Who Am I

I am an artistic mystic.
The temples I wander
are soft scented carpets
of sugar pine needles,
dry sagebrush sand dunes
and blossoming Joshua trees.

I pray in colors of sunsets and sunrises,
of cold foggy days by the ocean,
Of pheasant wings
and feisty blue bellies
in mating season.

I listen to the rumblings of ravens at dawn,
to the shy coconut smell of gorse flowers still out in full snow
(You have to get up real close and quiet for those).

I sing in soft tones to the ripening toyon berries
and to the stone people, my feet bare purple on riverbeds
until they sing back in the harmonies of ages.

Who am I to live this life
in such grand and colorful sacred wonder?
And yet, who am I not to?

Every other way feels too small, too sad, too constricted.

I know because I tried for a long time, lifetimes most likely.
It was deadly.

May my finally living large and out loud
with cerulean blue under my nails and bits of fern in my hair,
be an irresistible call
to you, my friend,
not siren or selkie,
but equally lyrical, feral and free;
a howling from the distant ridge, day after day after day after day

A circling of echoes inside and around you that will just keep on rising
until you reconnect, remember and rewild.

So that you too,
can finally do
what you really came here for.

May you live to give your greatest offering.

Sierra Nevadas, CA - 2018