Two new poems posted today. The first, Slipping Away, is my attempt to sit with some of the hardest things showing up in my life. The subjects run from the very personal to the universal. The suffering in the world sometimes seems like it is demanding center stage.

The second poem, Home, comes from a desire to acknowledge how authentic intimacy, whether it be joy or sorrow, connects us to our own Souls as well as to everyone and everything else.

This weekend my sweetheart and I are doing a three day Grief Ritual. Or perhaps I should say, it is doing us. Why on earth would one attend a Grief Ritual you ask? 

Great question. I find many gifts in these rituals. They can be hard gifts like the poem, The Skinny Branches, written in the wee hours of the morning before the last day of the ritual. 

For me the hard places often yield hard gifts. While time may erode these gifts, like water wearing away stone, I find the hard gifts persist the longest. Does that matter? Probably not and yet I find some solace in tenacity in the face of futility. What can I say? The sun has not yet risen and the darkness is still thick with mud.

After an other worldly encounter with a herd of Tule Elk out on Pt. Reyes, I wanted to honor the arc of their lives and the beauty and grace I experienced through them.

While mountain lion, bobcat and coyote may prey on them given the opportunity, the old wise ones know there is strength and some safety in community. Until of course, death inevitably claims them as it claims us all.

Just posted a new poem, The Priestess. It is a meditation on the wounds of the mother and their effects on her children.  On some level I think all of our mothers have had their voices silenced and the price we have paid as children is part of the suffering of the world. 

How fortunate it is that the feminine is rising in these times and hopefully the love filled voices of mothers AND fathers will be heard singing from the branches of our family trees in ever increasing numbers.

This web space begins as a place for me to be able to access my own poetry on line. If you find your way here, I hope you find some of yourself and parts of your own life in my words.

Feel free to comment on any of these poems. Whatever you have to say is welcome here around
The Center Fire.

Likewise if something here inspires you to write one of your own or reminds you of one you've already written, post it here. I'd love to read it.