General

all your cynical assertions
fail to convince me
that it was
somehow
my
fault

In response to: Reena’s Exploration Challenge # 112

one
look
at you
I wonder
that guy who loved you
that fool- was that really me

In response to: Reena’s Exploration Challenge # 112

I
am
trying
to hold on
to my crumbling thoughts
should I save ‘love’ or ‘sanity’

In response to: Reena’s Exploration Challenge # 112

Old Woman Nature

BYGARY SNYDER

Old Woman Nature
naturally has a bag of bones
tucked away somewhere.
a whole room full of bones!

A scattering of hair and cartilage
bits in the woods.

A fox scat with hair and a tooth in it.
a shellmound
a bone flake in a streambank.

A purring cat, crunching
the mouse head first,
eating on down toward the tail–

The sweet old woman
calmly gathering firewood in the
moon . . .

Don’t be shocked,
She’s heating you some soup.

Gary Snyder, “Old Woman Nature” fromAxe Handles. Copyright © 1983 by Gary Snyder.

We tend to see Nature in a lovely pastoral landscape: pretty flowers, verdant meadows, things we might like to eat. There is the dark, the alien, the deeply frightening aspect of Nature though, and this is ours to love as well. Why…

if
you
do not
manage to
find your destiny
question your maps, not the journey

In response to: Reena’s Exploration Challenge # 112

Inspired by Reena’s Exploration Challenge #112

how you get there, friend
where you go to just be you
please, land where it’s safe

Veronica was the love of my life. We married within two months of our first date. A week later she was dead.

I sat in the hospital chair holding her lifeless hand. The doctor, his comforting hand on my shoulder, offering words of consolation.

” Such a tragedy for one so young. All the scans indicate that she was in perfect heath except for those few seconds when her body denied oxygen to the brain. A very unusual case of cerebral hypoxia”

I was wrapped in a nightmare. This can’t be happening, my vibrant, beautiful sweet Veronica replaced by a lifeless corpse. I was sure that any moment now she would rise from the bed with bubbling laughter and say “fooled ya”. Staring at her…