Beauty comes and goes

"Beautiful" written across my mind's eye. Beauty felt in a dream where I gaze at a beautiful woman in the mirror and see that it is me. "Beautiful" told to me by many. Beauty I steal in another dream. "She does not belong to me." One day beauty known intimately,  another beauty lost, along with all that comes with believing in my own. Nature's beauty brings me home in moonlit tidepools, and I remember to see what it reflects.

On Beauty
Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet"

"Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say,
"We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say,
"We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves,
and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror."

Golden Eagle

There seems to be a mystery that unfolds to anyone who can drop into it. I wander the land at dusk often many nights in a week. Rare but sometimes my mind leaves all thoughts in the steps behind me, and spaciousness empties me as it fills me simultaneously. I join this unspoken rhythm. I allow my feet to carry me with no mind to where I am going. A few times I have wandered towards a tree, no particular tree but his evening resting tree. When my eyes meet him, he takes flight with a cry. Tears can follow this, or a giant joy I send off in his wings. He carries my soul high as these feet continue towards his feather and then onward in his name.

Aho Golden Eagle

Your wild cry calls up the day
bringing foresight for tomorrows

Quiet your feathers unfold
to release flight from it's rest

To work as wing
together as one

In balance these two hold dawn and dusk
Suspended from the sun's highest reach

With your last sun dance
You soar in silence,

Until a soft unheard landing
Invites nesting from the dark

To hold you in moonlight
Waiting this night for sun dance

For Sun Dance.

A Morning Meeting

I step into the wood an intruder upon this place that was peace until I penetrate it. The jay sounds alarm exclaiming my interruption. The deer I only can hear as they make their escape as I take their quiet. Quail in the distance take whirl and leave. I continue seeking peace at the spring, alone. I hold a stillness in walls the creek has carved that is not mine to comfort. The redwoods stand as silent sentinels, as their creek washed and exposed roots reveal a shallow journey.

Ripples dance on the spring's face, playing with light and the shadows of leaves that equally entertain my eye. Do I deserve such wonder after penetrating perfection? After an hour spent under shelter of these canopies I realize here I do belong. My inner landscape joins this outer.

Up ahead a mile or more I find another sky break by the water, where rays stream through meeting stream. Is what I feel deeply into my bones true? That I am loved by this place as I love it? I can't hold it, take it with me nor here it spoken in words but here it is always, waiting for me to feel it's warmth and it's chill, to listen, to witness and discover all that it is. Maybe that's how love always is.

In Grace I Go, I'm Gone

Always beginnings, always endings. Here is the last of "SonomaThoughts." I had to have an ending, or did this ending have to have me? Sometimes the experiences come to me and the words through me. Are they really mine? I like to think no. These words belong to the place, a place and all it's four legged, and winged inhabitants, all that nourished my senses and spirit and still nourishes my soul.
These woods, some part of me is still in relationship with, through memory and dreams, where I visit again.

Mirrors of Life and Death

I frequent two trees in a wood that stand amongst trees of more grandeur. These trees stand unsuspected, but are guides to my soul, holding memories that nourish the essence of who I am. Fallen bark creates a seat upon the forest carpet, where the two merge, meeting ground. One day after meditating under their reach, I slowly stand, turn to give thanks when a small bird flutters into the branches above. After dropping a green acorn, he dives down and begins pecking furiously. He halts his frenzied pursuit, stopping to assess me. He leaves me alone, with a cracked-open green acorn and his contagious playfulness. “New life” I think to myself as my mouth curls towards a smile.

After a good rain, the sun clears the way for a visit to the wood. I leave the sunlight in the meadows and journey in. I see something below the greener of the two trees, white and curving up through the forest floor. I unearth a deer skull. What lives inside still moves. I see it as a gift and leave it beneath the tree, with hope the remaining rainy season will rinse it out until hollow.I sit below these small trees, listen and learn the rhythms these woods breath. I rise and witness for the first time after months of visiting, that these joining trees are a joining of life and death. The dead tree, with it's broken trunk holds blossoming yellow coral fungus, and joins with a tree that breaths through green leaves and acorns.

Yesterday I discovered, beneath the trees’ reaches, feathers from tail and wing, varying shades of gray, with some feathers still holding to the others, spread upon the forest carpet. They escape the breezes that could cause their gentle carry. I gather them into a pile and watch them stir as the air encourages their movement.

I have met other trees in these woods. Givers of edible treasures, born from the soil shared by their roots. Trees for climbing that hold me so steadily in their open arms that aim towards the sky. I can close my eyes and remember those trees with cascading canopies that veil naked bodies from the open meadow.

There is the Great Grandmother Madrone who must bare hundreds of rings within her, and a lipped opening that resembles that of a woman's. Along her thick trunks, her skin peels back, allowing the rain to illuminate her moist yellow, orange and red underneath.

Intimacy with a place goes deeper than words can reveal. To know her stillness, her bird song, her hawks’ cries, her hummingbirds’ wings and her vultures with their soundless thermal gliding. To be still enough where the inhabitants do not mind your quiet witnessing. This pair of eyes can see her gifts on offer, off the beaten path. Maybe a place can feel it’s own aliveness as it moves around you, and through you. I return to the dividing trees, this marriage that holds one one
answer to embracing change. A tree from the yesterdays, decaying but feeding what lives inside it and the life that surrounds it, joins with the tree who holds the trees of the tomorrows in shells waiting to be opened.