How are you spending yourself?

From the Journal | May 19, 2023—Feeling poem-ish

Photo: engabito

For those new to this e-community, I periodically offer my readers & clients snippets from my daily writing (tidied up a bit ;-).

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May 7, 2023 | Sunday

Here on a path not walked in a long while
tendrils of lush weeds whisper, 
Give us back our wild, the human hands
that cleared a route no different
from the green hands reaching across
to close the opening you 
stopped entering.

The heart is like that, a trail inward,
a wildness closing around 
an absence, an aching presence.

Out of longing or earth-lust, you crouch, 
pulling away berry vines, tough Salal, shoots of 
Salmonberry, spruce seedlings, sweating
with focus, looking for the bare soil
that once held you, joy in roots and snails,
low thermals warm at your ankles, saying, 
Yes, this is the way forward.

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May 10, 2023 | Wednesday

What if you could hold light
as if a luminous bird in your cupped hands?
Speaking softly, with kindness,
your voice a song so soothing she lets you
draw back her shimmery feathers, go 
beneath the downy fluff, and see 
what holds her together, all the places
she’s been, tiny scars of hurt and healing, 
what came before and before, all the stories
that matter over time. Then, releasing her,
you are part of her, this span of
holding and curiosity, layered in,
the light flying on and on.

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May 15, 2023 | Monday

Bending over a wet head
of lettuce, how do they find us?

How does the ruffled leaf, veined and 
red-edged, bring back the dead?

My mother’s hands are beside
mine in the cold water,

washing away flecks of dirt, probing
for rebel slug or tiny beetle hidden

in the heart where all leaves root, 
holding tight to core.

“Never cut, always tear,” my mother
says, as I work each leaf, standing 

alone in the kitchen, humming, 
arranging ragged pieces on a plate.

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May 18, 2023 | Thursday

Looking up from my notebook, up from
the depths of thought, a swooping
and gliding, figure eights, no,
more complex, slipping over
the surface of pond, brushing
rushes and fern tips.

What bird is this?

Mid-day now, the sun has burned through
coastal clouds, bright on the water.

Not a beak, not feathers,
but wings that flutter and stretch
opaque, fleshy, fast, erratic,
golden fur embracing a
mammal face, looking sideways
at me, banking, pulling higher.

Hello, bat braving daylight, are you
a sign, omen, strange angel?

Part butterfly, part fox, she flits
and hunts the air, the pond reflecting
her passing, her mouth opening, 
letting out a language I can’t hear,
letting in other wings, the tiny meat
of gnatty, flying things.

Is it hunger or curiosity that brings
you to me? Thank you either way.

Suddenly gone, odd how the pond
feels empty. Like every other loss,
I add her to my bag of living
memories, called mind, called body,
called maybe you’ll come back
to me.

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May 19, 2023 | Friday

Walking in woods between
mud and broken moonlight,
one foot’s slippery, but holding its ground,
the other in air, suspended
ever so briefly.

Will you join me?

Even if you stand still, the earth
spins and flies through space, the oldest
form of time. Your body is another,
a soft, pulsing purse, each breath a 
penny spent, once and gone.

What better way to spend ourselves
than sharing a walk, mud on our soles, 
moonlight in our hair?

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How are you spending yourself? Who might you invite on your journey? Would love if you shared in a comment below, so we can all learn from each other.