Birch Island Books

and clean
and unstained by dishonor.

May it be so.

He was standing there waiting for me, revealed by moonlight,
and then all the others came,
the ghosts and the gods,
so I could give thanks
and refrain from making promises
and give more thanks.

Stag and Thunder;
Moon and Earth;
Wolf and Bear;
Owl and Coyote;
Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars;
Cygnus, Aquila, and Lyra;
Fire and Dance;
Mother and Father.

Now it is morning:
Moon and Earth still here,
Orion has his two good dogs and I have mine,
and we all have a Silmaril in the Eastern sky.
Oh, and the coyotes are still singing.

Finally we turn back.
Hearth and Home
and sleeping family.

All will be well,
And all will be well,
And all manner of things will be well.

~

That last stanza is, of course, written by Saint Julian of Norwich. Blessed Samhain and all the new year ahead to you and yours.

It’s white out there and I can only begin to express the little thrill, excitement, rush of joy!
Snow is one of the great healing balms.

Between islands full of trees and brush and beauty.
Through slightly warm water
Over beige sand.

That was it.
The whole dream.
Swimming, stopping to rest, swimming again,
and the sun never ceased to shine down.

follows me through this day –
a wonder and a mystery and a joy and a Spark.

Thank you, Lauren,

for the story of a small silver fox.

I read a thing yesterday
that made me sick at heart.

Time to put the armor back on.

The dog-snuffles
and daughter-footsteps,
and coffee-pot gurgles,
and soon it becomes a simple celebration of hats and kibble and walkies and teeth and baths and gentle chatter and user questions and eternal questions about milk.

and he has roared and stretched luxuriantly
and shown his sharp teeth and stretched down for another nap,

Stretching Time out in such a way,
that several days share one sleep.

It’s very different from the frenzied packing-everything-in days.

I am grateful for yesterday – the day when we said farewell to my retiring doctor,
The day I spent knitting,
The day I spent teaching and grading papers,
The day I spent with loved ones.

Thank you, gentle day in October, for your gentle way with Time.

They dance before me — or hide behind veils —
Who is this circle?
What do they know of themselves?
What do they not know?

Who is in this Family and who is not? Who lives
within these walls, if body is nowhere near as important as spirit?

Who are they to me?
Perhaps that’s the question.

And whom do they need me to be to them?

Today the stillness,
Today the emptying,
Flow out,
flow out,
flow out…

I empty myself
— not for some other purpose,
because it is good to do so.

Let go,
let go,
let go.

Breathe
all
the
way
out.

Slipping closer, closer,
shedding her skin

But still fresh and silver.

Sometimes it’s all made of mistakes,
from errors in judgment
to hate-filled genocide.

From the life I’m walking
To the history of shame.

To the countless individuals.