Love Notes in the Sky

My Belovedness
graduated from
heart shaped rocks
rainbows
eagles
seals
whales
shooting stars
and pennies
to murmerations
outdoing themselves
leaving traces of
sacred fingerprints
and conversation bubbles
from God

Compline at St. Marks III

Who will play the organ
when he's gone? Are
young organists being
trained who'll slide onto
his bench and make
it sing?

Tribute to Bill and Roxy Giddings 

Compline at St. Mark's II

Sitting in the quiet
unfinished cathedral
waiting with other pilgrims
and recovering pharisees
for the Compline Choir
to file in and form a singing
circle in the only lit corner
of the nave, I look up
and ponder --
what pithy phrases
would Montaigne
have inscribed
on these wooden beams
a-plenty --

if he could have
reached them?

Compline at St. Marks I

Five hundred pilgrims
fill Seattle's St. Marks
on Sunday night. Pure
notes echo high and low.
Peace washes over the
things that make us
different.
Full pews carry notes
along rows of vibrating
wood grain. The pipes
wait with lips quivering
to have their bellies
filled with breath.
Ivory waits for hands
to caress the keys.
Pedals long for dancing
feet. Organs have a heart
too. Evensong ends.
Organ music commences.

Tacoma Waterfront

We have friends who had a dream to live on a sailboat. They accomplished it this fall. We witnessed the process. This weekend we shared our first meal together onboard. I loved walking along the docks. We felt lucky to celebrate with them. The sea lions seemed happy and curious at the proceedings…...

Taking Pre-Meditative Measures

I dare to compose
a celtic knot once
mastered by mystics

I don't want to copy
it because I need
the skill to draw
them at a whim

to decorate spaces
and mark trails
cairn-like
and dream of
pilgrimages yet
to come

These intricacies
illuminate
my mind to
pursue
possibilities

They untangle
confusion
and order
rank disillusion

So I start

I make a grid
and lay down dots
mathematical
for the center line
design to follow
over and under
replicating
ancient patterns

Invisible tangles
knot the page

I thicken it twice
making a mess

I contrast
the double lines
with shadows

Relief rises.

Alternatives

We have freedom -
alternatives
to how we live now -

for other ways
of being

Crocheting or
collecting eggs
from your back
yard flock isn't
enough to take back
territory

What must
go missing
to keep elegance
from vanishing?

Maureen's earlier post about writer Ursula K. Le Guin read like a plea. Mathew E. May wrote In Pursuit of Elegance - elegance is defined by what is missing.

Defy Gravity How?

December's end
segueing into January
makes me feel like
a mariner marooned
in a drained
bathtub where my
flesh
fat
bones
blood
muscles
hair
nails
skin
sinew
brains
and organs
rest heavy on
cold porcelain
blanching the pink
right out of me.

New Christmas Music 2014

Blood Oranges In The Snow by Over the Rhine. Buy it. Listen to it. Smile. Cry. Feel the warmth. Be refreshed. Get a lift. Shiver. Shake it off. Breathe. Let It Fall and The Very First Snowfall. No words…but we are heading to find snow at the end of January. Until then, I'm breathing…

If you're reading this. Feel like the beloved. You are. Blessings upon this new year.

Have you been trying too hard

Have you been holding too tight 

Have you been worrying too much lately 

All night 

Whatever we've lost 

I think we're gonna let it go 

Let it fall 

Like snow 

'Cause rain and leaves 

And snow and tears and stars 

And that's not all my friend 

They all fall with confidence and grace 

So let it fall, let it fall 

Have you been carin' too much 

How this one ends 

Y'know it's not the kind of fight 

That you lose or win 

When you're down so low 

You feel the imprint of the ground 

On skin 

Look around breathe in 

'Cause rain and leaves 

And snow and tears and stars 

And that's not all my friend 

They all fall with confidence and grace 

So let it fall, let it fall 

Coloring for Grown Ups - Therapy

Grown ups color
with sophisticated mediums
costing more than
a jumbo box of crayons

Familiar sparks of metallic
enchantment still occur
when tip points make contact
with ephemeral
paper bliss






Johanna Basford's Secret Garden Coloring book for grown ups. Free therapy to cure anything. Splurge on good quality colored pencils or markers. Or better yet, Sakura gel pens. The metallics are magical.