Tag Archives: elemental

Lightly Treading : The Least Likely Elements

( poetry form: pantoum )

skies & snow hills reversal Feb 2016

I will tread this way, the way of offering up what it is that I experience

May or may not be a way that anyone can follow or taste the trace of

Depths of snow remain still in places, whereas bare ground also shows

The dogs and I walk this frozen surface, lithe as cloud jumpers, buoyant

 

May or may not be a way that anyone can follow or taste the trace of

What we share here is both rarefied and basically elemental, in concert

The dogs and I walk this frozen surface, lithe as cloud jumpers, buoyant

Silently scouting the canopied underbrush, then back to traversing clouds

 

What we share here is both rarified and basically elemental, in concert

Listening is simultaneously an act of bravery, risk, and companionship

Silently scouting the canopied underbrush, then back to traversing clouds

The least likely elements are embedded deep within this resiliency song

 

Listening is simultaneously an act of bravery, risk, and companionship

The risk speaks to the radical nature of what can and will be unearthed

The least likely elements are embedded deep within this resiliency song

These rest and wait until the very moment they are needed, called out

 

The risk speaks to the radical nature of what can and will be unearthed

Claims of solitude and measure, easy to walk outside of rather than in

These rest and wait until the very moment they are needed, called out

The very thing seen can be that which unnerves, estranges or restores

 

Claims of solitude and measure, easy to walk outside of rather than in

I take these close to heart, learning their ways and wisdoms, whole

The very thing seen can be that which unnerves, estranges or restores

The ways I measure and keep myself, what telling, what spells are these?

 

I take these close to heart, learning their ways and wisdoms, whole

I will tread this way, the way of offering up what it is that I experience

The ways I measure and keep myself, what telling, what spells are these

Depths of snow remain still in places, whereas bare ground also shows

 

El Salto hills deep winter 2016

photographs : janice sandeen, el salto hills & skies 2016

 

 

Falling Through and Between

The cracks have been opening up –here there and underneath

what used to be on top –like cracks in a hard crust of soil

once baked by light, deluged with raindrops, more light

 

These soils are a community of their own

sometimes thirsty sometimes paused in reflection

such that growing things are made temporarily mystified

 

Would it be that something elemental is missing

Or amongst all the bystanders perhaps readily available

like implicit memory waking up giving signals of many orders

 

The dance is moving so quickly, agile or not, positron wave

falling through and between perception in pure fluid motion

bridges created as life itself, timeless free fall, magnitude of silence

Painting Bodies

for Becci

.

If I had painted myself today

I would have been thinking

of our conversation and how

.

you seem to be in two places

at once while I — take chase

in hopes of getting sympathy

.

for an aged cheese, long sitting

on the shelf in wait of a gourmet

taster, just like you, someone

.

who’s not deterred in the least by

stinky concoctions, can see them for

what they are — real, incased, beauty

.

in a tough rind, the skin of this

body politic, the only one evident

to me at this time. “I don’t think

.

you understand,” I say to myself after

the conversation has gone on to other

doings. I’m so tempted to say, “What good

.

will it do?” But I don’t. Instead I look

for anything that could serve as pigment,

binder, carriers, brushes –preparing.

.

As I paint myself today, the body which

is not me, returns into its elemental

unfolding falling back towards the

.

natural order of its emanation: water

to water; seed to seed; fold unto fold;

mineral saturations and truth and grit.

.

“What/where is that other place you exist?”

.