The Arrival: Photo by Noelle
The TuTu: Photo by Noelle
Sunday and the TuTu: Photo Poem 17
Tag Archives: wildlife
Breaking Free: Haiku IV
Image re-posted from Enchanted Nature Facebook page.
Breaking chains that bind
Waiting on a free man’s sun
Faith in adventure
Quicksilver
Image re-posted from Enchanted Nature Facebook page
Quicksilver glistening
To night eye of
Iridescent trails
In an ebony and indigo wood
Shimmering bark
Drips to worn paths
Made rivers of
An even deeper blue
Moon glow fills
A darkened soul
Bright as
Phosphorescent
Jellyfish in a
Black sea
Coyotes yelp
Plaintive calls across a field
Tricksters of the
Night kingdom
Romanced like I
To sing by silvery
Light
Hull and Seed
Dragonfly on Lotus hull: image re-posted from Enchanted Nature Facebook page
I am the hull and the seed
The stem and the flower
Dry creek bed and flooded field
Crushed by life I am
Forged stronger than bone
Delicate as web threads in attic room
That dragonfly wings should replace a heart
Thumping wildly as the quiet morn
Aloft with a love from the coldest of fires
I am nowhere in everything
All my sounds in a hum
On fire is my soul to sing as one
Winter Sun
Winter Sun: Photo by Noelle
Winterscape barren as white bones picked. Edges sharp, light and dark. No color and much shadow till it weighs the heart to stone. All life in movements of sugar dust winds at high speeds across the now crusted snow. Crows cling to power lines as cattle huddle on grassless slopes. It hurts to look. To wrap oneself tight feels the only comfort. A lonely hug in a bereft land, silent, but for the wind.
Willfully, I force the aperture open wider than nature allows taking in angled rays, piercing and yet strangely soft in brilliance. Hitting the retina at full force I refuse to blink. Face warming despite wild, moisture sucking winds I open my arms wide. An invitation I give; opened and exposed. The cold strokes my warm belly as if it were a lover. I tolerate the chilly caress with shivers to remind I am no fool. I wait, each breath a blacksmith’s billows, for all treasures want for my patience. Then it comes as she tips along the mountain ridge.
Diamonds alive in the snow. Pinks and yellows arc across the lens with halos in green. Sunlight refracts off tearing lids bouncing back with a light of my own. Pupils snap wide as the eyes see what was there, but ignored – a rich, cornflower colored blanket surrounding the Earth. A blue sky as deep as Spring waters and endless as a sea. The heart quickens. It feels life and nearly breaks in exaltation of a winter’s suns penetration down to the soul. Warming the optic nerve, a pulsating signal to a wintered heart. Quiet my soul has slept in the cold, dark hours of December, but the great orb offers her hand now to dance. How could any spirit refuse a winter’s solstice waltz? Surely, I cannot.
Hildegard I: Little Gem
Starling Mumuration: Photo re-posted from Enchanted Nature Facebook page
“Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.” – Hildegard Von Bingen
Spirit River: Haiku I
Dutch Creek: Photo by Noelle
Transparent river
Flowing strong on field deep green
Thirsty for the sea
Enough
The Hog Backs: Photo by Noelle
I am enough. Who I am today – light or shadow – is enough. There is no other “me” skin hanging, neatly and stylishly pressed in the closet for me to don. There is no other moment than this one either. Thus, it too, must be enough. My past has already caught the noon bus, and, as is its habit, my future is fashionably late.
I am enough and my time is now.
Poor Man’s Shadow
Life in Concrete: Photo by Noelle
She asks what I want. Such a loaded question. No exit. I want, I want many things but purse strings wrap at my knees and I feel myself falling into her question. I look up. She wants to please me. Her love a warm blanket, tattered but whole. That moneyless handbag dangles off her arm and it’s not the elephant in the room, but rather the herd. I don’t know why she’s asking when there is no way to fill my hunger. I want to tell her not to ask me anymore for my insides she can’t fill. Best not to ask and let me gnaw on my own wants as dog bones left on the floor.
Still, she waits and there’s the tension. The longing to be true and answer with my greatest heart’s desire, because her love deserves that much. Yet to answer is to darken her eyes with that poor man’s shadow. He lingers with his empty pockets in the hallway jingling keys to fool you it was money. I hear him louder sometimes than I hear her. Still, she’s waiting.
I want to love her with an answer she can meet, but all my small hopes are used up. I got nothing but big heart yearnings left and I feel like she can see them straight up, though I’ve worked hard to hide them in the wood pile. “What do you want,” she asks now exasperated. I shove my hands in my pockets, “Nothin’, mama. I’m good.”
I see her sorrow and I eat it whole, like her biscuits. It’s all that’s on the table.
Work in progress from “The Writer’s Church” writing group, Boulder, CO. Hosted by Marj Hahne
Let Them Run
Image re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page
I want freedom. Freedom from a tongue bound by convention. Freedom of thought that need not be harnessed back like horses wild. Let them run, I say. I want freedom of time that has no tick. No deadline. It belongs only to me. I am the boss who’s burning that midnight oil for inventions that build a life. My life. I want freedom of style as I slip on skinny jeans, GoGo boots and too much eyeliner. I want freedom of money, mullah, bank, green dogs braying with a jingling, jangling pick me up off my sad ass, hard times, hard luck self. I want freedom of space. Open plaines and wind swept deserts. Where I can walk a mile or ten in my crusty, beat up hikers and no one holds my line to any destination I desire. I want freedom of heart. Open it up wide as a storm gray clam glistening with sea water and pearls, while it still holds the grit I earned honestly. I want the freedom to love you. Love you as I take you into my skin, bury you deep in my belly and warm you up like mama’s stew. I want the freedom to open myself to possibilities and disaster. Good times and crazy adventure. I want freedom that only a bird knows. Alone, in a winter wood, with nothing but silence and every branch I own.
Work in progress from The Writing Church Writer’s group hosted by Marj Hahne, Boulder, CO. Inspired by the poem “What Do Women Want” by Kim Addonizio
Meditation Travelogue 
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