Poetry

I can see it from here, the low slant of the sun’s fingers,
grasping the glimmer of the frenzied activity
of a million tiny wings inhabiting the haze
above the mustard fields.

And I can also hear the bees, their collective hum
hovering, rounding, ebbing, and sounding again,
filling the absence of silence with their energy.

In my mind’s eye, I can see the dust clinging to my feet as I climb amidst the stubbled rise of eucalyptus trees hugging the spine of the hill, until I crest into an arching blue so deep that you could almost fall into…

Poetry

Last night there was a dragon in the sky,
racing, dissolving into the night.

Ephemeral.

Before me, a myriad of footsteps
marred the beach,
the furrow of the sand,
whose brow had been eased
by the press of the waves,
and the lick of time,
each trace marking a single moment
against the backdrop
of the constantly-erasing
sandscape of the shore.

Ephemeral.

They come closer to my toes now,
each criss-crossed crescent of
wave escalation
arching up the beach,
the silvered sheen
slicking over a moment of history.

Time moves too fast. We know that. But to see the traces…

Photography

Spring has sprung here in Southern California. Last week, we hit 85.˚ The local hillsides are exploding with mustard and the irises in my garden are nodding in the breeze.

This week, though, we’ve returned to sweater weather for a few days and are expecting some much-needed rain. Those of you in colder climes might laugh, but I have a fire going at the moment, with the french doors open (so that I can still hear the birds and feel the breeze). …

Riding like a banshee,
screaming with the wind,
my bike, my breath and me,

we glide, we fly, we grind
up the gravity-defying spine
of the hill and wind our way
through mustard fields,
sprung tall, bursting
from the earth
into the arching blue
of heaven’s vault,
a boundless realm
inhabited by red-tailed hawks
and finches, sweet of song,
yellow sunbursts, whose melodies
trickle down to mingle with the mustard sprigs.

They sing, those finches, of the joy of spring, of tender breezes and clouds which tease the eye, drifting and slipping from fleecy sheep to oyster pearl, unfurling vapor…

Personal Growth

An ancient Indian fable tells the story of a spiritual seeker who climbed a mountain to reach a legendary guru. Upon the seeker’s arrival at the entrance to the guru’s cave, the master said, “let us have some tea.” The student entered the cave and told the master how excited he was to receive the teacher’s wisdom. He then proceeded to tell him about everything he had already been studying and that he didn’t understand why he had not reached enlightenment yet.

So en rapt with his own words was the student that he failed to notice that the master…

Sometimes I feel like and old and seasoned poet,
looking over my shoulder
at my own words.

Connections from the past wash over me —
echoes, memories, an overdose of being.

Transitions, boundaries, they’re fluid here,
in this place and time when I move
between worlds—

a mystical being caught in the unfurling
of words suddenly scrolling across the page,
whispered into my ear
by my very own shade,

the one who haunts my dreams
and compels me to complete
the work she’s already seen.

I look again through the lens of the ages, down at the page in front…

My husband and I recently returned from an impromptu week in Maui. Maui’s warm waters, azure waves, turtles and whales have brought us back to this tropical paradise year after year for the last thirty years. We just cannot resist her siren song for very long. We missed our trip last year, because of the pandemic, so when a client asked my husband to handle a matter in Lahaina, we jumped on the opportunity and tacked on a few extra days.

It’s hard to take a bad photo here. And the possibilities for some beautiful snaps abound around every corner…

“Hey, girls, I’m riding this pinecone. Are you impressed? I can even do push-ups on this thing!”

While on my daily hikes in Peter’s Canyon, in Orange County California, I always see lizards darting across the trail. First, they freeze, to see if they can blend into the dirt. Then, sometimes, the boys will do their little push-ups, which are intended to show the girl lizards how strong they are (or maybe to show me that they have dominated this section of the path). Then, unless I can step really softly around them, they scurry away into the bushes.

They…