Wave

I stand
At many shores
Along the Ocean's edge
While waves bring
Messsages
Across the silence to my heart
Each one unique
Some urgent and some quiet
All born in gentle truth
Sometimes I can't hear
Sometimes I don't understand
But waves bring truth
Urgent or otherwise
Toward every shore
Where bare feet stand
In water

Raindrop

photo: google images

How many places have you been
Before you found this window
And drew my eyes to you
And spoke with me though my thoughts
Did you touch an elephant in Africa
Did you fall with an autumn leaf in Russia
Were you used nine times in the Rhone
Before you came to this window
And why out of all the raindrops
That have touched me in my life
Did I notice you and know you
Surely you stand in your drop
With new friends about you
Yet your essence is unmistakable
As if I have known you forever

Simple Presence

Photo: Google Images

Water birds landing
On still water
At a lost backwater
Hidden among trees
Behind banks
Along the River

The sound in stillness
Is unmistakable
And beautiful
Perfect and in unison
Matched in sound
Matched in time

My head turns to the sound
And eyes find birds
Bobbing on top
Of their own disturbance
Proof of new presence
On the still pond

I notice the beaver’s nose
Pushing water aside
The determined Vee
Of water now rippling
Under the mallards
And lost in reeds
At the pond’s margin

Beaver ignores
The beautiful visitors
And remains loyal
To the focused work
Of tending a pond
A smile lands and finds me
Connected to it all

Bright and Shiny

Unborn, undying and everlasting
The part that waits for me
On firm ground, timeless where I left it
Even after this old favorite shirt
The self I lived in for so long
Now frayed and thinned and ripped
Still resists being laid aside
Yet knowing in my own heart
It is outgrown and beyond mending
Now, more than ever before
I want to hold that bright and shiny key
And return to live again from that place
I walked away from so very long ago

A Summer Dive

 Photo: Google Image

I remember swimming
Diving from a granite cliff
Imagining a steady dragonfly
As I try to find
And hold
that perfectly still instant
At the very top of the dive
But time rushes as a river
And casts us back
Into the irresistible draw
Of gravity
Its ever-present truth a triumph
Until we find that momentary chill
in the lake’s full embrace