branches
downed with rain

a million splinters
catching me off guard

who raises the dead
fell first

cottonwood crown
this benevolence
of freedom

floating
through sunbeams
your gentle lift

asks – beloved –
can you eat
the sun ?

All in All

guitar picks in couch cushions
petals pink, skimming
birth baths

religion or superstition
the creek grows wider

an orange cat on the roof
hears the river
hiss

lemon balm
comfortably seated
in a kiss

trail's flowering Judas
adds graffiti
to rainlight –

All in All
we can fill ourselves full
if we want to

all of you
before we meet –
a heavy gate
swings open
with a light touch

waking
to remnants
of tulip's flower girl –

petals cast
before the honeymoon
of now

Secrets and Stars

who is here
tending landscapes
bespeaking love over fear

filling this heart
with secrets and stars
in the garden of high affection?

who extended God
further than His name

in order to see
what grows beyond
the seasons?

Beloved, a healing
is at hand –
open the door

mud
and onions
on the breeze –

farmers
always at home

snow flakes
on squirrel fur

and pine needles
slow motion falling –

thirty five days
without sun

February ordains
gray as God.

this afternoon
from a chickadee
all I needed to hear

childhood home –
follow the dirt road
to the end

falling star
over the frozen lake
a cold winter morning surfaces
without a word
from you

missing blackberries
like a first love's heart
now a missionary
to the lost

no dawning beams

to fill my teacup –

this blackened ledger

keeping track

of absence

leaves
bruising

and streams
of ruined lyric

soften their glisten –

October's gossamer
spread too thin

and deeper into dawn
I see the dance
as everything

Undone

I've come undone again –
reeling.

Yesterday I pulverized truth and
pressed it into open places,

my mouth suffocated
by honor.

Can you see how I am fearfully
and wonderfully made?

My white flag falls
to the floor; I am naked.

I've come undone again –
starving.

Today I run hard in circles.

Bondage and freedom pounding
into the pavement.

Home, out, home

I've come undone again –
trembling.

Tomorrow I cannot be
wrong because there is
no other
way.

I come
to where I am
one –

two suns
hang over the lake
before both
are lost

blueberries and bears
soaked by morning dew –
even at this distance
my love affair with hunger
rarely composed

leaves
at rest downstream
like a tired monk
waiting
on no
one

cicada skin
floating on a fern –
there is no distance

Distilled

After moonshine
I think of the trail maker
and the river church
filled with skipping stones –
what burns at first
goes down smoothly
in the end