hello, today
2024
Moon of Returns
Two ways of noticing that I have named for myself:
- Stillness: that which suffuses, as if from some underworld realm, from the land of night.
- Presence: that which infuses, with its full and real immediacy, from the land of day.
These ways of noticing aren’t opposites. More like complements.
The other nameless, limitless ways of noticing? I don’t have labels yet.
Maybe soon, maybe never.
Waxing crescent Moon of Returns | November 2024
Spider Moon
body says
build a temple with those who would care for the living animal of your body.
mind says
with itegrity, create a path.
spirit says
you must move now. you’re half naked; so is everyone.
Waning crescent Spider Moon | October 2024
I hope you have secrets.
Secrets, compelling ones,
feel like pillows;
A comfort in a shadowscape.
Secrets are another source of sorrow.
Waning crescent Spider Moon | October 2024
hovering rain
rain that insists
rain that has not much of itself
furious rain
rain that lingers on the way down
firm rain
delicate rain
rain that ushers in the fall
rain that cannot decide
consistent rain
rain that coaxes in the spring
gray rain
rain that still resides in the cloud
New Spider Moon | October 2024
Apple Moon
beneath the small fruit
sparring sparrows twist and flash—
hard to say who wins.
Waxing gibbous Apple Moon | September 2024
Moon of Long Light
What is wanting, anyway?
I don’t understand it.
I’m susceptible to it, sure, but
it’s like how I often don’t understand frosting.
It is necessary?
The cake is already so sweet.
Let me tell you. True wanting seems to me
like a curiosity that seeks to witness the living images
as they arrive in front of us,
vital and holy, a surprise,
yet still completely familiar at the same time.
Waxing crescent Moon of Long Light | July 2024
Caddis Moon
subconsciousness says
movement is important. keep moving.
consciousness says
focus on the destination you want, not on the one you don’t want.
superconsciousness says
there is joy is using what you have to create what you need.
Full Caddis Moon | May 2024
Moon of the Long Grayness
No moon/new moon:
A day is half dark, after all, like us.
What power fear has
Waxing crescent Moon of the Long Grayness | February 2024
2023
Quiet Spirit Moon
body says
let’s change our environment so we can change our outputs
but mind says
please visualize the future vividly before drastic changes
and the spirit says
the higher road can be a harder walk. Slow down.
Last quarter Quiet Spirit Moon | December 2023
Moon of Long Light
Once upon a time
I stood in Ben’s room in the basement of that filthy house in Wedgwood
(where we had jumped out of bed when the earthquake rattled Seattle,
the room with the softest navy blanket and the small desk in the corner).
That room where we were tripping and
in came Lowell, not tripping, like some Viking god, proud.
He gripped my hair in his fist,
yanked my head back and exposed my throat,
commanded me to kneel.
Ok, really he just stood there and ignored me while he talked to Ben.
Later he walked out of the room forever (though
I did see him by chance in a magazine twenty years later, just human),
but now and then I still remember him.
Well, no. Actually
I remember that slowed-down moment
where he glowed with power
and I wanted to bow to him.
What was this moment?
Yeah, sure, drugs.
But drugs have come and gone and no one else
glowed like that.
Maybe you’re thinking I was just susceptible
to some tall guy with doe eyes
who knew how to stand with his shoulders back.
Sure.
That’s also probably part of it.
But not all of it.
Here’s how I see the rest of the story:
that evening, that moment, he became a god and I remained mortal.
For I, too, have also been a god.
These things ebb and flow.
At times we channel divinity from some ancient, dark well
and other times we live small and scared, half-full of actual shit.
(Projections, or: both and neither)
Full Moon of Long Light | July 2023
Moon of One Thousand Crows
Some 80s secretary-isms that hit real right now:
- Same shit, different day
- Look at all these patterns
- Your lack of planning is not my emergency
- If you’d looked even a little bit at all these patterns, we might be feeling differently right now
- God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference
- Good grief, these patterns are brutal
Very waning crescent Moon of One Thousand Crows | June 2023
Caddis Moon
I worried last time that I’d quit. And you know what? I did.
But then I didn’t.
I had passed to me again some Rilke* and I remembered that sometimes what looks like quitting is just meaningfully resting, or doing something else.
And just so you know, I had coffee when I woke up today.
*
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Waxing crescent Caddis Moon | May 2023
New Grass Moon
Here’s an experience: I rode my bike freely and with ease across town and then through the arboretum, into a showcase of early-blooming trees, rough-edged in a mess of pinkish blooms. The sun shone. The raw spring wind cut. I rode warm enough but cold enough, how I like to be.
Later, entirely alone (even though I rode the edge of a densely populated neighborhood), I wound up and then down a steep hillside covered in ferns and alder and a scattering of fancy houses. Endorphins behind my eyelids, icy air licking down my neck…racing through the cold shade, I wove back and forth across the empty road.
Why tell this?
From here, right now, I guess privilege and gratitude cross paths sometimes and those moments feel like prayer or holiness and I’m moving in the thick of it all. In my body, wrapped in cold air like it’s heaven. I’m here. I’m also miserable sometimes, and don’t know how to live, not really, not as well I wish I did. I feel angry and bereft and lost and I overshare when I’m excited and then retreat in shame: it’s the new moon and full moon, the day and the night, and why can’t I praise both?
Last quarter New Grass Moon | April 2023
2022
Quiet Spirit Moon
Jamie and I took River to school. It was cold and humid in the car. I wiped condensation off the rearview mirror on my side so Jamie could see out. He did the same on the driver’s side.
Later, driving home, we talked a little bit about how it might be nice to go to Hawaii, and I again said that I really wanted to spend a month in Rome investigating ruins and thinking about myths. Jamie said he wants to go outside more and I said, gesturing towards the buildings we drove past, “the outside is right there, just open the door.” He didn’t reply, because I’ve said that a lot of times and I think he’s sick of hearing that, and that’s not really what he means, anyway.
Lil Waxing crescent sliver Quiet Spirit Moon | December 2022
2021
Plum Blossom Moon
Soft winter rain
Clings to my body—
What a marvel.
Waxing gibbous Plum Blossom Moon | March 2021
Eagle Moon
The sky of the plains—
vast and close, a lightning dome.
Fear, my steady friend.
Third quarter Eagle Moon | February 2021
Gutter with fall leaves,
winter’s endless rainwater,
and a cast-off mask.
First quarter Eagle Moon | January 2021
What a vast nation.
Mostly it’s a nightmare that
I can’t quite recall.
New Eagle Moon | January 2021
Quiet Spirit Moon
I am my mother’s daughter
I am my father’s son;
my brother hews a stack of sticks
and gives my sister none.
I sit and knit and count the days:
one and one and one
Full Quiet Spirit Moon | January 2021
Each breath is new, yet
Nothing known to me is new.
Waves slide on the sand.
Full Quiet Spirit Moon | January 2021
2020
Quiet Spirit Moon
Done. Wring the rag and
drape it on the bucket’s edge.
What work is next?
Full Quiet Spirit Moon | December 2020
Moon of Returns
The vast gray outside,
much like the vast gray within:
a tangle. Not simple.
Waning crescent Moon of Returns | December 2020
A touch and a touch;
another and another.
An endless drip at the door.
Waning crescent Moon of Returns | November 2020
Blackberry Moon
The earth may shake us,
Though typically it will not.
Why wait for tremors?
Full Blackberry Moon | August 2020
2018
Quiet Spirit Moon
When the eagles are overhead,
you wanna watch the water extra closely.
The steelhead swim upstream.
New Quiet Spirit Moon | December 2018
Moon of Returns
thesis
move on with kindness
antithesis
but move towards where?
conclusion
follow your intuition
Waning gibbous Moon of Returns | December 2018
Spider Moon
a little bedding
but otherwise just rats
in the rat’s nest.
Waning gibbous Spider Moon | October 2018
as fall advances,
squirrel moves quickly.
the trees tremble!
Waxing gibbous Spider Moon | October 2018
Two men slurp tea.
The crow shifts to preen
upon the wire.
Waxing crescent Spider Moon | October 2018
All night long
At rim of the canyon
The mouse shivers.
Waxing crescent Spider Moon | October 2018
The heron fishes.
I see, or do not see.
She carries on.
New Spider Moon | October 2018
Apple Moon
sticker bushes, and
a golden autumn day:
perfection, it seems.
Waxing gibbous Apple Moon | September 2018
the moon, they and I
we both move widdershins
a sinistra
Waxing gibbous Apple Moon | September 2018
what’s next?
the sun or the moon—
simple.
First quarter Apple Moon | September 2018
rowdy children,
social time, then sleep:
a simmering glow
Waxing crescent Apple Moon | September 2018
night rain,
the weight of a work day:
inertia.
Waxing crescent Apple Moon | September 2018
how to show
a ranging set of thoughts—
the world, compressed.