On praying for signs

How many of us pray for signs 

To tell us where to go 

Or help us make decisions 

When the truth about our choices 

Could be obvious, if only we lifted our eyes, 

Looked beyond our own tangled thoughts 

And followed our feet, a single step at a time?

An invitation to drink

Glimpsed throughugh the trees, an invitation:

 Come, sit with me and drink 

The rosy colors of the sky; 

A wine that lifts the heart and feeds the soul.

At moonrise

Listen to your heart:

 Go outside to watch the moonrise 

 And let life gift you 

With the colors of surprise.

Pools of wonder

Let my words be a small pool

Of wonder, 

Reflecting all the beauty 

Gathered by my eyes…

Precious diamonds

The most precious diamonds to strive for 

Are not those formed of carbon, 

 But born in stillness: 

 The patterns formed when all opposites 

 Are balanced; gently flowing back and forth 

In perfect harmony, like the breath of the gods.

Caught in the act

Caught in the act of nibbling 

Late fall flowers, she stands still,

 Hoping to fade unnoticed into the scenery;

 A child with her hand on the cookie jar;

 A politician, with one foot in the fountain.

Cloud dance

Clouds dance above the mountain; 

Teasing; echoing its shape before drifting on. 

Sun smiles at their antics, 

Igniting edges briefly before rising to her fullest 

To breathe light into the world.

Thankful opportunities

You who walk through this world, 

Pay attention! Notice your surroundings! 

For while you stroll along, lost in thought 

You might pass by a small but perfect berry 

That could inspire a poem, an essay, 

A generous act, a wise decision, 

Or a new work of art! 

The world is full of opportunities to be thankful.

Moment vs memory

The waves leap forth repeatedly 

 To cover their own reflections in the sand, 

Creating, hiding, and redeeming 

 In the act of being themselves; 

Artistes who paint, then cover 

And paint again the same canvas, 

For whom the moment matters more than memory.

An uneasy truce

Stepping outside to shoot the clouds, 

I surprise a deer, sipping at his local fountain. 

He stares at me with haughty eyes,

 Ready to leap away, but meanwhile hoping 

I might be bringing food or drink: 

It’s that same uneasy truce we often find 

Whenever there’s an imbalance of power.

The seeds of resurrection

Each year we watch the trees losing their leaves, 

Turning from green to gold 

 And in their losses gilding 

 The edges of our street. 

The branches, then exposed, 

Etch graceful patterns on the sky, 

Then bud again in spring 

 With that astonishing yellow green 

That deepens, even as we watch, 

Yet still we find it hard to trust 

That life goes on after devastating loss; 

That deep within each being, each situation, 

Lie the seeds of resurrection, 

Waiting to redeem us, and bring to life 

The bright and glowing innocence of the new.

Come walk with me

Clouds swim across the evening sky 

Like fish, lit golden by the setting sun, 

While down below the old path beckons: 

Come, stretch your legs and walk with me; 

Tell me how your day has gone 

And I will tell you mine.

When mistakes are made

Having taken a running leap, 

My cat slides into the slippery rug, 

Which then wraps itself around him. 

So he settles in, wearing the white fringe 

 Like an Elizabethan ruff 

And pretending he meant to do this all along. 

Knowing it would make a pleasing portrait, 

He waits patiently for me to find my phone 

And photograph him, then leaps out of his nest 

And runs off in pursuit of his sister, 

Howling as he goes, rather like a human, 

Who, having made a mistake, 

Seeks someone else to loudly blame…

Compare, compare

Last night, the sunset was so lovely, 

I kept going outside to take more pictures,

 Hoping to capture it at its peak. 

This morning I find 58 new photos on my phone.

 How can I choose just one to publish 

And throw all these other beauties away? 

Compare, compare, compare: 

Is that really how you want to spend your time?

The mountain’s blush

All day and night, both ships and birds 

Are passing by the mountain 

But like a young girl waiting for her lover, 

The mountain only blushes with pleasure 

When her friend, the sun, appears.

Soul pleasures

High tide, a beach awash, 

 A sun-warmed cliff and a passing ship: 

Simple pleasures fill the eyes 

And simultaneously stir and calm the soul.

Radiance

Lit by the radiance of the morning sun, 

Even my potting shed is beautiful. 

So, too, the beauty of a soul 

Lit by the inner radiance of … 

How would you end that sentence? 

Faith? Truth? Hope? Love? 

And the greatest of these is…

Fall fashions

Dressed for their autumn fashion show, 

Each tree displays her wares 

With an eye to setting herself apart. 

While standing on the street corner 

To attract attention,

 One discreetly dangles her golden leaves 

 Like a flapper’s string of pearls 

While another makes up for her lack of height 

By clothing herself in vermilion lace 

And waving in the wind.

A grace-filled murmuration

The starlings gather in my yard, 

Chattering away as they swoop in, 

Landing en masse in the grass to feast 

On some unknown vegetation, 

And then, at some mysterious signal, 

They ascend as one into the air again, 

Circling until they alight again 

In some other part of the yard; 

Up and down, up and down,

A grace-filled murmuration, 

Like the Anglicans, who sit, then stand, 

Then kneel to pray, then sit and kneel again,

Then stand in church on a Sunday morning…

Patience rewarded

My husband named him Rocky, 

The tailless raccoon with the wounded foot, 

And has started leaving peanuts for him 

Under our deck, where the deer can’t get them. 

The stellar’s jays quickly figured it out: 

They swoop down from their favorite pine, 

Flashing their iridescent wings, 

And wait in the Rhododendron by the deck 

For their chance to sneak in and grab a peanut. 

Who knew retirement could be so entertaining!

Why create art?

The question asked, “why create art?” 

Has no one simple answer. 

I keep on painting, hoping to create 

Something beautiful, of which I can be proud, 

And with each one, when it’s done 

I feel, “Ah, this one; yes!” 

But later I come back and judge its flaws 

 Thinking it does not deserve recognition — 

Then, later still, with some, 

I return and see magnificence, 

And wonder if I’ll ever paint that well again: 

A never ending cycle 

 Of struggle, pride, embarrassment, 

Paint-overs and frustration, 

Marked with occasional and intermittent joy...

Before the dark, a dawn

My cherry tree again, her flaming branches 

Echoing the crescendo of colors 

 In the sky above my neighbor’s farm: 

My heart soars with the beauty of the dawn, 

Whose glorious colors now, just moments later, 

Have faded back to gray; 

Now falls the rain. 

Today, instead of “darkest before the dawn,”

We seem to have dawnest before the dark…

At season’s end

The aging actress’ rosy lipstick, 

Rubbed off with time and words, 

Exposing the lined skin beneath;

 A beauty all its own,

 Framed by the memory of youth 

And promise that lives on 

In evergreen leaves of script 

To be performed again in future seasons.

Separate to reconcile

Like the road ahead of me here, 

There may be times we have to separate 

To get around some obstacle 

That’s risen up between us:

 It’s good to step apart 

 And take some time to think. 

But if we fail to reconcile; 

If we cannot find a way to share the road, 

We run the risk of sabotaging the journey;

 Of failing in our efforts to help 

The world become a better, kinder place.

With time, leaves fall

I’d like to think that as we age 

The search for validation 

 Becomes a search for truth and honesty; 

That, like this cherry tree, 

Once past the time we’re bearing fruit 

We glow briefly with accomplishment, 

Then humbly drop all that we were,

 Letting it fall to nourish what may come 

And stand with vulnerability 

 Exposed before the wind in humble testament 

 To what has been, now letting the world see 

Both what’s beneath and what’s beyond; 

What waits on the horizon.

Blanketed by color

How blessed we are, to be enfolded in 

 So magnificent a blanket of colors in the Fall! 

It fills our eyes with memories 

 And warms us for the winter days ahead.

Together

Each day, however gray, a glimpse 

Of beauty to remind us just how fortunate 

 We are, to still be here; still be together 

In a world so torn apart by greed and grief; 

So stigmatized and traumatized by hate and war; 

All wickedness exacerbated 

 Each time we choose divide and separate 

 Over together, and community, 

Over collaborate, and compromise, 

Compassion, hope, and learning to forgive, 

When together, we could begin to mend 

All that has been broken.

A bit of quiet whimsy

Glimpsed through a break in the trees: 

A path to nowhere, guarded by flamingos — 

Another bit of quiet whimsy 

That reminds me yet again,

 Like another remarkable poem, 

A brilliant musical performance, 

Or a magnificently original painting, 

 How bound I am by my fearful assumptions 

 Of others’ expectations; 

 How rare it is for me to reach inside 

 And tap into the stream of creativity 

 That is the source of everyone’s uniqueness …

The wind phone

I just read the story 

About the Japanese man in Otsuchi 

Who installed a phone booth in his garden 

After the 2011 earthquake 

So he could dial and speak to his lost loved ones. 

People came from miles around 

To dial their lost loves, 

Listening for their voices in the wind: 

What a gift to offer others in their grief… 

If you could access such a phone, 

Who would you call?

The fence of ignorance

A hard frost, a layer of fog, and a brilliant sunrise 

Add an aura of mystery to our neighbor’s farm — 

And given that we moved next door 

Just as the pandemic began, 

The mystery persisted 

 Til a power failure forced communications. 

How glad we are now, 

 To know them as kind friends, 

The fence of ignorance between torn down. 

Too often, lack of communication 

 Turns strangers into estranged — 

A problem cured by reaching out 

 In openness and trust…