Riverstone Runes   <back to Poetry & Essays main page

The bowls sang to me
This morning
In the artist's home,
Flanked by creek song,
Oaken arms, steaming tea

The bowls sang to me
Sounds of creation,
Filling my soul with melody
The way a stroke of paint
Brushes the artist, takes her home

• • •

A seasoned log
Turns to dirt above
Hard crushed grass,
Lying in state.
Bird song, old cricket
Breezes touches leaf,
Gray whiskers on my face

The mountain's song,
Old creek story
Told in current,
Cacophony of water
And crack rock –

Bird, grab the brush.

• • •

They say William Bonney rode
Along this creek
Sat on this embankment
Fed his horse
Hid from the Feds
As the cottonwoods
Fluttered from a constant wind
Bonney's brother-spirit
Can you hear the creek
Whispering the legend?

• • •

Three rocks stand in a row,
Oak leaf shadow dances on wind,
My face is cooler
Leaf blows by below, crackles.
An ant bites off a piece.

• • •

Withered oak branch, stately,
Bark flakes, bald limb curls
Into center, scaled
Old branch still rises
Above a cluster of leaves,
Green earth song
Dissolves into blue.
A wren lands on
The naked old branch
Across the creek,
A filly whinnies.

• • •
Over the berm
Creek races homeward,
Bubbles beget streams
No wider than my finger
Dancing in fast splashes –
Wind splays water music
On my face.
Homeward races the creek,
The taste of wet rock,
Sun bounces off the bottom.

• • •

On the ground, a branch dead
As leaves crackling beneath my footsteps.
Hawk cries above,
Breeze waves past seedlings,
Baby pine struggles to reach
Its sixth inch
Bumblebee hard-hums into my ear.
A weed rises from dirt,
Tiny blossom ready to spill
A new purple Genesis – for a day
Wild onion caresses the smooth
Flaxen skin of a branch, dead
As leaves crackling beneath my footsteps.

• • •

A million roofs
Above my head,
Hoisted by symphony of
Rock and water, centuried
Tree, heaven smiles down.
Roofs move, dappling earth
With evergreen sunlight.
Breeze blows a roof
To the ground.

• • •

Pods of a flower
Pink, open,
Vulvic blossom spreads toward center
Blowing into my eyes
No scent, no sound, faun's movement
Absolute music.

• • •

Tree limbs jut off embankment
Lurching upward & outward,
Cliff diver arcing toward the creek,
Ballerina at mid-turn
Straining to touch water.
Wind dresses lower leaves and vines
In a garment of chatter
And pollen –

• • •

I walk this trail,
Any old trail,
Fly buzzing in my ear,
Creek humming on the rocks,
Just any old trail.
Grasses brush my legs
Sun sculpts the shadow
To expose light of root jutting
On any old trail.
My feet sink in, home
On any old trail.
On any old trail.