I remember the time I sat with the chickadees..

Perhaps the only thing we need to grant ourselves is the permission to be still.

I’m going on vacation…

The bird flies to the feeder,
and there is a bird…

Is it in the fresh glass that shines smooth and hard, empty and full of future?…

We give the wind and the tree
their own names. But what do we call it when the tree starts dancing?

It takes fifteen minutes and a lifetime to drive home.

Just trying to get everything lined up and certain…

Today I am sitting on a chair, still, with my eyes closed…

Amid the noise and the dinners, the rushing and the Zooms, the texts and the nexts…

If you go for a walk in the woods this December…

Below insists the slushy, grey snow
of the everyday…

As I drove along Highway 118, up the hill and through the forest…

Sometimes when I’m homesick for a wild mountain…

The squirrel, cozy amid the frost, stamps its feet at the excitement…

There’s an oak beam stretching from here to there…

It’s curious, isn’t it, that amid the spice and salt of every day…

Just now I stepped outside into the cold air…

It’s odd–but probably true–that if you hug mud…

I wonder if the chickadees, busy all daygathering sunflower seeds to hideamid the trees, worry about the winter–the snow, the ice, the dark, the storms?Or do they just gather sunflower seeds?

What is life if we forget…

One day I might become a tree…

If you were seven and you were luckyyou would come home from schooland your mother or your fatheror someone else who cared for youwould give you a gingerbread manor something with sprinkles on it.Maybe sugar is love in physical form?

After Amazon Prime and Schitt’s Creek…

As I step outsidemy house (where thewood-stove is glowingand there are yellowbananas in the bowl),into the grey, gusty,sogginess of November,I notice the worldlives saturatedwith the cycle of endsand beginningsand love and hope.And so I feel good.

Evenasit’srainingthebirdskeepfeeding.I guess they know a “bird” is mostly water and world-stuff anyway.

When I was a kid, I liked to finda wishing well – the kind you’d droppennies into and hope for a Rubik’s Cube.Sometimes, I’d try to glimpse thebottom of the well, but all I’d seewas a reflection of myself.

I’m going to get lost in the woods…

Is asking questions…

Do you remember, somewhere…

Maybe today it’s enoughto drink mint tea and eatginger biscuits while thechickadees chuckmillet and the squirrelssteal sunflower seeds.I can fix the world another day.

I was clutching my problems so hard my hands were hurting.So I let goanddroppedthem. The funny thing?Nothing broke at all.

We will get out the rakeand scrape away the crudof striving, the golf scores,the quartz counter-tops,the shiny car. We will dig throughthe compacted earth of achievement,the rubble of trinkets and trophies.We will scythe through the bramblesof stories and anxieties, the shouldsand shouldn’ts. And then, revealinga sweet, blossomy meadow,we discover ourselves–our wholeness and our emptiness–and find…

Last night at six o’clockor thereabouts, I flirted withmy dusky side, my uncertain,unstable, darkly side,when grey rocks glowedmoonly and silvery mothsbrushed me. Last night the wind forgotto blow and squirrels crashed likeangry bears while dampness sat close and heavy. And yet the stream, so daytime chuckley,kept gurgling – like it was no big deal at…

Let me remember the stoic things,the stable, stolid, standing things. The rocksslowly cracked by ice and roots,the lightninged pine, the holed hemlock,the bass awaiting a winter blocked by ice.Remember too the daily sun, the runningstream, the deer-stripped maple leafing again. And here I sit, pondering,my heavy head, my anxious heart, my soft bottomsupportedby granite.

There are timeswhen the thing to dois to simply be,to gather pillowsand tea, and watchthe blue jaysand the squirrelslive their ordinarythrough the window.

Is life found in the brackish parts and the misty parts, in the delicious gray of half-knowings and maybes? Are we only fully open when half-in-half-out(half-not-sure)? Perhaps this is where truth lies – in the gorgeous slurry of exist- ence.

One day I’ll let go ofthe screwdriver, the hammerand the wrench. I’ll put the nailsback in their box, the top screwedon the Super Glue. I’ll tear upplan B, plan C and D, stop thehedging and the betting, the analyzing, sketching.And instead, I’ll watch the squirrelleap in hope towards the seedy stashand know – soon –…

Is there anything more delightful than a freshly unwrapped bar of soap, whose corners will never be as sharp as they are today?

I can’t decide if I shouldbuy stocks or sell gold,whether the trail to the right is betterthan the path to the left or ifbutterscotch is superiorto caramel. I seldom knowthe correct answer or whetherit’s kind regards or best regards,or if I should go to the storeat 1 or at 4 or not at all today.…

Let me rememberto loosen my grip onthe steering wheel of life,allow my hands to relax,my elbows to sink. Let the roadtake me, the wheels rolland notice – yes – I’m gettingwhere I need to be.Anyway.

Can I sink into the shades of brown,the mushroom, bark, earth?Let me inhalethe mud, the chestnut horse.Shades of brown so nourishing,I will let red alone.

John,we will call him that,got himself all upsetabout the neighborand what he didand how disrespectfuland rudeand thoughtless he was;so distressedJohn could not sleepand was angrymuch of the time.Then one day,he saw the tiniest of birdssweetly peckingseeds from the pine,and he rememberedthat actually,in reality,when it comes down to it,most things– really –don’t matterthat muchat all.

On a sullen day with agentle breeze, the heavyhemlock, the bronzed beech,the peeling bark – they’re allsoftly moving in a danceof aliveness.

Rocked on the foamy waves…

Let us go nowhere slowlyand find the world –the woodpecker knockand the chickadee float.Let us love the gigglingchoir of the stream andthe brave clover shoots.Let us go nowhere slowlyand feel the rocky, squidgy groundreveal its stories to our feet.

Look at naturewith its thousand treesand their million leaves.Billions of sperm,trillions of bacteria.Mosquitoes,dragonflies,moths. So much,so wastefullyefficient.

It’s curious how autumn can smelldelicious, warmly loamy, earthy, cozy.The crispy leaves trap the heat,the nourishing nuts in woodchuck’s nest.There’s bark and twigs, seeds and thorns.It’s gorgeous, nutritious, scrumptious,death.

Sometimesthe easiest way to get to the place I need to beis by sitting still.