Fall

In the mysterious netherworld
Sometimes black forces grip
The spaces in-between, although
Why should I think
That they'd be any different than
The ones I touch and move among
In ordinary living, the daily of
Familiar; waking, sleeping, wondering,
About all of that that is.

Lately I have been possessed
By beauty hiding in plain sight,
The tease of magic rounding corners
From the realms of in-between,
And sometimes when the gray shapes shift
The line between the beauty and
The fury razor thin, I am
Reaching for my balance.

The other night I rose in darkness;
I've never needed light
For a trek across old floorboards,
Feeling every deflect, hearing
Every sound from every
Season, as old living
Wood contracts and moves:
I know these things so well.

An anger had been seething,
Gnawing on some old
And sore deep grievance
I'd let in and wished away.
But the daemon came back in,
Malevolent and hard, and
From the southwest corner
Of the night, a mighty vapor struck me,
You let me out, the blackness said,
And hurled me, tumbling
Vast distances,
From one world to the next.
A flickering light went out,
And with it went the rage.

I opened up my eyes, widening to
The covering dark:
Orenda,
And surrounding me:
Orenda,
Had been waiting, and then coming
From the trees, the fields, the sky, from
The spaces in-between
The physics known and unknown,
I'd keened it, felt it coming
And I melded to 
Orenda,
And I rose as new again, to
Face a clearing.

I can't quite say how this lit up
The new of conscious always there,
The golden fire burst from embers in
The hollows of my clay,
And then the sky burned dawn,
And day began, like all the others;
I slipped back into what
I'd simply wanted for the night,
Balm and restoration, by way of
Waiting dream, 
The far terrain of slumber.
I settled then, and slept.
The room grew warm.
Did I fall and enter in-between?
I suppose that I may never know.
Orenda.

About December

This, a December day,
Trying to become winter,
Layers quiet upon the countryside,
A mantle over howling strife
Taking over sanity, robbing
Goodness from my life.

But gratitude wells up inside,
Calm knocks and says, be still, and
Watch the chickadees,
They squabble at the feeder,
Watch lone snowflakes, languid motion
Floating from the stern grey sky,
Their lace gone before alighting.

I am weary of
Assault by poseurs, scheming bandits
Who will vanish into some
Post-election,
Post-trauma mist;
They won't matter after their allotted
Sound bites, furious pacings;
They'll be ghosts, just viral mendicants,
Figments of a cosmic evil
That flared and spat out bile,
Dared my earnest mission, balanced core.

Meanwhile soon our family will arrive,
We will close in around
Our own warm hearth,
Fall back into small rituals,
Of mercy, memory and creating,
And we'll watch
Our dogs and comment
How they romp like
Cousins on a summer picnic,
We'll make a trifle, bake some bread,
And feed appled fat-wood
To the fire.

This is all there is, and all there should be,
Breathing in this grey December day,
Watching as light changes, as
The winter solstice comes.
I say a prayer for joy,
A prayer for peace and fairness
As the hours pass,
Reflecting, I look through windows
To the back, the sleeping fields,
The western sky that rolls toward
My old home; I think, now time
To do some chores, bring in more greens,
Find the candles, shelter in, for
Soon enough will come
Another lift-off into night.

Bloom the Earth

Reflecting on the repetitions, those
Carried spaces in between the
Constancies of
Light and dark,
Effort and repose,
Interstitial possibilities of
Joy and despair thrive lucid,
Calling me.

Years float thru as my toehold
Slips in one world to become
Tenacious in some other.
I enter and fade through time.

Watching love and beauty
Shapeshift as roses
Die on winter canes,
Stillness becomes motion.
Refusing to give up, I am
Breathing into dream.

For Buff, Zora, and MJ, Paris, November 2015

Across the homelands
We keep watch,

We see the future coming

The buffalo have now returned 

They graze the grasses long in spring 

And winter wheat will come in time

For harvest after solstice.

I am Tatanka Itancan.

Water glints in morning sun,

A shadow curves to surface light

Folds back down, a graceful dive,

Scales flash and disappear.

I am Cante Skuya Win 

While arching high and over us

Thermal riders fly through clouds,

We hear their cries, the darkening skies,

The Golden Eagle watches.

I am Anunkasan Tokaheya

Across the homelands

We keep watch,

Though we may leave and then come back

To care for Unci Maka

And so this is our vision now,

Ancestors guided us to this

We ask you keep your promises 

We pledge that we'll keep ours. 

We're all one heart, one voice, one plan, 

The one Creator gives us.

No Way Out

Out in the meadow the Japanese maple

Burns red in November sun, slanting in low enough to uplight

The lowest limbs.

Red, it pierces me, destabilizing an

Already unsteady self, wraps anger

And fear twinning as I fight the tears.

In past times I've loved the fall, my

Season, the season of my birth,

I thought that I've been good and strong

And tried to occupy my space and time

With some intention; 

With love and an open heart.

Red, like blood, like fire, fugitive,

This intensity.

Six O'clock AM

Yellow moon,
Round spotlight in an
Early wintery morning,
Fog lifting from the
Frosted fields, a
Close porous mantle 'round
The restless owl.
He'd been hooting
As I drifted off,
Was plaintive when
I woke; the room moon-bright,
My blinded sleep sealed
Wakeful in the silent house.

Alone I strain to recognize
The settling creaks
And sighs of the old place,
The changing darkness
Of the full moon waning
Stirring near-noiseless creatures
Moving on the metal roof
And along the gables,
Big as running bears in
A wary, undreamt landscape.

If he were here I'd have
Tossed and turned
To shield away
The interrupting moon,
And not heard a thing but
The voices in my dream:
Wake up, wake up,
There just might be
A new day waiting, coming;
We're calling now,
We're ready now
For you to claim the light.

North Woods

Russet on the golden miles

The swaths of bracken bronzing 

Into nestled corm to sleep

Amid the thistle and scrub pine

Giving way to watery

Bogs, to kettle lakes

Rimmed by boulders and outcroppings. 

We drive consumed by shouting silence

Of conversation unimagined

When we were young and 

Starting off in a world

Undimmed by so much peril.

But I still carry him, although 

He's gone forever, leaving

Memory in the stillness of my heart,

Ahead of days that roll uncertain

Into a dark where no light shines.

And yet a door was opened once, 

And I will never close it,

Meanwhile the maple and the birch trees 

Shed their leaves,

My season metamorphose

As with theirs, because 

All things must change,

Although for some of us, 

All things will stay the same.