Bedtime Gallop

 

 Starlight     wrested from its mooring of day. 

Night-weary cloak upon me

                    the leaden weight    

                                        of joy

                                weighs heavy with the knowledge

                                the scales tip as deep 

           in the other direction.

Sleep        a diamond mine trawled through

    longing for relief

                a thousand points of light.

The sullen waning Moon        running rough-trod through my fears.

With each settling

the words

they come

insistent on my recording.

My hand     furious     in attempt at catching

                                                        the mind's flight of fancy

                                                        the heart's embrace

                                                            of a moment    undone.

Vine and bracken        scrawled across the page

    painstaking indulgence

    stirred by cricket hymn.

Spring's unfolding

    redemption and torment

                        a banquet    laden with fruits

            soon enough to rot.

Not every bird caught in hand,

not every stone cast,

    we set out.

Full and empty.

Clutching at pearls

    of loss and longing

words slip by

    many lost to the night...

(Photos:  Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker Holes in a decades-old landscape Holly)

The Yang within the Yin: Hear the Music

"Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on."
 - Mary Oliver

In this dark, inner time of the year, that coincides with this dark transitional period for our society, and this dark time for the entirety of the human race and world, as we know it, itself...
I want to remind you, as I remind myself...
that it's always darkest just before the dawn...the deepest Yin turns to Yang,
Spring always follows the darkest, coldest (warmest?) Winter...

Here is a video that shows the seed of Spring that is within the Winter; revel in the exuberance of new bees taking their first flight and know that we too shall fly.




If you haven't yet, plant some seeds of the new, the next,
for now is the time to nurture them in the dark of the earth...
so they may burst forth with strongly rooted growth when the time is right... 
Within Yin is the seed of Yang and within Yang is the seed of Yin.  Extremes turn into themselves.

"You should be angry. You must not be bitter.
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.
It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure.
So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it.
You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it.
You talk it. Never stop talking it."   - Maya Angelou.

And as a reverse to these times, here is tomorrow's seed, the Yin within the Yang.

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
  - T.S. Eliot

"And those who were seen dancing 

were thought to be insane by those 

who could not hear the music.”
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

~~~

Woman

'And She Calls' (from the archives, 2007)

Woman.
You are so powerful.

Lesser men will try to smother that radiance,
squash it by a multitude of means.

Be ever vigilant
and take necessary actions to shine on.

It's been long enough.
The time is now. 

Contemplating Collapse

'Contemplating Collapse, 2015, full collage

Upper left

Upper right

Bottom left

Bottom right

“The test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring.”

 - Willa Cather

Oh to Be a Bee in the Summer Soltice Garden...

"The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul." - Alfred Austin