Author Archives

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Take off

Our family of four is visiting the Hoh Rain Forest. I think my husband is a relatively normal person and that he and my daughter are just being silly.

Suddenly they morph into dinosaurs! Pterodactyls! Ferocious long toothed beaks and weird speckled feathers! My son looks at me and gives me a hug. “Thanks, mom.” He morphs too and they are in flight, off in to the rain forest!

They weren’t being silly. They were practicing and apparently my daughter has now learned to fly.

I still miss them terribly and hope that they are well. Be careful, and do not marry a pterodactyl.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fiction.

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Missing water

I miss my Salish Sea. At home I can’t see it from my house, but stand in the middle of my street and there it is.

All that water. There are mountains here and trees, but they are very different. Here it is high desert, 4600 feet and up. The Grand Valley is at 4600 feet and the mesas rise from here. I miss Port Townsend Bay, and the big trees.

Gold sky and blue water. Look! A grebe! Catching breakfast!

A pair.

And they dive.

Gone.

They are small on the big water.

Taken in November, 2018.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: contemplation.

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Forgiveness

Rumi writes about the wound being where the light gets in. Leonard Cohen says the cracks are where the light gets in. My poems about being reborn or changed seem to involve either burning or the sea. I wrote this in 2009.

Forgiveness

I want to forgive something
Someone
In fact a group
Something that hurt a lot
I’ve tried logic
I tell myself
“It was an expression of concern”

My heart doesn’t agree
It is sullen
Immobile and grumpy
It whispers
“They have not apologized”
It whispers
“When people say you’re crazy
It could be a joke
An expression of concern
It wasn’t
It was a palm held out
At arm’s length
To distance me.”

My head argues
“That’s what it felt like to you.
You don’t know their intentions.”

I want to write
A poem of forgiveness
Hoping my heart will follow

My conscious doesn’t write my poems
My conscious wrestles with an idea
The poem comes out of this struggle
I look at the poem I’ve written
I think,
“That is what I would like
my conscious heart to feel.”
My poem is often more generous
than my conscious feels

My poems are not mine
They are a gift
From the unconscious
It is much larger
Than the small conscious me
I dream of feeling envy
I climb into a bathtub
And transform myself
To battle a trickster
We are transported
To the bottom of the ocean

In the ocean
The trickster and I are one
It is unlimited
It is not my unconscious
There is no separation
It is all unconscious

I did not think
A poem would give forgiveness
But pain drove me
Into the sea
I am connected
You gave me these pearls
Thank you

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crack.

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Mind

Facing a wall or lying in bed
breathe slow: four seconds in
one two three four
four seconds out
one two three four
keeping count

or facing a wall sitting
on a zafu, bell rings to start
how can forty minutes be so long?
fall asleep and body weaves
waking me up OH don’t hit the wall
adrenaline then slithering down
towards sleep again

zen mind, blank mind?
my mind wanders off again and again
what is for dinner? grocery list?
that annoying thing or person
at school or work
the mind busy as a squirrel
burying nuts and digging them back up

bring the mind back again
again again again
to the breath the wall letting go
of this well trodden mind trail
only to have the mind wander off
down another: this with briars
and falling into a pond
that has ice and cold

back shake like a dog
shake it off
focus on the breath the wall again
vivid multicolor cats
with paisley and stripes and spots
there is the BELL
forty minutes

Bow to the wall
and stretch
get up
ready zafu for the next time
meditation
mind

_____________________

Written today for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: blank.

The translation that I originally learned is here.

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the pale reflections of our bitter selves

they are neglected, you know, by most
the worse self, the worst self, the dark
the impulse to yank the moon from the sky
when she slides down the stair, to see who’s there

there are few poems written to the dark
impulses, the demons, the underside of our hopes
and dreams, the nastiness, the grief, the anger
we are kept in the dungeons below the basement

below the belt we band together huddle
in a pile of claws and unfeathered wings and teeth
wishing for a blanket, to be held, rocked
loved, wishing for the mothers who left us

the fathers who denied us, pushed us away
so that we knew and know what to hide
what to deny, what part of ourselves to kill
we try and try but few do

and then they are mourned, people say
they don’t understand but ask the demons below
and oh, they do, they do! maybe the next plane
will be kinder and love the demons

the bitter self, the dark self,
that longs so badly to be loved
that longs forever to be loved
that is not loved this round

this round

written 11/24/2023

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Goals

Are they called goals in cornhole?

Sol Duc has a goal.

Warm belly fur. I am not sure she is going to like going home. When we first drove up the Olympic Penisula, my daughter was two. It was three pm on New Year’s Eve, getting dark, and we were on 101 with the very tall trees blocking most of the light. “Where sun, mom? Me no can see sun.” Sol Duc will probably ask the same thing: Where did the sun go?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: goal.

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Tea bear

My friend C. is a bear.

People don’t know she is a bear. She carries a bear, a teddy bear. It is named S Bear, after her husband. He died of cancer a while ago. So she carries a bear named after him. The first time I met the bear, I asked if it needed a teacup too. Because people make clothes for it and I don’t know how far it all goes. No, the teddy bear did not need a teacup.

My friend C. is a bear. She writes horror stories under the name lostcauser. The writer is from Tennessee and so is C. The stories are horrid. Lostcauser is an anagram. Rearrange the letters and you get closet ursa. Closet bear. Hidden bear.

She is not my only friend who is a bear. She is aware of her bearness, her ferocity, the beast inside. Bears like honey and blueberries, too, they aren’t just monsters. My other friend dreams of a one room shack in the woods. His dead brother is at the door shouting for help. His brother is being attacked by a bear. A huge terrifying bear.

“Did you invite it in?” I ask.

“It’s a BEAR.” says my friend.

“It’s a Dream Bear.” I say, “I would ask what it wants.”

“You don’t understand bears,” says my friend.

“I understand a lot about dreams. Some think that everyone you see in a dream is a part of yourself. It can be a part that you don’t accept.”

“Bears attack. You can’t invite them in.”

“I would ask the bear in. I would ask the bear if it would like some tea.”

I tell another friend about one of my dreams. There are monsters screaming. I go towards them.

“TOWARDS them?” says my friend. “Why would you go TOWARDS them?”

I have to think about it. “Well, they are screaming. They might be hurt. They might need medical care. I have to go help them.”

My friend shakes his head. “Only you,” he says, “would go towards the screaming.”

One time in my neighborhood, I hear horrible screaming. I get up. It is 1 am. I go out and try to find the screamer. I don’t find anyone. A few days later, I read that someone nearly severed their arm somehow, in my neighborhood. A policeman saves his life with a tourniquet. It was three blocks from my house, at the grade school. The grade school is where I went. I think the person was knifed, but I don’t know. My neighborhood does not get a lot of that sort of thing, at least, not a lot of screaming that wakes me up.

I wonder about my friend that is attacked by a dream bear. A bear that is much bigger than his dream self and his dream brother self. There must be a lot of darkness in that bear. It is angry about being ignored.

My friend C. is a bear. She knows she is a bear. Reading her stories, I do not think she likes being a bear.

I don’t mind if she is a bear. I wonder if we will have tea again some day.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fan. Why? Maybe I am a fan of bears. Or maybe fans make me think of hats and gloves and tea parties. And bears.

This is based on speculation and some true events.