Connected

The gifts I kept from you
The Love I kept from view
Left me standing
On the other side of the River
Alone

I could have joined with you
In the river
If I would have found the courage
To share a dance
A kiss - a gentle caress
When you needed them

When we got lost
And needed to cross
Back to the other side
We could have made a bridge of love
Together

Winter Morning

Ducks in darkness
Glide silently
Perfectly together
Sliding to a stop
On dawn’s heavy pond
Settling to rest
Like two slippers
On a fabric floor

Their soft swash
On the still pond
Draws brash calls
From crows on branches
Tangled in the darkness
Awakening the day
Like a fire stirred to life
From overnight embers

Morning’s light ignites
Its wash of colour
Flooding the eastern sky
Tinting all things their Hue
Black withdraws from all
Except the crow
Who keeps his morning
Colour in his call

Wind Chime

Everything in nature
Everything in life
Moving
In its own way
With its own rhythm

The tree
In a breeze
Dances with its leaves
Its branches
Its trunk

One branch of leaves
Makes the beat
As the crown
Sways with feeling
And the trunk resists the pull

Sometimes
My eyes close
And I lean back to sway
In the soft push
Of the wind

Sometimes
With my hand
Or my voice
I add to the music
Of the wind in the trees

It really
Doesn’t matter
How the wind plays us
Just that we feel
The beauty

A Widgeon’s Warning

I walk along the river
Every day
With my dog
Chester

Widgeon whistle warnings
While we walk by
Even though they know
He never chases birds

Their warning call
Fused into behavior
By the white-hot need
To survive

Not so very different
From some of my own
Strong habits…

Surf

Waves form their curl
And one upon another break
To run up on the beach
And sink into the sand

Sand grains seive through fingers
As the water draws away
It is a wet and sandy apron
This noisy ribbon in the bay

Morning Crow

Black crow
Flying low
Across the road
In front of my car

Round belly
Black
As its
Flat shadow

Sun's silver steel light
Stolen from the ground
Flashes
Off cocky wings

Autumn Leaf

Yellow leaf on black pond
Of two worlds
Under a bare branch of your tree
That combs the morning mist
Reaching out for winter's sleep

How different your back
And your belly must feel
Stuck to the top of deep water
That soft familiar whisper of breeze
Now silenced under a muffle of cloud
Pushes at your belly
But the irresistible pull of the river's current
Moves you now closer to the shore

While you floated
I watched a boat pulling logs up the river
Its exhaust mixing with the mist
Spreading from a cotton-cloud gray
To an air-brushed blue
As the boat took its sound
Around the river's bend
I noticed you again
In your neither-here-nor-there world
Still and silent

There wasn't much of a wake
From the boat or its boom
More like the jelly-jiggle of rippled water
But it cast you on the shore
Where you folded and tore in two
Yellow leaf on black pond
Circling back into life

Stuck at the interface

Listening to Waves

I felt you lift my boat
Green and solid ocean wave
Moving so fast and strong
Silent on your track

I watched you find your shore
And at your turn
Stand to call your truth
I ran with you down the beach – listening

Sometimes you just whispered
But sometimes
You seemed to shout
Pounding your message into the surf

I never understood you clearly
But you always touched me deeply

Your voice carried over the sand bars
And tumbled with the salty wind
Beyond the beach grass into the forest
Where your song would softly rest

High up on bent branches
In the summer smell of old cedar trees
You would sleep with invisible silence
Until the raven would visit your branch

I watched the raven tilt his head
And listen carefully to your secret
Then with it fly away calling
The essence of your truth

I never understood him clearly
But he always touched me deeply

I wondered - Did you find your peace
On the beach, or in the forest
Or when raven learned your message
And called it out for the others to know

Now, when I watch your brothers find their shore
And I smell the forest where they rest
And as I hear the raven call your truth
I find your joy in my own heart's beat

A New Season

Standing for a moment
Toes in winter boots
Touching
The river's edge
Gazing into my own
Rippled pond

Distracted
By a wing of geese
Passing over the water
Like a healer’s hand
Its subtle brush of air
Quieting rippled water
Under the gentle touch
Of its soft feathered shadow

Their colourful-chorused call
Finds me and draws me
From my sleeping place
To join them
In their triumphant return
To spring

Now out of sight
Past the thicket
Of budding branches
On the other side
Of the river
The geese move on

I watched it all happen
And somehow now
My inner pond
Full and clear and still
Has awakened
To the rhythm
Of a new season

Present Moment

Sometimes the past
Rises with the tide
The weightless pull
Of a memory
That can shadow
The sand we stand on

Sometimes the future
Carries me away
Like an outgoing tide
To dream a distant thought
That shimmers
With uncertain light

As with every tide
At the moment of its change
A quiet instant rings
Returning us
To the fullness in a moment
And the sand beneath our feet