Up to the mountain top,
this wild place of
pine trees and
hickory oak.

Up to the mountain top,
river valley spread
out from ancient
mountain roots
like children behind their mother’s skirt.

Wandering path along the ridge,
hugging boulders cut by years.

Wisdom trees hold on,
hold onto the horizon,
let themselves be bent and turned
where few can go.

Here, there is Grandfather
and grandchildren,
Here, there is youth and old age,
sapling stretched green in the sun,
searching wind, soil, light and rain.
six hundred million year old rock weathered by
volcano, ice age, flood and time.

The brown hare hops off into the distance,
leading the way
up to the mountain top

as I leave behind human constructs and thoughts,
arising out of the dark valley
sleep
into pure white sunlight.

Even the salamander is out to
greet this day,
darting this way and that like
a snake’s glinted tongue.
He knows the way,
up to the mountain top.

A thousand generations
have passed this way,
and humans,
almost none

melting the mind
like snow into mountain,
bent and turned
along the edges of wilderness,
the Way the heart is weathered,
sharpness smoothed away
by the river of yearning,
a soft stone
dissolving
into sediment
leaving behind
soil
and the pure crystal peak
of mountain top being.

I will follow and sing,
trusting in the wild ways
stepping closer
moment by moment
up

up to the mountain top.

Lying on the ground,
my back curled up to soil,
dead wood, leaves, winter’s dreams.

I rest like snow,
like a rock lodged deep,
inert, still, silently aware and
full of presence.

I wait here on the ground,
not for anything or anyone
but
for waiting itself,
knowing nothing
but
this. No need for questions,
not on the ground.
No need for beliefs
or reasons why or how or where

because I am
simply
lying
on the ground

resting on earth
a billion years in the making of
now.

That is enough
That is more than enough
assurance for me here
in this moment,
lying on the ground.

This place with the birds calling to one another,
the slow whir of river walking upon
age-worn rocks from another life,
red clay sinks down, accepts, slides,
green thorns covered with promises of spring,
snow like winter’s ghost melts into the earth.

The river runs and walks, then runs again,
the quiet eyes of trees observe
passing of time
passing of years
dropping their leaves down
sap rising
budding
shooting forth into fullness
the colour and splendour of death
as the fall of leaves comes anew.

But now, now their blood,
their heartbeat pumps stronger
after long, unconscious sleep.
The deer have eaten at bark and branch
during winter’s starving bite,
but now, now from roots
spread forth green blades,
each a speared desire for sun and air.

This place is open
and intimate
the pebbles and small shells
mingle together like brothers and sisters
at the riverbed,
each stone a story past, each shell a life long gone.

This place with its tall trees,
buckeye and oak: white, blackjack and laurel.
This place with holly, rhododendron, sycamore,
white ash, maple and beech, the trembling beech,
walnut, pecan, wild thorn, alder and dogwood,
sourwood and ironwood, honeysuckle,
a thick array of river birch, cedar and hemlock.
This place with grasses, grasses and grasses,
moss and lichen, ivy, sumac and creepers,
shooting bulbs wild with spring’s coming day.

And pine trees, who could not mention the pine trees,
the short-leafed pine in bunches with the loblolly pine drooping down,
long-leaf pine that needs fire to seed, fire to be freed,
ancient giants that covered this place long ago,
pine-cones everywhere before deciduous trees took root.

A sparrow peers at me now,
querying my intentions in this place,
then carries on, moves along feeding off the ground,
dancing with a hop in his step,
his lover nearby,
their white breasts glimmering
beneath brown wings and
gleaming eyes.

I am breathless,
breathless
at this place,
at its rolling sides rising up to blue skies,
this valley, this river course,
this place of cosmic lineage,
about to awaken to Spring again
like all other years — yet unlike ever before.

The joy that fills me
reminds me of home,
tells me I’m home,
tells me to walk softly on this clay,
to slip with it and slide with it,
to feel the leaves, the bark, the dead grass, the new grass,
the smooth stone, volcanic etrusions,
the woodpecker in the distance amidst creaking trunks.

I know this place in my dreams,
have known it for many years,
but this place is real,
this place breathes,
it lives,
carries with it memories
sinking in,
sinking into me,
seeping in like blood and breath,
like scent on the wind.

In this moment,
there is no me.
The woods, the river, the birds, the shore,
the silent white-footed mouse staring at me from his hole
as he melts into grey rock light,
blurring his edges,
not mouse, but stone,
not stone, but mouse.

So too I melt
dissolve
blend into the hues of green and brown.
I am earth and wind,
murmur of water as it kisses stones,
tree-creeper hopping, moving up bark paths,
wren in the distance shrieking his warning,
rising rocks emerging from the hillside,
winding way along a river’s long walk

all this I am,
all this flows in me and through me,
the Eno River walking and running, then walking again,
part and whole,
whole and part.

This place is real,
this place is home.

Note: The Eno River is my native NC watershed … the rocks here stretch back 600 million years and are very deep into the psyche of this area.

Hail hits the house,
Soul trying to get in.
We build our minds,
place bolts on the doors,
locks on windows,
shutters,
blinds,
curtains,
mortar and bricks,
cement thoughts,
fears,
expectations,
desires.
We build our minds
and the Soul wants back in.

Last night, a dove cried on my window.
She wept for her lover in the fox’s belly,
her mourning woke me to moonless night.

“Little one,” I whispered across the sill,
“Come in and rest your tears somewhere safe.”

But she would not come near.
“You’re the wife of the fox who ate my man,
and your love is hot in him. If you feel sorrow,
then so will he, the one who ate your heart.”

Then I wept for her and for myself.
I shook with tears for all the loves
stolen and maimed in the world.

My Todd came home at first light,
his eyes a trickster laugh.

I wore my anger like a coat,
my hair a flaming red.

But he laughed at me and kissed my hands.
“Don’t be angry with me who holds your heart,”
he said with a toothy smile.
“I exist to make the little birds faster and the
sleek hares nimbler,
without me
they’d grow lazy and die, and where would be
the food in that?”

“I exist to make you, you, and
without me, you’d never learn
to be more than who you are now.
I am your longing and I will devour
until there is nothing left but an empty cup
filling up with the tears of the world.”

He was going about fox business
when I met him again.

The trees were thick and he wore that
hunter’s grin on long black lips.

And when I asked him of the day,
he said
“Kiss me quick.”

My heart ached like fangs sunk deep–
stealing the wind, a desert in drought.

I placed my lips to his cold wet nose
as he breathed in my vital breath.

No sound but the fire burning within,
now igniting in me as we breathed as one.

Heart sat stuck, stuck in my throat,
choking on care, desire, and whim.

He ate my heart with that fatal kiss,
devoured it bloodied red and raw.

My heart burned up in the belly of a fox,
I did not know love could empty the self.

The universe seeps in this hole for a heart,
pulse-pulse-pulsing with the beat of stars.

*”kitsune” is the Japanese word for a fox, but in Eastern culture, the fox is so much more than “just” a fox. They are shapeshifters who, like many other cultures’ Otherworld inhabitants, fall in love with humans, mete out justice, trick the greedy and foolish, etc. The fox who has kept appearing to me in my border dreams is very much a kind of Otherworld fox … and his name “Todd” is linked to my animus. This poem comes from an actual dream-body experience.

It’s enough,
his laughing eyes to melt with mine
as he walks past me uninhibited.
“See me,” his sleek perfection demands.

It’s enough,
to be a woman alone with him,
in a wild, long-forgotten place
of all things, to find him waiting.

It’s enough,
his face a full moon of recognition
and my mind unsettled by his desire.
“You’re mine,” his smiling fangs declare.

More than enough,
his bold attempts at wooing, enough
to make me fall in love forever,
my soul caught naked by a fox.

Something drew me out
from a long unsensing sleep
into the woods behind my house.

Maybe it was the snow melting into sunshine
or the blue morning deepening into noon.
Maybe it was the red birds laughing outside my window

or perhaps it was the silence
between their songs giving way
to another world awakening from seed.

Speak into the darkness
like a child praying.
Age does not lessen
your need for faith.

I don’t mean
blindly binding soul to dogma
or sacrificing intuition at devotion’s hands.

There is another faith
that lives beyond these,
waiting for you–
not on the mountain top of wonder
but beyond, in valleys
deep with yew, oak and hazel,
moss, cress, mushroom and stone,
fine leg, hoof, snout, fin and tail,
hiding behind the mask of many.

It is the faithfulness of love
that dares to look straight into the
Heart of God
and melt into that fierce sun, again and again.

To feast at the table of faith is
to open your mind
to the vulnerabilities of being
human,
to admit without shame
that you can never live up
to your own expectations.

Instead, faith is bringing home
the subtle fear
that makes you believe
every other story but your own.

When you tread with faith
up the spiral milky Way,
you are a star in the night
a naked light without agenda
or any other power but to
shine.

Only when the inner heat of longing
burns up the clothes
of what you thought you knew
and all other loves you claimed for yourself,

Only when there is nothing left
between you and the darkness
can you make love,
skin to skin and breath to breath,
with the Heart in all hearts.

Only then does faith become
another word for “know”.

“Climb with me to the top”,
picking berries in autumnal sun,
warm and sticky, hot breathed wind
carries her promise of love.

We wend our way in curves,
dizzy with lust, that untamed bird,
leading us up the hill of pleasure,
shy but laughing, intending more.

I chase you, feet wild in pursuit,
rampant in my longing like
Grainne demanding of Diarmuid
unbreakable vows  … or else.

Tumbling, you fall, into the bosom
of the earth, a heather bed made
ready for two eager-mouthed youths,
our legs already a lover’s knot.

Not even the gods of this place,
could come between our bond,
as I share with you my fruit,
a marriage feast for two hearts.

Juice explodes in our mouths,
sweet hunger for more and more,
dripping with red-lipped desire
and stained by a heavy harvest.

We are two wild things, two
blackbirds starved to madness,
two waves rolling into the other,
as we heave our delight to heaven.

“Climb with me to the top”,
to the height of heady dreams,
where even Sliabh na mBan
becomes inflamed with our love.

*Sliabh na mBan is a place in Co. Tipperary, Ireland, where Grainne (one of the most beautiful women in Irish myth) fell in love with Diarmuid instead of her older and rather elderly betrothed Fionn (a bit like Trystan and Isyllt). It was traditional in both Ireland and Wales for young couples to go ‘berry picking’ in late summer, early autumn on the hillsides, but of course, it was also a euphemism for so much more! Both in Irish and in Welsh, there is a close tie between the words for ’sex’ and for ‘hill’ (they are almost identical) showing how ancient the practice of lovemaking on hillsides was. And they still do it, haha.