shedding skin

...she brings me birds nests and bees wings

D R A I N E D :: A G O T A D A

Inspired by Still I Rise, Maya Angelou

F R A G M E N T E D :: F R A G M E N T A D A

S H A T T E R E D :: D E S T R O Z A D A

agave abstraction in bnw

weary

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.

I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight but you cannot leave yet. 

I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs toward a new kind of love your life has never allowed. 

I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers. 

I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious. 

I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand because life is short and you too are thirsty.

I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.

I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse. 

I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

–Adrienne Rich, from An Atlas of the Difficult World

looking to the sky

shedding skin abstractions

shedding skin

agave abstracted

eco texturas

summer lake scapes

PLAYA TEXTURE-SCAPES

And what love are we solitaries mute witnesses to? The omnipresence of great aloneness, the infinite possibilities of no duality, no separation between you and me, between the speaker and the spoken to, the dancer and his dance, the writer and her reader, the people and our earth.

At the Center of All Beauty:  The Dignity and Challenge of Solitude

By Fenton Johnson

shedding skin ~ a work w/cara hagan, in progress

takigawa-inspired

 ...Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours?... 

                                                                         From Poetry is Not a Luxury Audre Lorde

each seed, a universe

peace

and then she was gone

after the rains

everalasting impermanence ~ summer, 2018

eco abstraction/s

Joy is not made to be a crumb, Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate.

Give in to it.

There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.

We are not wise, and not very often kind.

And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left.

Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,

that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.

It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.

Anyway, that’s often the case.

Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.

~ Mary Oliver

(lake) superior textures

Princes Garden

findhorn

feeling all the greens :: scotland 2018

walls water wood windows :: textures of scotland

scotland 2018