a few poems

and a short story

our initiation onto the mountain, Dec 2022

Within its seed is a blueprint of everything it may become. As it pushes beyond the earth and rocks to initiate photosynthesis, it moves through the darkness, intuitively knowing there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. Whether fruit or flower, all direction manifests from within. Through photosynthesis, it releases the oxygen atom from the carbon molecule. The plant thrives and yet, it nourishes other life forms in the process. By taking its place within the larger fabric, it is simply being the unique creature nature designed it to be.

- Nothing Bad Happens in Life, by Kari Hohne

photo by author

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before time
is eternal.
mastery
is the craft
of returning

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a bushel
of wildflowers
for each gift
from the Mystery.

my home
is overflow(er)ing

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orient
towards
the Gift
and realize
abundance

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hunters come here
each autumn
to harvest - 
but what do
they sow?

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umbrella
concepts
blanketing
earth
should include
the Give Away

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photo by author

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The glorious gold setting sun turned the south sloping snow blue and glistening seed pods sky-bound soared from the hands of my small child, cheeks red and pink, softly framing the most contented, wholeheartedly at-home smile as we galloped through the sagebrush meadow with each other, the ringing goats and a family of wild deer, carefully watching us from the juniper and sandstone horizon.

(I once closed my eyes, deeply, and saw the deer for what she is. Blue, really. A blue inner eye being of very high psychic awareness and perception. Beautiful, really. Really beautiful, as she silently paused outside our tiny hut on the farm, all those years ago.)

When we came home, our cheeks chilled to the bone, fingers red and noses dripping, we were giddy from the sanctuary medicine of mistletoe tapping in the forest at dusk. We found a tiny deer antler buried in dirt beneath the old junipers and tucked it in my wool jacket to bring home and marvel at by the light of the fire.

The solar power had somehow blown, we realized, so we had no choice but to begin building the fire by the light of a few candles. As the fire grew and the yurt warmed, my child began to dance. Really though. Elvis hips. I mean, I’ve just never seen anything like it. Where did she learn that? Giggling, swinging, spinning, gallivanting like a victor of some unknowable battle, sky clad in front of the fire, she smiled at me, bigger than heaven and earth, warmer than a thousand suns, perfectly innocent and ablaze in her unabashed praise of life and all things good.

In a concrete world of mechanical sounds, you may forget that you are a natural creature in the river of life. When a floating leaf encounters an obstacle it begins to move in a circle. It demonstrates the movement of turning back. Beyond the leaf and the obstruction is something, which seeks continual movement.

This is the great river of life.

- Nothing Bad Happens in Life: Nature’s Way of Success by Kari Hohne

As my child’s perfect ecstacy for life and completion settled, we gathered ourselves up into a warm yak wool blanket by the crackling, dancing, warming fire. We watched it together quietly for a moment, the waltzing reds and yellows, the echoes of green and blue, the flames licking logs cozied into piles of white ash and hot coals, and then I saw it.

A perfectly formed symbol on the end of the burning juniper log: Jupiter.

♃

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Thank you for reading this edition of Wild Leaf! There is something so impressionable about real winter in the wilderness. May this brief writing bring you a whiff of it’s impeccable purity and magic.

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Happy Wintering. I love hearing from you. ❤️