winter morning birds
weave song through misty gray clouds
leaves add harmony
nature
Very verdant vernal vessels
The energy of the earth flows through the veins of springtime.
Motherly perseverance
Mother Nature is the ultimate truth of the show must
Ravish
it is raining!
no, not water
from clouds
but dead leaves
from july trees
scorched by
a brutal heat
too sunburnt
to evergreen
falling, fallen
brittle brown
leafy teardrops
raining down
the dry warm
forlorn face of
mother earth
The graceful and beauteous
Flowers rewrite soil, rain, and sunshine into petal’d poetry.
Seed in the wind
flowers are fragrant metaphors —
happy colors sing “carpe diem!”
wilting whispers “memento mori.”
Ever-changing
Why do I love clouds? You can’t save a cloud as you can save a leaf or a flower or a rock — clouds are now! Clouds are the carpe diem of nature.
Autumn’s wake
leaves dancing
in a brisk breeze
on an almost-bare tree
joyous at autumn’s wake
they tremble, ready
to be free, to sleep
with past seasons —
dying, they celebrate
the awakening of winter
Embering
glowing electric pink
surges across saguaros
sparking the sun’s burning gold —
colors blazing so wild
the sky cradles them to calmness
with dusky embered amethyst —
and tucks in the sleepy day
with blankets of serene shadow —
Spring flight & grounding
Butterflies dot springtime with flitting airy kisses.
Barely knowing
Spring and summer come with a lush layer of foliage over reality, but when things start falling away in the autumn and get bare and stark in the winter we’re forced to look at things more as they really are, including ourselves.
Wilderness pathways
“The wilderness has the power to exert enormous influence on the mind of a man freshly arrived from civilization, especially if he lives alone and has but little contact with other people; some that I have known could not take the solitude, the absence of comfort and reassurance offered by the presence of other humans.
“Such men have become effete in terms of personal survival in the face of natural challenges, the city is too much with them, and they don’t last. There are also those who go too far the other way, becoming misanthropes… these are the withdrawers, and they are found sprinkled loosely wherever there is a forest or a jungle, like seeds that have lost the ability to germinate in cultivated soil.
“But between the quitters and the lone stayers, there is a third kind — indeed, there may be more than that, for all I know — in whom the wilderness acts as a catalyst and who, after they have experienced both the wild and the civilized, begin to form new values, to explore unknown pathways, and to realize that nature is an endlessly patient teacher with an infinite capacity to stimulate thought and to sharpen the hunger for knowledge. That is how the wilderness affected me…”
—R. D. Lawrence (1921–2003), The North Runner, 1979
Desert winter departing
early February in the desert —
the sun is springtime warmth
the breeze, winter’s leftovers