Sit on that bench awhile
Look up at that sky
Listen to the birds call
Imagine what they talk about
Early one morning when you’re feeling glad
Grateful just to be still around
Lace up your boots and start walking
Up around the corner
Climb some hill
Take that stick waiting
There among the ferns
Grip it like a sheep herder
Like some old woman or man
Yes, keep on moving
But pause for breath too
There is time enough for everything
If you value the precious in you
Heron and me
Wind and sea
Space between us
Watcher and watcher watching
Am I alone here
Or part of a whole
Belonging is fleeting
Questions lift and fly
Melody of swash carries
Choirs from other shores
Night birds glide to clouds
I survey you surveying
Graceful hunter
Sky draws her shades
I choose a stone to throw
In the silence between morning birds’ song
whispered comforts or threats traverse unseen
Communities of canopies
Neighbourhoods of heartwood sheltered deep
for decades or centuries
Human steps tread past or with bravado some ascend
lookout holding steady trunks endure
fragile limbs of women and men
Night gatherings moonlit shadow shapes
sacred swaying to the rhythm of stars
Record keepers
inhaling exhaling all glory all decay all debris
Beyond the continuum of this holy life
our human eyes may glimpse a light amid seas of possibility
Yet misinterpret again and again the message of our role
and what could be
We occupy this fleeting existence so temporarily
what has been and always there will be
beyond you and me beyond all of us in our collective lack
Despite our elevated posturing our experiments our narcissism
our valour even our creativity
After we again have surrendered and ground ourselves back to dust
There will remain the one constant one glory whose truth
always was and ever will guarantee
Survival of the Tree
Building cairns out of stones and leaves
and bits of trees forest sea debris
everywhere I go I leave a print a hint
shred or shadow a little piece of me
i may have said once long ago invisible
is the one and only honest way to be
but i must have left a door ajar
perceptions change I’ve travelled far
what i feel is real is it’s alright if when
my time is past a stranger or almost friend
finds among fragments along life’s path
remembrance of the presence i once wore
I am here
message etch
reflection
holding wall
stone bank
water’s edge
reminding lookers
first, existing
I
corporeal, then
presence.
Step off
edge of the world
no abyss myth
concerns
footprints
soft like butterfly
round like honeybee
Romana rises
fire in wind
Pencil Notes 