, Song by Glen Phillips 2005 No one knows your trauma, not fully. Only you. And your tribe beyond the veil. Are you healing ancestral wounds, passed down from generations long forgotten? There’s unimaginable pain and suffering stored and stacked neatly in your double helix, waiting to be released to the Light—OR are you going to push your trauma down and keep piling onto that ancient stack, ignoring it, burying it deep, passing it on down the generational line?  Some of us are called to task, we’re branded ‘Black Sheep’ of the family. We’re weirdo’s, troublemakers, outsiders, misfits. But we’re also intuitive, passionate, truth seeking bad asses. We feel our ancestors in our bones, hear their cries in our restless slumber, wear their strength on our weathered faces. Shadow work can make you mad. But that ...

Recently, I was standing in the backyard bidding the day adieu, watching hues of soft pink and creamsicle orange take over the warm blue sky. I heard them before I saw them, a noisy chattering of starlings. They flew in low and fast, directly above my head, landing in a mostly bare red maple at the edge of my fence. The glorious cacophony of their impromptu gathering left me breathless. In all the years lived here, practicing my ritual of saying goodnight to Mother Earth, never had I experienced starlings, quite literally, at my back door.  I held my breath, watching them, listening to them speak in language known only to them. They were still, yet aflutter, their collective energy an invisible and palpable force moving through the stark limbs of that red maple like a wave. To most people this moment would just appear to be birds in a tree and go largely unnoticed. To me, this was poetry, this was a gift from the Universe, this was a moment to savor, a moment to etch into the deepe...