The Secret Life of Trees
Sometimes
When the world is loud
Crashing in concrete and asphalt crescendos
Of crisis
That cracks the marrow of my soul
I curl up
Into a burl
Between the bare bark sheaves
Of my wintering friend
And wonder of the secret life of trees
Their arms thrash
Not to trade blow for blow
In some tryst of tragedy
But in the dance
Of wind song riding
Along staves of air
That only play for leaved finge
Tracing arc of sky
I listen
For the sound garden
Of secret language
That rustles
Along leaves
whose dialect
Turns with the seasons
The quiet curve of leaf and needle
Pointing to places
I have not yet arrived in
Their outside, pith pocked and shod
In bare bark
rough from rain and sleet
Pest and pestilence
Heat and cold,
cunning in their decaying pursuit of what lies beneath
And in its sapwood sheath
bast remains tender and strong
Even as by the day, it grows old
Not unlike
Some two leggeds
I know.
Their leaves take shape as they will
Without worry of fitting someone else’s fo
Green and purple
Red yellow orange brown
From every corner of creation they wear the same crown
The same Clorophyl colours each and every one
For those with eyes to see
Their trunks stand on common ground
Even in death,
Hollowed out and gaunt
Weathered and ridden with relentless rot
Determined and infinite as only time can b
Yet still, they open shelter
And make room for life to sprout
For the place we all the same seek:
Home
Even in death,
For everything a season
Of seed and bud to build up
What is torn down
For the dream we all the same seek:
Hope.
For a future we can never assume will come
They cast their vote
Rooted
In what is but isn’t yet
In a world that treasures both life and death
Oh humanity how I wish for thee
To spend more time
Listening
For the secret life
Of trees.
The Dark Velvet Veil
In the low light of that in between time
As the morning stars begin to call
Across an indigo scraped sky
To the sun -
still deciding to rouse another day
I slip out into the dark velvet vale
That only I know
I cut in between the cattails
As the loon aches its way across the lake
That space between shores
That no compass can calculate
For the direction of her mourning chorus
Tugs my heart along a thread
Deeper into the dark velvet vale
That only I know
I listen to the pines
Swap stories
Ancient breath
brushes against my coat
Crackling in the cold
Trading secrets
Of deer that pass
Through a squirrel of footsteps
Guided by paths that slip the thread
Deeper into the dark velvet vale
That only I know
Not much farther now
I have framed this shot before
All the angles fall into place
As the shutter slows to grasp this sacred time and space
Around the bend
Into the gully
Like Manna morning dew
Gossamer of moonlight fading
Against frozen fractals
Streams sing against
Cragged rockface
Broken into stone scraps of wonder
That resist and yield at once
The test of time
Running like a thread
Deeper into the dark velvet vale
That only I know
At last I come
Standing on ground
that thrums
With the beat
Where angel feet
have trod
And danced their way
Where only low light of morning
And star scraped skies
Call
Into the dark velvet vale
I exhale
the gift given
All that I am,
All that I do,
All that I ever have
Now, I come back to you
You - The one who thread this love
Across that space between shores
Across the memories that move
Into the ways of my heart
Into the embrace
Of the place
That only you
and I
know.
The Turning
As November creeps
Onto the threshold
of December’s doorstep
and waits to knock on another year
Along comes the turning
Where sap that runs,
Returns to the heart
When it turns too hot and too cold and too much
Time takes intention
As breath risks a deep inhale
And a space is born
To cradle
All the cares that crowd
The ins and outs
of raw roughshod places in my chest
that splinter
skittering across a morning’s frost façade
To hint at the deep
Beneath the surface
Of life lived, lost, and loved
And the turning
Over
Of all those
Yesterdays
I got my pray on today.
I pray for the birds and the bees and all the fish that swim in the seas
And I pray for my neighbours who lately get brought to their knees
I pray we abandon the vile valleys of toxic ties
That chain us and try to claim us by all that’s less than Holy in God’s eyes
I pray we lift our gaze to the hills
And are filled with a spirit of compassion that chills
The hot and heavy tide that slides down slippery slopes
That keep trippin’ us all as fools steppin’ on the same old racist tropes
I pray my kid grows up with a view of humanity
As God sent and Spirit willed into Love’s rich diversity
I pray that your kid is seen in every blessed hue
Of light that shines with promise of this Gospel truth:
We are loved into being and are not born into
Categories and boxes that claim it’s pre preordained to
Assign them and file them into have and have nots
How can we treat our children like they’re chips for the slots?
And I pray for the women in this world and my life
Whose courage and conviction have prevailed upon us even though resistance is rife
To the need to raise every eye
To the horizon where our life together meets
With equal opportunity, full autonomy and rights that leaves no room for sexist hate speech.
I pray for this time,
So fragile and dear
I pray for my neigbours looking for health care
I pray for the one who has no roof
Who’s nursing addiction just to cope and get through
I pray for the clerk who keeps the groceries going and the cleaner who’s doing their best to keep sickness from showing
I pray for the back to back shift workers grinding on the daily
Just trying to get a win so they got something to feed their family
I pray for the grieving and the weight of loss they carry,
As everyone rushes them on “just find acceptance and move on already!”
I pray for the carers who just keep caring,
even when their burdened backs and hearts are straining
I pray for myself, that I don’t get lost
tossed on the banal seas of not counting the cost
I pray for the pause where we all make room to take a breath
And give one back
So everyone can have some space to stop and reflect
That what’s most precious isn’t far out of reach
It’s just the walls in hearts and minds that need to be breached
Pray tell, where have all the good people gone?
Well take a hard look – this is the Kin-dom.
Spirit open my eyes to more than struggle and strain –
Grant glimpses of the goodness and love that abide and remain
In everyday people, choosing everyday choices
That lift up one another, rather than push down marginalized voices.
I pray I’m gonna keep working
And I pray you will too
For the harvest is still plenty
though the laborers seem scattered and few
I pray that between the place
Where certainty and doubt reside
We take up our prayers –
In word, action, heart and mind
And I pray I remember,
It’s never too late to begin.
Because just when everyone though it was all over:
“Time to pack it in!”
You are the One
who rises
again and again.
May it be so, Amen.
Ash and Dreams - moment of poetry for today.
Somewhere
In the way the wind winds
between black and white ashes
I hear the echo
Out of reach
This come-thou- long-awaited future
Passes
And in the silence that slips
Like silk sighs too deep for words
Through fall’s grave grove leaves
Their brittle banter
Chatters
Across lazy wires
swinging to the current
Of in vogue vain violence
Jolting my decent into the dying days
Of everything-a-season
To awaken
To my feet
Planted Firm
On the rock that will not move
For a future
That we will build and grow
Whose roots raggedly reach
Deep
Into the heart of hope
Whose life uncertain sings
Beneath rolling stone away streets
paved with ash and dreams
for our children
That are yet to be told
The other side of light
I’ll see you on the other side of light
Where the stars slip out of dusk’s reach
And make their way among the wilds
Of hope dancing on the edge
of the almost but not yet
Where the line between us blurs
Where all the bright beastly bruises
Of tender times and memories of what-could-be’s
soften their “if only…” ache
In the sway of sun and moon
Sure horizons are unmade
And Hope is born
Not in the glare of morning’s big reveal
Or in the big steal
of the little lies we tell to cover
The painful places we see all too well
Littered with the glitter
of tinsel tales told
In the panic of preserving
the familiar shiny mold
we made safe
for ourselves
No - hope is not borne by wing of dawn’s first light
Hope is born
In the darkest hour
In the patient pause of the uncertain
Of Possibility taking her breath
After the long exhale of letting go
Between what has been
And what can’t yet be
Who wastes time waiting for what is already seen?
Darkness spreads her long velvet veil of night
And I rejoice,
For in the space that comes
after the loss of surety’s sight
Lives a future where I just might see you,
On the other side
Of light
“When all that was becomes all that’s beyond”
I don’t know what comes next
But it’s all I can think about
And then I hear words like
surgery and chemo
And buzzers and alarms
And plans and percentages
of possible maybe’s
if things go my way…
I can’t believe this is now my day-to-day
And then what’s next
is the last thing
I want
to think
about
I don’t know what comes next
So I will try not knowing instead
I will try being here, now,
In this place where I feel
like I’m falling up
Maybe the next breath
is enough
That thing I do
When I’m not thinking at all
Because my body just knows
the how of it
Is buried down deep
in the bottom of my being
In that place that only You and I know
When I get up and lay down
Rise and fall
Breathe and exhale
In and out
Life and death
and lost and found
And I am part of this both/and round
Sung since day first dawned
When all that was
Is at once becoming
All that is beyond
Spirit fill me
With that breath of ages
That hovered over waters
ebony with promise
And drew life up from unseen depths
Into these same lungs
That have risen with each day and night
And night and day
Lungs that know
when to fall back
and pull away
To make room
To say: “Come - you are welcome here.”
Inviting that next new thing
that is on its way
To be
even in the midst of all my fears
Breath
That rhythm that turns
My anxiety into the tune
Of a beat that can’t yet keep
what the next measure of life may bring
But I sing
Anyway
Because
even when everything that was
Now seems beyond
I rest my breath
In evensong
That no matter what unknown this way comes
I in You and You in me
In and out
Lost and found
Rise and fall
Life and death and in all that was
and is to come
To each other
We will always
Belong
*painting “Clearly Unknown” by Sharyn Fogel
Another year, another amazing Kaloose festival.
In a time when so much seems so tender and fragile in the world, it’s amazing…
to hear 8 year olds sit together on rocks,
on the lakeshore,
under a searing sky of colour,
dreaming of their future
and all that they hope for.
For each other - and for all of us.
“Right now I pray for all the people in the world who don’t get to see fireworks. I hope they can see the light.” - Issy.
Hope is a choice we make,
Leaning into the dark -
the almost but not yet
of faith
Determined
That in the simple act
Of believing in one another
We can move humanity forward
To that which makes us all:
Whole.
Gilded black gossamer
Spun in the ink of faded stars
Whose death in eons
Spans time and space
To light a child’s face
This bejewelled body
dusted with comet tails
Hailey like hues
Transposed through a cosmic kaleidoscope pallet
Emblazoned with the promise
That light still shines
In ways we rarely look down
to notice. And wonder.
Opus of Mourning’s Light
“Outrage is now,
something we all talk about”*
Outrage tramples through the garden
It does not weep
It does not sow
It is a gall to grace
That no balm, its peace, can bestow
For only when it’s vengeance is routed
Does it over a shoulder
Throw
A glance: hindsight
Flowering the wake of what was
Petals shocked with blight blooming
Evaporates
A sharp breath
A moment born…
The flower is only known when it is mourned.
May we walk tenderly
Together
Sowing seeds and planting trees
So that when the blind bellicose
Wail
Of outrage screams
We might sing back
Of softer things
Unfolding
In the opus of morning’s light
A testament
Of our witness
That outrage may be now
But
It is with the incessant resistance
Of Hope
That we will unfurl
The very best of who
is within us.
*from deathfromabove1979’s album “outrage is now”
Flowers are from my garden - Siberian Squill according to my phone - I absolutely adore these fragile and precious blooms.
Beloved. Together.
Like Mary of Magdala
We stand by the tomb of our beloved.
Together.
In the grief of our night
where the sun is a promise
On the lips of earth and sky
that have yet to sing of light.
We stand in our grief, and our loss, and our pain.
We turn our face toward it.
Together.
We will open the gates of our being
For the river of tears
Must flow from our hearts
no matter how hard we must make them
Because we know
As The Creator has written on the heart of every living thing,
The heart of all creation,
That the measure of life will never be weighed on the scales of success or failure –
But only in love.
To love others, even as we have been loved – this is the measure of life lived.
To birth meaning, joy, friendship, compassion, and kindness into the world
In the moments of breath
That are given to us
To rise again and again,
Even when the world, like a stone,
presses on our shoulders,
Rough and raw and unyielding,
So that we must limp and scrounge our way
It is love that gives us step after step,
To stand where angels have trod.
To stand at the tomb,
And exhale a broken hallelujah
For life lived, fully, beautifully, mercifully
Even in tragedy’s end.
Remembering always, that love is breath,
The energy that courses through our spirit,
In life, in death, in life beyond death
And energy doesn’t die among the stars of this universe
It transforms.
It returns to the wellspring of creation to be born anew, scars and all.
It rises in ways we can’t yet see, but boldly dare to hope.
For who hope’s for what is seen?
Who hopes for this wound, this ache in the belly of our being?
No one.
Alison did not hope for this. Yet she lived and loved anyway.
And beloved, she loves Oliver and Tom still.
And beloved, we love her still.
Like Mary of Magdala
We stand by the tomb of our beloved
and we turn our face toward one another.
Together.
We hope for what we have yet to see –
That this love for Alison will rise in ways unexpected and profound
In tears that run,
In laughter at the absurd
In memories recalled,
In trips we have yet to take,
In small moments that are far more than the echo of a life once lived,
But are the song of who we are now,
In how we live our lives, and who we live them for, and who will become,
together.
Like Mary of Magdala
We stand by the tomb of our beloved. Together.
In the grief of our night where the sun is a promise
On the lips of earth and sky
We hold fast to the love that stays with us,
The love Alison gave in her own way,
The love we receive and carry still,
The beauty of her spirit that we see in the spark in Oliver and Tom’s eyes
The love that has changed us and will continue to change others,
The love for whom there is no road not traveled,
in this life or beyond,
Where its footsteps can’t be seen.
And we stand by the tomb of our beloved. Together.
We turn our face toward the morning to come,
Knowing, that her Spirit is not here among the dead.
And the love of her light lives in us,
Taking shape,
In the words of our mouths,
And the mediations of our hearts
And the road we will chose to make,
When we go from here,
By walking it.
Together.
Just like Mary.
Just like Jesus.
Just like Alison.
Together, beloved,
We will always be
For nothing and no one can take the Spirit away from us.
In the name of all that is holy and good and true – we pray.
May it be so.
Amen.
Around the Bend
I’ll see you around the bend
Where the light dips below the horizon
In the holy hollow of the space
Between Alnitak, Alinilam, and Mintaka
Where the eons make their home
I’ll see you around the bend of Baird’s Place
Where the red rusty merry-go-round
Carried our dreams on gales of childhood laughter
Psalms of thanksgiving sung on high
Fingers hanging on for dear life
With centrifugal force
As gravity pulled us each away
I’ll see you around the bend
You know the one
Where we walked on pine paved roads
That led to the most beautiful nowhere
Our imaginations could conceive
Through fields of wild spun gold
And craggy mountain escapades
Into bogs that left their mark
and stink
On us
I’ll see you around the bend
The one at the bottom of Weymouth street
Where it runs into Wicklow so fast
That the wheels almost came off our bicycles
As we raced through time together
Not beholden
To calendars, clocks, and chimes
I’ll see you around the bend of the harbour
Where salt washes sun kissed rocks
Warmed with the touch
Of memories that roll with tides of time
Carried on the wings of gannets
Echoing prayers
We never knew we would need.
I’ll see you
My friend
Around the bend.