Sunglint Butterflies

The moment exists

and slips my grasp today

as it does on many

As present bliss is lost

in time that will not be detained

even if I resist the flow

An unseen force is moving

through me...and I question

if the current knows the stream, or

if consciousness can recognize

living as it seems

Is simple awareness reality

and living just a dream?

Or is the truth of Being

somewhere inbetween?

Human born, we are born to see

that balance is a mystery,

a cosmic dance...

Siva, getting down, getting on,

getting free!

Destined for more

than a meal and a mate,

we must daily choose our fate

and fell the power of the stream...

for we are carried, after all!

Yet, it's up to us to paddle

and not to drift, for ultimate

enlightenment

Sunglint butterflies scintillate their flight

upon the windrift soul of water

flowing over stone...

I'm on the bridge, above the stream...

again, the Sun is bursting

light and water over me!

© Gerry Sackett, 2019

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Dazzling Dinoflagellates

We gather when the moon is hidden

in earth shadow, stand in a group to hear facts,

take advice, don life jackets that cover our lungs,

our hearts.  We drive toward a cove at the

salt sea edge where the plankton proliferate,

persist in a small shallow bay with its twisted neck

to the sea, its reef a wall that holds them in.  These

bright, tiny organisms, single cell, simple we call them,

beckon us to witness their wonder. Under wisps

of night light we load into kayaks, follow one

dim beacon. Only paddle sounds dipping, dripping,

pulling on water.  Last light tucks under the earth,

dark descends fully, fills the space that holds us. 

The enchantment begins.  Under every boat

a lining of light, each paddle's dip is a brush

painting sparkle.  Even the fish surface

in small blue spotlights, descend exposed.

These uncountable beings dance ghostly

glimmering with every splash we make.

I sink my arm in the cool cove, skin glows

blue.  Lift lighted water in both cupped hands,

let it fall back twinkling into the bay, dots of glitter

on my fingers, my palm -- I am holding starlight.

© Marti Snell, 2016

(Snell, Martha E. “Dazzling Dinoflagellates.” Streetlight Magazine, Fall, 2016. Issue No.19, Web 16 October. http://streetlightmag.com/2016/12/09/dazzling-dinoflagellates-by-martha-snell/)

Bioluminescent Algae at Vieques Bay, Puerto Rico
courtesy of jenonajetplane.com

I-88

The long shadows of winter,

of bright, white birches;

their gnarled and arthritic fingers stroke the sky,

reaching for a sun that barely rises before it sets.

Other trees, gray and patient, stand waiting. 

Their gentle sway suggests no hurry.

They trust that new buds will come soon.

But the white birches have an anxious gleam.

Creeks are frozen into miniature glaciers –

rocks and fallen limbs scattered in silence,

like the limbs of drowning men.

In another season, the precocious creeks 

are kinetic in the still woods.

In another season, they are renewal,

carrying the tired and broken bits of these mountains away.

But even the creeks are silent.

Only the white birches refuse to accept the patience of winter.

Only the white birches reach for the coming spring.

© Jeff DeBellis, 2013

Birches in Winter
Photo by Axel Kristinsson
from Wikimedia Commons

Passage

In colluvial dreams 

we poke at the edges

of the thin membrane that separates

us from God

as though there is a weak point

that we might pass through

The back and forth of the whip-poor-wills 

ping-pongs through the canyon

and the wind plays the walnut leaves like a xylophone

Somewhere beyond our limits a bobcat cries 

and the rain begins to fall in large drops 

that seem to rest on the rocks forever

In the narrow floodplain, a deer exhales

as the sun pushes its light over the low ridges

Once again the night turns us over to the day and we rise,

slowly, toward morning

                     

                          Smoke Hole Canyon, 7/7/2011

© Jeff DeBellis, 2013

South Branch, Potomac River
Smoke Hole Canyon, West Virginia
Photo by Jarek Tuszynski, Wikimedia Commons

Bears

This one I’ve never heard

but I remember the old mountain story

about the woman who is tricked

and hands her baby over the fence

to a bear, who she thinks is her husband…

and I have dreams about bears

they change into people and change back

I change into a bear and change back

I sit in a tree and sing to one

until fierceness turns docile

like a puppy

and, god, I miss those mountains

It’s a pain in my throat and the only place

that causes me to cry when I see it and when I don’t.

So we’re all kin and we’ve all married

our kin and we continue to find them,

we continue to look for their twinkling eyes

in the hills of every place.

One may come lumbering out of a cave

give itself shape apart from the trees

and look like me and feel like me

and like the polar bear be the loneliest

--that’s because he hasn’t got any mountains.

Why do I miss it? The thing I’ve never had?

It was a distant backdrop to my childhood dramas

but a visit is a visitation

the place where mist is at dawn

where I fished on the Shenandoah

where morning glories dot even the sun.

Stories of bears reside in my flesh

what is commonplace there

becomes extraordinary elsewhere.

Aunt Han Ran may have used a broom

to chase that bear off her back porch,

I’ll invite him in to sit by the fire

dust the snow from his fur

and ask for all the things he knows.

I’ll bid him stay till spring

he may tell me where the treasure is hid

or what enchantment he is in.

I am close in nature and nature

is close inside me. Woods and Mountains

become my house and call me.

If I don’t have you covering me

I dream of bears and an ancient wooden door

and my Daddy calls to tell me mountain lore.

© Linda Suddarth, 2001

"Bears" was published in Alchemy on Sunday, Lit. journal. 

pub. through Pacifica Grad.Institute, 2001

"Mosquito and Mishka"
from Wikimedia Commons