Present

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I awaken around 2am, get dressed and out into the Palouse fields. Gracie is a bit confused at first, but happily follows along. I stop on a slope next to a young pondersosa pine about 13 feet high. A bright moon about 3/4 full is high in the sky, a bit to the south. A steady breeze with a touch of coolness blows from the west. My weight sinks into the earth, my skeleton a bridge between sky and magma core. Listening to my sway and spin I slowly begin to release thought and effort. The wind blows against my back rippling my spine in small waves upwards.

Suddenly the moonshadow of a huge bird crosses the bunchgrass in front of me. I look up to watch a magnificent owl soar directly between me and the moon, his open wings gliding into the flow. I am filled with a sudden sense of hope and grace, as if this creature is calling my soul to life, calling me to witness the vital and endlessly emerging source of being in this space of awareness and connection to the powerful beauty of this planet. I swoon into this opening and begin to bounce in a gentle, rapid rhythm upon the slope, my arms loose and free. Rushes of sweet pleasure rise up through my core in healing waves of bliss expanding into the bowl of this amazing valley. I feel fully awake and deliciously alive.

A Thrum of Hum

The last touch of light warms my spine, my skin soaking in the angled rays. Pondersosa shadows lengthen on the upward slope across the Palouse river. Gracie sits by my feet, wanting to stay close this evening, frightened by the fireworks. I am standing in a long sliver of light, my shadow scattered on the leaves and limbs of the apple tree growing near the porch. I feel awake and centered, alive with quiet sensation in a gently shifting resonance of fluid emotion.

I begin speaking softly in a language that feels like home in all its odd waves and currents, a language I have never spoken in quite this way. I am telling the land a story, or perhaps the land is telling me a story, or perhaps there is no need for interpretation just now. The language is beautiful and captures me with its quiet intensity and flowing chks and unusual sounds. Gestures dance through my hands as if each vowel desires visual form. Emotion pours through the telling. Sadness and joy in equal measure float upon an ocean of sweet love cradling a wholeness of being. I am held in this state for five, six minutes, suspended, my observer wavering in and out.

The story is told and I stand silent in the golden light, savoring the lingering field. I feel on a cusp of knowing but everything is still too soft and formless to understand. The thrum of a hummingbird sounds about two feet behind me, hovering. The littlebird darts suddenly to my right, a few paces in front of me. For a moment it is the plainest of brown birds, but then it catches the setting light and becomes a shimmer of iridescent greens before disappearing in a line to the south.

I stand in wonder at the immense mystery.

Gracie whimpers, nudging my leg with her nose. Time to move inside.

this bliss

Shapes of bliss forming this charge in an electrical storm of possibility guiding light through cloudbanks bouncing upon a northeast horizon. Spine turns in memory of spin's grin repeating embodied mantras of luminous proportion. Releasing into flow aligned with a slow throw of knowing, allofus turning towards a branching spray of delight drenching eyes in spiral columns of lifewind reaching to deep blue skies.

This bliss kissing this wish: guidance into goodness upon wings of beauty.

Solar Eclipse

a soft knowing flow alignment

magma > earth > me > moon > sun

spinning out waves of being as expansive space
turning through core burning through core holding
electrical-chemical-habitual chargeflows
cranking identity down as repetition of desire

a core yearning
this burning turn
halos my rise
through golden folds
of funneled flow

all lines align, all waves awaken

what might we share
as expansive goodness and beauty?
let it out and up!
deliver us a centripital center
guiding wholeness home

shafts of slanted light above the bay invite my whispering sense
into a middle float beyond effort, thought and identity-entities

entreaties fold through my holding
a bold scolding scorching release.
spirals unfurl with graceful arcs
forming pathways of the now-presenting-past.
the loop scoops me up with a compressive charge
hooping my contraction into time told as personal story
embodied in the once frozen tunes of yesterday’s intensity.

released into the wind

softening into a leaning madrona
draped upon her soft skin, right leg dangling,
hip joint honky tonk bad ass holding on for dear life
tension poking up my hurried partialities.

a dozen ways of relinquishing effort in her strong arms.
folded, stretched, cradled, turned, open, folded
her roots hold deep
effort sinks as a sigh
offered to the bay below.

Buddhastone

Essence of Motion Rotating

Finding stillness in the quiet of night I surrender to the soft sounds and rhythms pulsing through the depths of my being. Moved by an internal animation of subtle sensation spreading from my heart through my core to my limbs I begin to voice an essence of motion rotating gently upon forces of eternity. Cradled in an effortless flow I spin through the Madrona grove and off the high, crumbling bluff. I float west over the bay to the snow covered peaks of the Olympics until a sudden shudder draws me home to the cold, wet ground, to a deep breath, to a quiet acceptance, to a soft tone of knowing.

Stillness