welcome me, dead land
I’ve wandered far to come here
place of ghosts and bones
let the sun burn and bleach me
a parched grave for a parched soul
#1244
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Category Archives: nature
#1176
[ Warning: haiku dump. ]
Dear elliptical:
this love/hate relationship
is more hate than love
~
wind brings clarity
in the distance mountains loom
sharp enough to cut
~
coconut oolong
one cup buys a moment’s warmth
melts away winter
~
how hipster is this
sitting in a coffee shop
scribbling down haiku
#1164
weak sun this morning
pale and wobbly, slow to rise
hung over, maybe
#1161
“Winter in Olalla”
snowfall in the night
dawn breaks beyond steel gray skies
birds sleep in today
#1155
“At the End of All Things”
failing sun bleeds red
wind wears mountains, fills canyons
dust to dust to dust
#1147
fresh morning canvas
fingers drip with rose and gold
dawn rises early
[ Picture taken off our balcony a few days before Thanksgiving. ]
#1146
“Solstice”
moon wanes thin with grief
fog and mist his mourning shroud
cold wind his wailing
#1138
“First Frost”
feathers of ice creep
grass blades shiver and go still
dawn sun glints on white
#1109
darkness rends and tears
shadows flee in ragged spires
tree tops glow with dawn
#1107
“You’ll Just Want out Again in Five Seconds”
cat stares through window
eyes plead “let me in! I’m cold!”
but I know this trick
#1103
autumn resurrects
exhaling leaves and wood smoke
blinking full moon eyes
#1094
“And Cider and Stuffing and Sugar Cookies”
hurry up, autumn!
I’m longing for pumpkin pie
craving crisp apples
summer’s great but I can’t wait
gotta have fall’s flavors now
[ Here's a bonus recipe for you: canned pumpkin + apple sauce + pumpkin pie spice + salt = SO GOOD ]
#1083
The lighthouse fell years ago in a thunder of cannon fire and crumbling stone. Its scattered skeleton sleeps in the shallows now, though some say that at night if the moon is right you may glimpse its ghost rising from the fog, milky and insubstantial, sweeping white light a beacon to the lost ones still. I cannot speak to the truth of this but if you venture the shore at low tide and plunge your fingers into the thick wet sand you can dig up word fragments buried by the restless sea. Step carefully, though, lest you cut your feet on the shards of glass hidden amid the ruins. Every storm uncovers another layer of slivers so hard no amount of time and waves’ caress can smooth their edges, so shattered the bulb may never be pieced back together.
#1082
“Waldeinsamkeit”
amid steel and glass
still the silent places wait
refuge of dreamers
[ Picture of Lake Trubsee in northern Switzerland, taken on my trip there last July. Title (a German phrase meaning “the feeling of being alone in the woods”) courtesy of Better Than English, a highly entertaining website every wordsmith should visit. ]
#1078
“Escapism”
while body’s earthbound
at least the mind reaches out
tastes salt on the wind
touches shifting flour sand
washes clean in frigid waves
[ An old picture taken at Long Beach, Washington. It's my go-to place when I need to imagine somewhere calm and comforting. ]
#1076
as like calls to like
so we opposites are drawn
twins in discard
- – -
I shall cast away
adrift in a sea of words
anchorless and free
- – -
colors bleed and blend
butter yellow, midnight blue
finger paint moonrise
[Moonrise over Vashon Island, Washington. Apologies for the blurriness of the photo.]
#1072
beyond the window
white foam and whispering waves
beyond the water
solitary snow capped peak
slumbering giant
[ Inspired by the view from my back porch which overlooks Colvos Passage, Vashon Island, and Mt. Rainier (the largest mountain in the lower 48 states and an active volcano). I am so never moving from Washington. ]
#1070
sunlight vanishes
dark clouds cast drizzly shadows
June in Washington
#1068
gray sea howls below
churning, yearning to touch once
white ocean above
#1064
looming thunderheads
black crows hunched close on a wire
calm before the storm
#1063
[ I mentioned I have some crazy dreams, yes? Consider this The Ruins... in space. ]
“———–traces of —————- contami————————-tain, do you copy?”
Sudden chaos as consciousness returns. A dozen different lights flash; a chorus of alarms shrill and beep at ear-splitting frequencies; cracked screens scroll with damage reports made meaningless by their severity.
“—– can’t send assistance until —————ings. Please repor——–”
Brade wrenches her leg free of the debris thrown loose by the crash and delivers a solid kick to the control panel. The disorienting hiss of radio static clears and the signal sharpens.
“Captain, do you copy? Genesis One is prepared to begin emergency extraction and is awaiting confirmation the surface is sterile. Please transmit planetary biological hazard readings immediately.”
Sticky blood seals one eye and Brade scrubs it away with the sleeve of her flight suit as she surveys the damage. During the crash her research vessel became vertically wedged in a steep, narrow canyon, its nose pointed toward an unfamiliar sky. If not for her safety belt Brade would have been thrown to the back of the ship on impact. As it is, her whole body aches and the wound on her head leaks a steady trickle of blood. At least she fared better than the ship, though. Staring at the remains of the flight panel, she knows she’s lucky the damned thing hasn’t caught fire.
“Captain, do you copy?”
Another kick silences the radio completely. Brade doesn’t need the delicate biological scanning equipment, now a jumble of broken circuits anyway, to get a biohazard reading. Beyond the ship’s shattered bubble shield the dusty air dances with green motes, questing spores of a carnivorous plant Genesis One has already classified an extreme threat. A mere handful of the minuscule seeds is enough to form a rapidly spreading colony capable of eating away at metal as easily as flesh, and the crash has shaken loose clouds of them from the canyon walls. Genesis One can’t risk contamination by bringing her back on board now.
The ship may not be on fire yet, but neither she nor it is going anywhere. Brade leans her head back and coughs, feeling the first spores take root in her lungs and spread their tendrils through the spongy muscle.
#1059
“Yosemite”
in cooling twilight
a glimpse of nature’s wild heart
gift of Providence
[ I'm just back from a trip to Yosemite National Park. While approaching one of the trails behind our lodge one evening, I managed to come within about ten feet of a bobcat walking the same path. He didn't seem too concerned to see me, so I was able to snap this picture before he sauntered around a boulder. I've always been very connected to cats, so this was an absolutely breathtaking experience for me. A minute earlier or a minute later and I would have missed him completely. ]
[ P.S I'd like to note I just added a nature category and will be going through my old posts and categorizing ones under it, so feel free to check it out! ]
#1057
“7 A.M Battle, or: The Joys of Living in a Ground Floor Apartment”
spider on my neck
OH HELL NO MUTHAFUCKA
wham! – that’s how it’s done
#1046
ting! ding! cow bells ring
through valleys and o’er mountains
Switzerland’s anthem
[ I took the picture above last July while on vacation with a friend and her family in northern Switzerland. There are dairy cows everywhere in the mountains and you can hear the ringing of their bells for miles around. It’s one of the most peaceful sounds I’ve ever heard. ]
“Winter in Gion Kobu”
silk speaks in whispers
trading secrets with the snow
gossip with the wind
“Dawn”
ghost pines drift and dance
vanishing in hungry fog
autumn’s sentinels
“Hibernation”
wrap me in linen
bury me in leaves and earth
I’ll sleep ’til winter
Autumn’s wind collects
like detritus in its tides
suras, incense ash
hymnals dry as fallen leaves
and blows them all to dark lands
She first heard the call as a child, as do all who are drawn by the untamed land. She could not sleep for dreams of running on fleet deer feet, of croaking crow cries high in the snow laden pine branches. Her lungs swelled with the wolf’s harrowing howl and her ears, nose, fingers twitched at the thousand sounds, scents, sensations of the ancient earth. And so the girl forsook blood kin to venture out alone into the world of stone and ice. There the forest darkness taught her to see without light; the winter silence to listen without sound; the myriad dangers to act without hesitation, trust animal instinct and gut reaction. She grew hard and lean in that frozen land, a wordless creature of the wilds which skirted night watch fires but never drew close. The cold did not touch her. The beasts did not frighten her. She braided the bones of her trophies into her long hair and wrapped her muscled limbs in the skins of predators which, in hunting this lone creature, had become the prey themselves. The land nourished her with its blood and spilled her own in turn, and in doing so forever entwined the two as one.
[ An unplanned somewhat-prequel to one of the geekiest things I have ever written (and that's saying a lot). ]
She speaks no language that is not of raven or wolf or snow, and so she has no words with which to ask what dark demise has fallen across the land. But certainly some evil lurks at the heart of this foreign realm, leaking its poison out in all directions like an infected wound. The journey from her alpine home takes her down into a wide valley where each night restless spirits roam, giggling and screeching as they seek to lead her off the trail, only to vanish at the first rise of her longbow. In the distance a bleeding mountain disgorges whirlpool clouds of sulfurous black fumes which stain the sunset a sickly red. When the specters fall momentarily silent the thunder of volcanic turmoil can be heard rumbling like a giant’s death rattle.
The ruined city holds no answers. Its people are long fled, the buildings boarded and crumbling. Grotesque monsters populate the abandoned streets; their gaunt, shriveled bodies are almost human but their low moaning bespeaks a demonic hunger. She affords the creatures a wide berth, hacking down any who turn their shuffling gait in her direction. They do not bleed, nor seem to register pain, but a sharp, solid blade cleaves their skulls just the same. The air here reeks of rot and so she does not linger long.
Outside the broken city gates she follows the road west as it climbs into foothills and skirts boulders twice taller than her head. Her destination waits beyond the rising ridges, a legendary desert land of burning sands and blazing sun a northern nomad as she cannot truly comprehend. Bordered by red stone peaks, inaccessible save for one rocky pass carved by some long ago quake, has that isolated world withstood the cancerous taint? Or will she find that the fingers of evil stretch wide indeed, touching even the sacred sandstone temple sheltered at the desert’s heart? Her hands flex in anticipation, one gripping her mount’s reigns while the other rests on her sword’s hilt.
