Burning maples vibrating with life

but the dead snag holds the hosts

the bluebird & titmouse piping their heart songs

a gray squirrel family chattering their urban sprawl

putrid bark rife with millipedes and sow bugs

as a red capped woodpecker pounds and picks for lunch

while the fungi creep and crawl the cracks and crevasses.

And who is more alive?

Those who shine now all around us?

Or the hosts of our ancestors

who people our memories and surround us

nurturing us from their graves.

 

 

Sourwoods didn’t always

contort this way

Once they grew straight and hollow

were used for sewage pipes

To avoid this fate they learned

to grow crooked as a mountain road

 

 

‘Dandelion’

Sunny dandelion

going to seed in a

white fluff ball

first one puff

carries away a seed on its tiny umbrella

on a breeze

off to college another

drifts down to work

suddenly the big wind blows and

all the seeds are gone

scattered to the world

with the solitary stem

numbering its day til

frost brings an end

 

Shared from the Heart by Andy Weatherly of Asheville North Carolina.

Moments around the Fire

Why Fire?

Sitting in the Fire 

Learn more about Sacred Fire Community fires and the dance of deep community.