Mason bees are solo females,

effective pollinators who

seal themselves in with mud,

regenerating through dormancy.

( I can relate- longest winter ever!)

But you can feel the wisdom of it

the tenacity of gathering mud

creating your hermit space in time.

The bees filled in almost every circle

It didn’t happen the whole first year

or maybe even the second.

I’d kind of given up

So it was an unexpected joy this March

to see the holes filled,

bees within.

I highly recommend it

and it’s a leg up for our pollinators.

( mason bee houses under twenty dollars- on line)

Willow and I did an errand yesterday

( She bought their first TV)

and I was her driver.

Willow likes to retell funny stories

and I love to laugh

so we are a perfect pair.

She says as we drive along

that a friend has new job

in a center where drug users

can come to get clean needles, etc.

(They also have counseling available)

The funny part was that her friend

popped out with

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

as if she were selling socks or gloves or peaches.

When I visited St Petersburg in 1990

The Russian Grandmothers wore black arm bands

with the intense need to tell a visitor

about 900 day siege of St Petersburg

100 thousand people starved to death

75 thousand bombs fell.

The Germans had all supply chains cut off

in the depths of cold winters.

Proud that they could suffer

Proud, 50 years later.

We don’t live with history this way

as if it’s a living thing.

My grandsons have no concept of war

And we want to say thank goodness

and yet……

The responsibility to integrate the other

has the weight of war as part of its continuum.

One world takes work

The united whole takes work

A paper doll chain of humans

holding the hand of the other!

So intimate

Where we sleep at night

I reach for you my beloved ( reader)

By morning, such cold feet

Circulation is a thing!

Less meat on bones

Less blood flow

But tons of connecting

Vegetative willingness to Love – YOU!

In all our diverse forms.

We are one body!

Bark snout webbed rooted

skin, toes, nose, fingers, teeth

Hair- “hairy noon and night”

Take Heart  

The path is before you

The path of heart

Walking on moccasin feet

 I know you are weary, the mire, the fall

Still questioning things long ago decided.

 You are a warrior.

Bravely entering  the unknown territory

As if your life depended on it.

 I am a Warrior too

 I came here to break new ground

 And  to ride out into the dark cold night

 Holding my empty hands upward.

Sit by this fire… 

Women Warrior

And I will drape the softness  around your shoulders 

And help you remove your boots

Look into the fire 

It’s not recognition you seek 

Only a truth

A choice made.  

 I am a warrior

 I am a warrior

 I am a warrior

 I think strategically

 And death sits upon my shoulder

 Knowing  this act could be my last

 I am conscious

 Habits are harmful

I am not small

 I extend from here to Canyon wall

I am magnificently large and old and sometimes sad

 Alone at my fire most nights

 Because I haven’t said who I am

 Take heart, dear one

I am a warrior

Maybe you are too!

Best Beloved….

You laugh delighted at the turn of events,

your life is an opening

a wonder

an appreciation of the smallest thing.

A door to a second room

a chance to make your own cup of coffee.

You light a fire in my heart

and end every conversation

with, I Love You Sally.

( Michele has plans

to move out of Mesa Vista..

into Assisted Living with Terry

whom she married last fall)

Infinite Love is our true nature!

It’s Imbolic , The Day of Ewes Milk!

Lambs wiggle as they nurse.

And we find ourselves on this day

wiggling

between a Solstice

and an Equinox.

It’s the first day of winter’s turning.

And if I stand very still

as if listening for a far off mountain stream,

my mind lets go of it’s endless thinking.

This is a practice

This always listening for that which is far away-

corrals the mind

and lets me experience being here…..

delicious

Mothers milk.

“I’m just waiting to see if my coffee

chooses to use it’s power

for good or for evil”

Honoring the range of possibilities

I tip tow on the catwalk…

threes cups in

strung like a net over

the frothing sea of emotions.

Caffeine accentuates the moment to moment

precipice of every minute

to be conscious

and not just strike out with a claw.

I read in yesterday’s Daily Good

about an artist and a mother,

named Rachel Callander,

who worked with hospitals

to change their wording

on their medical forms

from just what was broken in her child

to add, what they loved about this child,

what they enjoyed….

so that these beautiful things

would be part of their medical record.

And then I heard from a friend of mine

who’d also read this article

and contacted me about it.

My friend whose son had died.

And as I wrote back to her I realized that

I’d never had a chance to

say his name to her and to me at the same time

To allow the wonder of him to be with us.

Loving the children we don’t get to keep.

I spoke his beloved name

and such aliveness was with us.

January is stock show season in Denver

Bulls with blackened hooves

ready to tap dance….

their curly hair blown back by a hair dryer,

Such care.

The bull is the beloved!

An oiled Nundi!

The warm smell of animals has a settling effect.

Can I just stay here until spring?

It’s not an easy time of year.

I have to be careful not to slip on the ice

and then there is so much to feel.

In my childhood friend’s Christmas letter

along with the photos of her family

she told me of her intense health struggle

and I am brought to my knees.

In the Tibetan book of the dead

It says that, when we have passed through

the different forms of light and then dark

with it’s fullness( tricky going here)

“We get to a place where we know

that our willingness to include it all

with arms open, heart let go-

matters more then we can imagine

and at that same moment…

We know

that all the suffering was Bliss.”

We were always in Nirvana, in Bliss.

( with Nundi)