I called my sister today.

She’s been in a nursing home

over the holidays.

I have not been sleeping well.

When she answers the phone

I rest back in my chair

it’s the soft tone of her voice, an instant pleasure,

my first love, my beloved.

I am myself because of you.

Love a small boat, it leaks and has seen better days

It’s a tenuous sistuation

we tip with the slightest movement.

But even if we fall out

cast into the cold water

I will reach for your hand

and I will find it.

You wanted to tell me something funny,

“They have a all purpose soap, you said

and I washed my hair with it today,

and when I looked in the mirror

my hair lay limp and thin and flat to my face

I looked twenty years older, I looked like mom

I looked just like Annie, remember her hair?

I laughed so completely and we had ourselves a bit of fun.

Our time has run out

no more sand in the upside down clock.

Mother Earth is calling to you

where your no longer warm body

will rest.

Her timing is impeccable,

neither of us could continue.

Me cleaning up after you

and you so very ill.

Our final act of love

is being with each other at the end.

So brave So true So impossible!

My brother and I

are from a long line of burglars.

It’s an unconscious profession,

an undisclosed mythos

a trade passed down by generations.

If we could just admit the truth

( our love of thievery)

my brother steals from me

and I steal from him.

This acceptance is Love

freed from it’s box,

the horded treasure

can return to source.

The End!

I am water,

only because you are the ocean.

We are here

only because old leaves have been falling.

A mutching of memories folding

into buried hands.

The cliffs we learn to edge

The tree truck hollowed, humming.

I am a tongue

only because you are the body

planting stories with thumb.

Soil clings to your knees

Small stacks of empty clay pots dreaming.

I am the milky fish eye, only

because it’s your favorite.

A slipper is lost in the yard.

A haku lei is chilling in the icebox.

I am a cup of feathers,only

because you want to fill the hours.

I am a turning wrist, only

because you left the hose on.

Heliconias are singing underwater

Beetles are floating across the yard.

(A poem by Donovan Kuhio Colleps

Entitled Kissing the Opelu.)

I am in so many spirit walks

that I’ve lost track of them all….

walking with my sister whose been looking at the other side

walking with a new baby coming in and her wild journey to get here.

Walking with my brother’s move to Hawaii.

It’s too far away to suit me

but then he is always in the “dog house”

(according to me.)

Walking with myself and my inability to change.

Feeling the sweetness of love

coming from the beyond

where my sister and my mother and my father are

my grandmother too.

This place is a spirit walk.

I contemplated my friend’s joy

in the middle of the night when I was not sleeping.

How can her joy not be diminished by pain?

There is no be doorway into joy,

If I have to look for it I will not find it.

Guilt likes to keep in seeking

and not finding.

The idea of finding the door was a misdirection!

Can I go to the flip and claim my responsibility

for the entire pain of the world

that way guilt has no wiggle room

and something peaceful like joy is here instead.

These are my thoughts this Thanksgiving.

Thanks Charlie!

Just like Mr Banks

I want to lift my leg

and piss on the high grass

for whoever passes by.

That’s why I write

It’s primal.

I want you to get a whiff of me,

my essence discovered

I want to be available

in our two way communication.

A kiss, a love letter,

the wave of the hand.

We can either do rituals from our hearts

where we sing and know our true name

or lame duck rituals, like watching the evening news.

We are performative creatures

beings of two worlds.

Rituals are connecting experiences

where we claim our partnership

in the dance

both as lover and as hero

as a being and a doer.

Like standing stones in a circle

that dance under the moon light

when no one is looking.

We are getting into profound layers now

the deeper we go into this tunnel of love.

As in the coat of many colors

it’s only after being tossed into the well

that the adventure can begin,

one’s perfect destiny.

God is not a concept nor an image

but a spontaneous eruption of love

for someone I know perhaps or

just occurring like a wave on the ocean.

I am that!

AMERICAN BAD GOOD DAY EVENING

BROTHERS

“Out beyond ideas of wrong doing

and right doing

there is a field

and I will meet you there”

Rumi

Winter Count 2020 by Sally King

We almost made the Turkey be our National bird.

Turkey is the Give Away in the Lakota way of life

When you have enough, you give to others in need.

The richest family gave the most

that was how you received honor.

Betsy Burton sent me this photo this morning

(She is our very own White Buffalo Calf Woman)

It was wild how many women were out walking at dusk

after the intensity of the election.

Moving the stagnant energy with each step down the road