For Ansel There is a certain lilt in the whole of things, so demure yet so threatening to the letter and the law it must subtle itself in life forms and experiences that take hold in the unguarded spaces of the heart. The lesson is to learn to see what one did not […]
Tag Archives: unity
I read twenty to thirty books at a time, piecemeal, like short visits to important people I wouldn’t want to bother with my insignificance. These days I’m stricken with attention deficit disorder beneath which flows a stream of consciousness confluenced to a sure mystery. That’s where I have come to rest at this age. Stars […]
I walked into the wild, the high country, a silence, the first to the end of that sky canyon, no sight of human tracks before me on the last of the great snow embankments. I was held in my steps alongside fields of fallen rock, above hidden torrents. When I arrived, I realized it is […]
In the dark of winter’s night the trees release their salvage into fair exchange with the breathing. This is an aged and wisened love. Enter the season, and much has fallen off and away, subject to the effect of natural circumstance, a learned method of thriving, braced against the cold yet finding stillness. Remaining rooted, […]
I sensed a rush of wings above, a sudden river flowed in skyward waves, a twisting spiral random convergence leading itself centerless, to inspire it’s own innovations and my silence. First, of the crunchy growl of boots on hardening snow, then breath held for the sake of listening, then mind entrancing in it’s parallel flight with this […]
Autumn is burning, turning, all green grown is suddenly fire, lit from within in the fading dusk. The vital hue descending, to the root and rhizome we all go, to our essential darkness, but not before our luminous colors reveal the passing of our substance, our quest, our earnest effort at some small good and […]
As night summoned a hidden despair, I sang in silent harmony with a lone coyote; his call was ragged with longing and he was wondering where his love had gone. When the song was over, and the stars hung still, I whispered to the wild spirits who understand such things. Know my heart O world […]
The canyon was flooded so I found myself leaning against the tailgate of the truck, pulling on my waders, setting up my fly rod after another drive through the mountains to fish wider waters in open country. Out across the field sweeping away from the lake there knelt an old antelope, folding his legs under himself to […]
He leaves the house before dawn to stand out under the moon and that single morning star, listening to everything; a torrent within, outside, the distant northbound train, the dogs in the hills serenading the end of night, the interstate humming. An owl speaks of the first world in the far cottonwood. The man is […]
I am of poems and rivers. I stand as it all works around my footing. I am held, wordless and watchful. While I fish, while I write, waiting on delight, a fight, not knowing what’s next, a broad turn downstream, a desperate run to hidden structures, a sudden gasp at twisting flight then plunging to […]
James Scott Smith 