Strange and ...

 

I saw a scorpion this morning.

 

Improbably, on the pipeline path in the low light of dawn,

I saw a shape that looked like a scorpion and

Wondered and took a stem of grass

Growing there and poked

At the shape and

Watched it move,

Rear up,

Hold that position as a palpably living thing,

As a brave and tested warrior takes up a stance to strike.

 

I breathed.

 

I wondered.

 

I carefully stepped over the threat of something strange and dangerous.

 

I moved on.

 

As Breath

 

I was forced to slow this morning

and was aided in this by the hermit thrush and its

solemn studied song.

 

I was forced to slow by the exigencies of berry picking amid the brambles,

By the tangle of wild clematis and the fierce

Blockade of blackberry

Canes almost an inch thick and deeply, dangerously armed with thorns.

 

I was forced to slow by the steep and treacherous loose rock path up the pipeline. I slowed

For the careful search for black and red raspberries.

 

As a consequence

Of all of this,

I am now

 

Slow

Almost to stillness and

 

Quiet

 

Unto silence.

 

 

May's Emergence

 

I’ve been

intensely focused

on the beauty of the season,

on the gardens, the plants, the soil, leaves, old stems, emerging tenderness

what needs to be done

what can’t wait.

 

In all of this, I have neglected my interior.   (I love

 

the echoes of allusion and

 

I feel

the deep love for me inherent in them.)

 

In neglecting my interior,

I neglected to call forth from within me

 

the higher vibrational being that I am –

 

pure love incarnate,

 

which,

 

even as I sit here saying it,

writing it,

thinking it,

 

comes forth on little cat feet.

 

 

 

Expanded Now

Out at dawn in April snow,

Feet sliding on the hill

Legs, lungs and beating heart

Become aware of a larger beating rhythmic step

In sync,

With a season,

A process,

A weather system’s sweep;

The vast wrap-around Newfoundland and then back down to where I stand

Still.

This is where I find myself much larger than first thought.

Clouds and snow moving in service to a greater imperative

Than my step by step impatient climb –

That we are as big as continents

In our containment of large mysteries,

That we reflect the wheel and spin of star systems,

That stepping stones can be the size of decades;

You can open yourself up

To this

In the movement of your

Mind’s eye.

What You Thought

What you thought was solid

ground

is not solid ground,

you feel a sickening slide of subsidence

where you expected strength enough to hold

Firm under you.

It seems that there is something

Unseen underneath

Maybe snakes or rodents that you didn’t know about.

You didn’t know

Snakes maybe or rodents, living furtive sneak-thief,

Right under your feet.

Snakes

Or rodents maybe, sly-snouted, danger-eyed

Hearts beating baleful

God’s creatures every one

God’s creatures

The Gathering

Like strands of yarn or bits of fabric,

We gather now all the various bits and pieces of ourselves into a bundle of being.

We bundle them up, gather them together, hold them within our clumsy embrace.

Clumsy because we are new at this.

Clumsy because our hands are now so full, our sense of ourselves is so volatile,

Changing from one day to the next.

Clumsy because our gathering up continues even when we think

That perhaps we have got it all gathered in,

So busy holding all of these bits and pieces and

Strands interwoven

While at the same time

We continue to come upon more bits, more strands,

And gather them in as well.

And all of this is done in love, so that we become thick with it,

Our eyes moist and our hearts open.

This is done in a quiet imperative of pressures

Unseen, undefined,

But none the less real for us.

We do not slow ourselves in this work of gathering at this time.

If anything, we increase our pace, become ever more aware

Of even the smallest strands and pieces which have not yet been touched,

Gathered in,

Embraced,

Included in the wholeness of our bundled selfhood.

Why? Why do we do this? Why now?

Like peripatetic families we learn to carry all that we

Have and all that we are

More easily with us,

For we are preparing ourselves for a journey.

We will travel swiftly and travel far and we know

Somehow that the time is upon us, the time is now,

And we must prepare for the journeying, prepare for the swiftness

And the distance and the unknowns

Of our becoming.

So we gather all of our parts and pieces, all of our strands and strains of selfhood,

All of our love and all of that which is not yet love which still we have within us

And we bundle it all into a more or less unified selfhood,

A more or less streamlined package,

So that we can go the distance

At a pace

That will

Find us

Where we should be

At the dawning

Of a new Age.

Water and Light

Here are photographs of Walden Pond in Massachusetts.

These are a celebration of the exceptionally clear and clean, almost silken water of the pond and the beautiful sunset that presented itself to me when I was there. These are presented to you in the order in which they were taken as the light changed and the night came in.

And here are three more. Two were taken at a Wildlife Refuge near Concord, Massachusetts.

The third one was taken at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Thank you for taking the time to experience the beauty of water and light through my camera lens.