Gossamer Naturalist

Tag: Poetry

  • Liminal Velocity

    This is a piece I wrote at this time last year. Liminal space is the space between, the transition zone between one thing and another. There is always space between the forest and the wetland, a mixture of both where a completely different set of ecological interactions take place. Just as there is a liminal space between us.

    Liminal Velocity

    Home is the liminal space 
    Between dream and reality
    Like the space between a swamp and a fen 
    Where the speckled alders and cattails grow together.
    A space you occupy
    Where we meet in the in between
    Of late summer chorus and early mabon fog

    The liminal space
    That land between the rose garden and the industrial blocks
    Where we roam and witness lives 
    Without really being a part of them
    Liminal Velocity
    The instant between the story you tell me
    and my brain processing the words- 
    and losing them
    in the high of seeing your smile again.

    The liminal space
    Between having a voice and the 
    Silence of a lichen 
    Is not so wide a canyon
    As the illusion projected on the screen.
    It is a pinch of genetic code, and political gain
    Taught by worlds with borders between
    Urban and wild
    And you and me

    Liminal space,
    like the sandy shore between my feet and the mantel of the Earth
    where things grow and death becomes life
    decomposing to a base substance we call dirt.
    Soil, a rush of petrichor between the rain and the sun.
    blending together with the sound of your laugh
    like one essence of laughter and smell, 
    a dance between sensation.

    Liminal Velocity
    The space between 
    my perception of you
    and the reality of you-
    different forms of the same perception-
    is the same as the space between the sea smoke
    and the inland sea herself.
    The one perception we share.
  • The Beats of Continuing On

    The Beats of Continuing On

    The Lakes Shore we once paddled continues to breathe-
    In and Out. 
    The siche folds its layers over itself in fractal waves
          Like percussion beats.
    The beats of your breath, have ceased. Is life
    Like a butterfly? 
    Beating its wings, effecting change
    Half a world away.
    Is it the change you fought 
    So hard for in the world. Or is it
    Just the incessant beat of the world marching on?
    You once told me you were afraid
    To imagine the change we marched for-
    	       Side by side lifting a banner in the streets of St. Paul.
    You lived it and where is it now. Here, Now. 
    With the Lake and the rainforests of Panama. 
    	Forever impermanently interwined with reality.

    “Where ever you go, there you are.” He once told me. 
    We had taken such different paths to that same Canadian Beach.
    And the waves of Mother Superior went on 
    With the beating wings of a quail. 
    We walked together from Hattie Cover to the distant point of rock
    And we laughed until the sun set over that glistening Lake.
    And we wept.

    	The waves continue
    	From us to thee
    	Forever impermantently intertwined
    	While we are apart
    	One from the other.

    A Frost’s Amanita I found growing on my driveway this morning.
  • Woodstove Dreams

    Woodstove Dreams

    The South Shore is chilly today, with the jet stream pushing cold polar air southward across the Lake. A sublime Autumn chill may hang out with us all week long, as our bodies still crave the celebration of August, time spent sunning on the beach or working in relationship with still growing food. Instead, yesterday I lit my woodstove in the afternoon, retreating inwards toward myself and my fire while I let my cat be fascinated by the mother deer with two fawns, and by the hummingbird who visited my feeder for some rest. Yesterday, I needed to give my curiosity a break to recover it again for the week ahead.

    My woodstove gives me the most lovely warmth, while it burns away years of history. Each piece of wood I burn is a record of an individual history, full of years of bounty and years of withering. What did the trees of this fire dream of before now? How did they perceive the world? I sit, I wonder, and I listen to the crackle of the fire as history heats my heart. I’m thinking I will post poetry on Sundays and essays on Wednesdays for now until my big move in November. We’ll see how it goes.

    What season is it?? Who knows.
    In the flame of the woodstove
    Witness the dreams of the universe
    As embers weave their way through the air before 
    Revealing themselves like stars
    Just more delicate
    Fewer parts of hydrogen to fuel 
    Your heart.
    They are multitude and small
    Simple as a hallucination
    The one that tells you that you turned off your
    Alarm Clock, that morning the sun had not yet peaked through 
    The window to your naked body. 
    Your alarm clock still sang
    The sound of waves crashing, even though 
    Those same waves are frozen now.

    The same waves that made rainbows in the mists of the sea caves
    The same waves where we kissed and first began to dream
    Of things like windows, things like orchards, things like birch trees
    Those same waves who are frozen now
    And without motion are they still waves?

    The universes hallucinations, as
    Vast as the love between all the people
    When it shrinks and cracks between two, 
    Rekindles between others
    And healing must take place.
    Healing as though humans were stars
    Or embers
    With a constant spark,
    Meant to be bright,
    To transcend without a wisp or a name.
    Yet to be the material of us all.
    A staggering bend between Aspen trees and sandstone cliffs
    The dream of a spark
    And little more
    Along your beaten path
    To those waves between us.


    Listen to the crackling of the woodstove,
    As it boasts the story of 20, 30 years of life,
    A crackle as 1999 burns

  • Futures Spun on the Barren Earth

    I am in between lives at the moment. As are the chickadees, and the maple trees in their way. As food grows more plentiful the chickadees have stopped flocking, and returned to somewhat more solitary lives. Maple sap, the sweet elixir of the Northwoods, flows from roots to branches. I love the process of gathering and turning it to syrup. The walk from tree to tree and back to the central fire. Each tree I visit today I see as a different future. A different life I can possibly lead. Unresolved futures. The central fire though has not shifted from its spot in a long while. 

    Walking between lives
is like being a melting glacier
I uncover new beauty with each retreat
And mourn the loss of myself
Drop by drop
Each piece of myself is a flood in Miami
And a drought in Phoenix
A degree warmer and I vanish
Along with the communities within
ideas and dreams and timeless records
down to the scraping of soil from the rock
Love lost to 400 parts per million of CO2
As we walk the chasm together
taking one step after another 
to a future spun on the barren Earth.

    Recently I’ve spent some time reminding myself that we can each craft a mission for ourselves in life. Mine is to help myself and others create relationship with the natural world through how direct interactions with Gaia, specifically within the Lake Superior watershed. This is my central fire, through which I refine those many futures down to life lived well. Lately I have little faith in myself that I can reach that goal, but still I try. What is your mission statement? How does it do good for your Place in this era of The Great Turning?

    Sugarloaf Cove as the ice breaks apart, one potential life to lead.

  • The Loudness of the Sunset

    Lake Superior sunsets are loud, particularly in this time of year. We are between the tumult of the winter with its night time winds, and the songs of summer, with the birds and the frogs and the wolves all calling to each other. We are even before the Spring, with its sounds of people, out and about once again. We are in the inbetween time, when the sun thaws the top of the snow, and the night freezes it over again. The ground itself becomes a sheet of icy mystery. And we as humans project our own stories and anxieties into that icy layer of barren snow. 

    The sound of a Lake sunset is loud. 
    It tells stories of the traditions of college students 
    biking down to the rust belt breakwater 
    on a first date. Stories 
    of fire spinners and lovers 
    shy together 
    in tender moments by the creek. 
    Never in the same spot from year to year 
    As the creek shifts between channels. 
    The Lake sunset tells booming stories in echoes of colors 
    But not the colors themselves 
    Giving space for new stories 
    New kisses under cotton scarves 
    And so the colors are ever brighter and sweeter in their memory 
    Until they go grey in their eyes. 
    And then dark. 

    




           In one sense this is the season of greatest hope for the future, when the sap is just about to run and buds just about to bloom. Then again it is the season of greatest waiting, in anticipation for the sounds. And the silence seems timeless. The sunset and moonrise the only solace of time moving forward. All potential still. 
    




           
    




    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Stormfront between Selves
    
			
    Stormfront between Selves
    
			
    

           There is a dichotomy between filling my life and the lives of others with experiences, and trying to function in a the world of environmental education and justice in a capitalist world. The two simply dont mix. Today, I am confused and hurt, and still processing in walks with friends up mountains, and in observing the behavior of a nuthatch as it bounces between my head and its spruce tree home. There is so much more to say. But today I tire, and fall into dreams. Tomorrow is full of snowshoe adventures and planting peppers for the season of growing.  Hopefully my dreams are full of those peppers.
    




    Gitchi Gumee ways flowing between icy cliffs 
    and sandy islands. 
    Each story building upon what has been before like the sandstone which builds the south shore's cliffs. 
    And the water which tears them apart bit by bit 
    into caves and beauty. 
    The storms between storytelling and sap-flowing, 
    pushing between expansion and experience and back again. 
    Tearing me apart. 
    I cannot stand before the storm. 
    I can only take shelter in past selves and could have beens. 
    Empty selves shaped by the waves and silences. 
    Broken by a gift of chaga 
    from a child filled with wonder. 

    The universe is created by division. 
    The river splits in two, and the cells in my body divide 
    and give rise to story and stormfronts between selves. 
    And I dont know where the river flows next 
    What story there is to be told 
    between now and dust. 
    




        
    




    




    

    
			
    
		
    
		
	
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    Gravity Holds
    
			
    

    Gravity Holds

    Every step we find ourselves in dreams-
    Of the moment the snow fled from the freshly covered
    Winter boughs
    Towards the ground that holds us so tight
    The gravity of Gaia pulls so much 
    Softer on each crystalline snowflake
    Than she pulls upon our aging imaginations.
    So trapped by Moloch as they are
    Encased in screens and responsibilities.

    Our minds soar like forming hail
    Down through the clouds, then up again,
    Then down again, and so on until 
    We have so much icy weight that to the ground our mind returns.
    Falling and falling in 
    And within the winds. Towards
    The withered stream, held by toxic soil.

    Gravity holds me tighter than your touch
    Folding and unfolding both on the level of the strings 
    That make the universe
    The strands which weave us together
    For only a stitch or two,
    Before splitting apart into new patterns 
    And old.
    




    I meant to post this yesterday, or the day before. But each time I thought about what to say to accompany it, adventure pulled me away. A ski at Tettegouche, where my Mother’s ashes rest. An unexpected opportunity to teach. Each bringing to a space of new discovery outside the realm of everyday gravity. I want to use this blog space to share my work regularly, predictably, in the grounds of the everyday routine, the gravity which holds us to our lives. That gravity isn’t a negative energy. It’s just that I cant let it control me while I live a space so magical as this. 
    




    That’s what this piece is about. Holding that gravity as a friend, rather than a prison guard. And letting the orbits that are our relationships to others run their course naturally. That is something I am still learning. In Love I hold and hold those with whom our orbits meet only briefly, and try to force the gravity of our lives to stay orbiting together when they would’ve naturally drifted apart. When do we hold on? When do we let go?
    




    Lake Superior in the Late Autumn