Trust is at the Core of Everything

The voice of the wind whispered, “I’m coming.  I’m here.  Where are you?”

I knew instantly where I was, but how does an animate respond to an inanimate?  A being? Energy?  My thoughts flew rapidly outwardly onto the ethers.

And Wind’s gentle persistence replied, “I’m here.  Where are you?”

And I, as perplexed as ever, emoted these inner disturbances.

Wind blew and grew a bit pestilent, shaking the blue metal roofed adobe’s edges loose from the underlayment.  “Presence is required.  I’m here.  Where are you?”

The insistence pushed at my edges, raising jaggedness up from their depths.  Roof edges.  My edges. 

Wind boomed,  “I’m here.  Where are you?”

The demands caught smack dab in the imprints my heels created as my body weighed into my crouching back-leaning posture.

Wind’s mighty force pushed and pulled at every edge of the adobe, forcing little to shift, with the exception of the roof.

“What do you want?” I cried out into the deafening night’s blackness.

“To dance with you in the llano, under the stars.  To hold you close and kiss your cheeks, turn you twirling and back again.  To share in the delight of all that matters between here and there—the wonders and beauty of life.”

Kat

7 November 2016

Origins Without Endings

Tender lily shoots tipping out

at the creek’s surface

touching air

and sky --

life teams with newness.

Wet unfurling curled cone leaves

ribbon out on tender stems

lushly engorged

on photosynthesis

and early sap flow.

Peeps and chirps, delicate as baby’s breath

fill background silence

of earthy under-story

in oxygen-dense landscape

merging fauna life with flora.

Waxing moon extends
her feminine edges in

tandem with light--

synchronicity with Solstice

reaching new boundaries, yet ancient.

Long ago now, without beginning

with no ending,
life begins--waxes wanes

tender—expanding—maturing—closing

only to begin again and again and again.

Kat

2 November 2016

Like a Bird

Crouching on battered hands and knees, with focused flight, she goes

bowing from the turbulence on her Path—still unfolding

forward, she lifts in flight, upwardly to the stars and goes with focus

tenacious, it is all she knows in this day and tomorrow, this way.

Those who cradled her to their breasts, whispered, “Go in peace and love”

sending her off and out to live life with early riveted focus—flying, she goes

fielding mountainous terrain, low fertile valleys and broad open plains

rich in deep relationship—with focused flight she goes with love in her heart.

Kat

17 October 2016

Fog

In the heat of the baking sunlight,

the force of sand-whipping winds,

thinly oxygenated high mountain air—

there is a clarity within

that holds fast. 

The elements tether hearts and minds, firmly

to the crusted fissured landscape, drawing

the last two percent of moisture from our pores. 

The penitentes drag weighted crosses

on bloodied knees

baring sweated brows and

bulging veined arms. 

Flies hover, bite and amass

on wounded backs of man,

living off the pores of sweat and stink

that feed them well. 

Our plights, with which we wrestle,

small perhaps, yet immense,

draw us deeply within,

holding us down on bending knees—

with humility, molding us into our shadowed form

whether through mortification of the flesh

or by weathering the environmental dearths

until releasing us—

when obscurity becomes bright with clarity

and the heart sings with light.

Kat

3 October 2016

Conversation At 14

Golden bulbous muscle,

wild grainy strands, massed—

a swishing tail against flies and heat,

sweat and sweet hay-smell

wrapping her cocooned hairied body—

moisture and heart

pulsing through to my hands

on her breast,

her face,

thighs,

and with deep soulful breaths

through widening nostrils

she stomps her language

with her hooves

on dry sun baked soil

disturbing dust into the air

and my heart

in unison with hers.

Kat

3 October 2016

Cinco the Cat

“Cinco?  Cinco?  There you are.  Come here,” she whispered, on her hands, sideways leaning in through the unlocked dog door as she stuck her head into the house five doors down from her home on 12^th Avenue. 

Cinco had been missing for hours at a time—sometimes all night long and often throughout the daytime over the past two months, missing meals and making the neighbours suspect in her eyes.  But Mary denied feeding him but once as well as taking him in at night.  In spite of expressing her concern over Cinco’s absence, it appeared this morning, that Cinco was well acquainted with this home and lived there due to someone in Mary’s home.

“Meow,” said Cinco, quietly as he walked gently with familiarity on the insipid grey plaid vinyl kitchen flooring.  

 Oily, petroleum VOC releasing flooring, she thought matter-of-factly.  "Yuck" in her mind, horror in her heart.  My kitty is being exposed to this yuck!!! Horror of horrors!

“Cinco, come here,”  she said more insistently.

“Meow,” as he turned in those allusive cat circles, waving his tail up in the air—expressing indifference to her pleading.

“Cinco, come here!” This time with insistence and no patience, forgetting cat language altogether, and with complete ineffectiveness.

“Meowwwwwwww,” as he turned his back and sprung lightly away as if on air between pads and substrate, as cats do, out of her eyesight from her vantage point—head stuck inside this portal, shoulders held outside by the door's guillotine-like yoke framing and separating her head from the rest of her body.

Pushing further forward, she knew she could squeeze through the dog door and physically locate him….

“Doug!?” a woman’s voice pleaded.

“What are you doing,” he boomed?

“Finding my cat,” she said back, with no apology and with the utmost sincerity of her mission.

“He’s in your house and he is here due to your feeding and housing him.”

“Meet me at the front door and I’ll give you Cinco,” he said in irritation.

“Fine,” came out with relief and equal irritation.

“Mary and I have decided you cannot come on the property any longer to get Cinco,” he announced when we stood facing one another at proper height, weight, relationship now that I was standing fully upright sporting a 5’-6” vertical composition to his 6’-0” stance.

“That is fine, she replied back with her end of the agreement yet to come.

“And you must not feed him or let him in your house any longer, “ she said with as much certainty and outrage that justified her recent appearance with her head sticking through his dog door just minutes ago.

“That is our agreement,” he replied.

“I am fine with that,” she said.  “This would never have been an issue in the first place had you respected my wishes.  $600.00 in veterinarian bills and two months of worry and angst later, we are discussing the respect of my family at this moment.  I appreciate mutual cooperation from now on.  Thank you.”

A few days later, looking for Cinco and calling his name, a part-time neighbor, three houses down, asked if the missing kitty is orange and sports a collar.  “He was meowing insistently at our doorway late last evening and wanted in, but we didn’t open the door,” she said.

Here we go again, she thought to herself…..

Kat

29 August 2016

Joy For Writers!

September's cool moist mornings
giving way to the warming
afternoon sun
flood me
with a lifetime of Autumn memories.

A deep well of sighs escape my throat
pushing my shoulders back
down into their sockets
reminding my entire body
to breathe
to take a few longer moments
between movements.

Nearly as archaic a memory
as bear's hibernatatory jaunt
into her mountain cave
I sense
it is nearing my time, too,
as the daylight hours shorten
and coolness expands.

In the upcoming and increasing months
of darkness
we have more opportunity
to nudge our stories, unencumbered
by summer distractions
onto paper--
to chew the words more slowly

into music for our souls.

Kat
September 2016