I turn my gaze towards the void,
And stare into the deep abyss,
To meet the blackened eyes within,
The invite of damnation's kiss.

I speak into great beyond,
And share the thoughts in my control,
To voice the words I've never said,
The secrets of a tortured soul.

I step back from the edge of fate,
And give thanks for the love I feel,
To walk the ever winding road.
The path to where my heart can heal.

Leaking.
Darling, your love is leaking.
I hear it.
The drip drip drop.
Wakes me up at night.
Thinking didn't the faucet
Turned tight enough?
Or did I overturned it?
Till it's loose and
Leaking.
Darling, your love is leaking.

Clothed in its blanket of birds
Great arms reaching impossibly high
Her leaves filtering the light between shadows
And flashing diamonds of sky
For thousands of travels round the sun
She worshipped the turning earth
Through raging fires, the shaking ground, frozen winters
Droughts for decades burned the soils,
The rivers disappeared and still she held herself
High and strong
Even the humans recognized her power
Leaving offerings around her roots
Fruits of the earth, fish and painted stones

And then George came
The natives told him it was the largest tree in the world
The Mother Tree
He needed to monetize it
No one was going to come out to see it
And he needed capital for investments (mostly *****)
So he cut her bark off
Just the first 20 feet or so
Carried it off and put it on a train
For paying customers to see (two feet thick and 20’ high, oh my!)
They say she lived for another year or two before she died
They drove iron spikes into the trunk so visitors could climb up her skeleton
And over a century later, over a hundred feet of her trunk
Still rises over the valley of the giant trees

I like to think that the Mother,
That burned spar on the hill
Is still trying to protect us
From ourselves.
Selah
2015

I wanted to kiss Death one Monday afternoon,
but Death had moved his face away from mine,
instead putting his chapped lips to my ear and whispered,
"my girl, you are too beautiful and too loved, you have too much to offer for something as dark and as lonely to kiss you.
so my girl, I will give you Life instead, and you will take her hands in yours, allowing yourself to be the strong girl I know you can be.
and when it's your time,
I will let you kiss me,
but my girl,
that time is not now."
Death had vanished from my view,
and was replaced with the wonderful mystery of Life.
I took her hands in mine,
filled with the desire that maybe I did have something to offer.