Spider Web

One web spun,

ceaseless and lucid as the rising sun

simple as morning worms

invisible as today’s breeze

waiting, waiting to catch me in a sticky pause

A web sturdy as the ant’s back,

the one who carries away my frosted flake

A web shimmering only in the right light

            at just the right angle

            or right time of day, of year, of life

This web, intricate and complicated

beyond my capacity to design,

brushed away as an irritant

            an annoyance

            or was that fear?

I break this web’s anchor from fence post and tree limb

and yet it is spun again through the night, every night,

and yet the impenetrable pattern

that ambiguous weaving

an obscure path

so unclear to me, until today,

when a particular ray of the sun, a hint of first light,

cuts through this one web

so simply, so rightly

into my dawn.

Water way

Follow

the riverbed

wash clean dust and debris

purified triviality

cleanse me

Arrive

in peace

through streams of green

and humming bees

Mitigated silence

so much easier here

between pine trees and idleness

amid effortless lakeside purl

to hear

your Beloved

il bel far niente

light riffles round us shadows fall

day rests with cricket calls

lullaby psalms

be still

Hummingbird and Columbine

Awake Now

from a gloomy hibernation,

I notice columbine in bloom

and last year’s barren apple tree

bearing spurs. Anna’s hummingbird

flits merely feet away from me ~

her name is Joy.

She was, all winter, an always

presence of possibility,

but my eyes were closed, my mind shut

to her iridescent green crown,

ruby-throated chirping contrast

to my gray song.

Today, following a season

of black, I wear scarlet again,

the red that attracts her to me,

beating vehemently between

honeysuckle and apple trees.

The hummingbird

in crimson pursuit, reminds me

of my power to fly backward

or forward, or to just flutter

my wings in place, pollinating

and consuming all the honey

nectar of now.

Trillium

Trillium

Trinity of forest floors, remind me

as I cling in this spring of uncertainty,

with desire to claim, possess as mine,

heightened by daily news and little sign

of peace.  I seek your lesson, wood lily ~

Rife and wild, you are ever meant to be

white wake robin, shaded, yes. Sheltered, but free

from harsh winds and warring lives entwined

Trinity of forest floors, remind me

that if I pluck violet-veined petals, nestled in ivy,

to vase as mine, for seven years I will not see

your flower, in patches of promise, divine

golden centers of hope in precarious times.

Behold, but not hold any blossom too tightly.

Trinity of forest floors, remind me.

A note: I first posted this in 2006, but wrote it 2003 when we were entering a war. Seventeen years later, as we are quarantined from Covid-19, I felt the need to repost.

After the Storm

After the Storm

I leave the polished black waters

of resentment and greed

to walk this muddy path

strewn with fallen greens

and pink veined trillium

folded in on themselves

from the weight of a drenching rain

I walk this path again

past abandoned wildflower bouquets

to the circle of cedar

and my leaning tree

the mourning dove cries

her hollow song

simply

hear me

please

please

please

please