Ravens

And I find myself crouching at noon beneath one fir towering up past the bright green bigleaf maple. While from the canopy a raucous rasp of teen ravenous ravens demand notice. The rain clatters all about, tapping bigleafs, smacking fallen arbutus husks, blotched with yellow. And Raven, the grown, annoints the forest with his unexpected clever clucks and sonorous thralls.

smart out

The paranoia outsmarting all

outsmarting self

outsmarting smartness

protecting from an

ill dream a fantasy doom

and producing lockdown

metalbrain

locked up

locked down

box of 

blank

.

Ig

It's oily down
     the  overing sludge,
     the heave of dull,
     thick dark clouds



                               sinking.

Sea Centre

Within a sphere — sphere of light
Upon an open blossom
       a carriage of filaments
       network of vessels
              chalice of ribs:

That's where to rest, and spread my eyes
       across the green-white surge
       of wind-whipped waves
              climbing over and through one another
              and past the farthest
                     lips of sea.

Tessa's Dharamsala Journey

ONE shadow scattered through soft layers of grey,
     spilling through clear sky
     racing past tree land
     hurtling east.

TWO breathing the thin sun, marking the flow in un
     certain heartbeats, un
     settled tugging at lost
     threads, questions left
     hanging.

THREE journeys unfolding:
     Sweet home departed. Old home, a touchstone.
     And India, gleaming in her millions,
     a swirling mirage
     on mind's horizon.

FOUR faces will sail the sky, one of this world,
     one of the other, two held betwixt,
     bound to both by long threads of heritage:
     the white cloth of Saxony,
     the white scarves of Snow Mountain.

FIVE weeks across the broad Earth: a time to
     grow, to learn, to dance, to cry, to sing, to try.
     To touch the mud and dust of
     one thousand million dreams.

May your path be smooth! May your steps be sure!
May your hearts be bright! May your days be full!
May your songs be sweet! May your stomachs be unemptied!
May your eyes be clear! May your spirits be lifted!
May your cups of promise be filled and overflowing!

DIA

Grinding throb as heart cycles,
               pulling  ,   pushing  ,    dropping    ,    returning
               and, as it weaves liquid rhythm:
                                chest rise  ,   catches sinew   ,   recedes.


These two, heart and breath,  idle at the stoplight.
Green light lingers on the mind.   And the host of stimuli
           beckon:      find,        remember,        chew,        doze,
                               hold,       release,             follow,      forget.

Restless Whitecaps

The whitecaps of my mind push me down.
     pull me. heave. yaw me.

Powerless, I cannot but follow.

Splashing through my eyes: insistent doubt,
     persistent weakness, throb of cowardice
     knell of worthlessness. Voices in waves
     telling me of my bumbling confused good

     fornothing
     ness.

That's my storyline, but
     glance to the horizon―an endless sea of wavelets:
     now rising in frothy tips
     now sinking in unstable hollows.

How many, like me, suffer this endless unrest?
How many host an ever-marching procession of unsettled anguish?
A sky full of whispers cannot begin to tell the answer.

All of us, beset by ceaseless waves, have forgotten our true essence:
     clear, pristine, fluid, unbound:
     like the limitless deep expanse water
     within, beneath the waves.

Into this ocean, may all confusion now dissolve!
May the radiant sun of wisdom shimmer on the restless waves!