stonetosser.com

This is the picture I have on my pc desktop. It's just a little beach that reached out to grab us last year as we drove up the California coast. It was so beautiful, all four of us agreed without even speaking to stop the car and get out for a moment simply to try and touch it fora moment.

Every time I see this picture, it takes my breath away. It's like a dreamland where the air and the water and the earth all live in me together, blended and perfectly apart. I can feel it. I was there. I know it is real, and yet I want to hold it as though it is no more than a vision I remember from a life imagined but not yet touched. By me.

I will be back there before the Eastern leaves turn again. I am breathless with anticipation and yet I dread finding it. It will be different . So I am letting go of my need for it to exist at all. For it won't. It lives only in memory now.

I am hoping to stumble upon a new vision this time.

Photo credit: me or my husband. I can't remember. We both took so many. Originally posted on LiveJournal in 2008

Salty rot wafts across jumbled stone,
swelling into the surges of brine
that creep up and back down
before me, ceaselessly.

As I watch, mighty rock wears to
pebbled specks, dulled jewels of
green, gray and brown washed until
they sparkle with veins of white and rust.

Life clings, waving
softly below and lying limply above –
starving and drowning against
each wave’s sucking caress.

Desperately,water and stone
push and pulse in
an endless press to merge, constantly
frustrated by the slipping and sliding away.

Unaltered change shapes the face
of this place I love, as
each year we return to find that
the sea has moved the immovable, yet again.


StoneTosser  © 2006

Note: (Almost) every year when we return to the Northern coastof California and we always try to visit this beach.This particular beach has always been amazing with a tremendous wash ofmulticolored pebbles brought ashore for us to explore. The year I wrote this poem it was different.It looked barren, as though the sea had swept in to take the most beautifulstones with it to the depths. We had a good time there but the change reallystruck me and I was inspired to write this. This is my youngest son in the picture (who is quite a bit older now). Here are some of the stones we've collected on that beach in a gorgeous cherry tray I bought in a San Francisco Japanese antique store in Japan Town.

Yes, this is the picture from my site. The big stone has carved on it the Japanese symbol for "wisdom" and was given to me by a close friend near the start of my personal journey of living out loud.

Stilled in voice unused
A memory echoes untended.
Once magic, now victim to
Heartless dreams,
Desperate wishes ~ tangled ~
Like words dead
in my throat.

I am lost.

I would die unspoken
But for time, my breath
Stirring it like fire
To cleave future from past,
Rattling loose ~ an imagining ~
A conjured moment
Unlike this one.

I am found.

StoneTosser (c) 2008

Images familiar flit
within the blink of his eye -
his lashes rise and
life anew unfolds once more.

Odd how a tiny twist
of reality makes the
normal feels so damned strange -
and so unusually alive.










(c) 2009 StoneTosser
Originally posted on LiveJournal

I wish for you the sight I see,
looking at the sun glisten off your hair,
seeing the glow on your face,
the beauty of your soul as it shines
at me through your eyes.
 
I wish for you the pride I have
knowing how hard you work to do the right thing,
watching you struggle through
the wash of emotion we throw at each other
never giving up, never giving in.
 
I wish for you the love I feel,
the calming that comes when you hug me,
pushing away the little things
we won’t take with us
when someday we part.
 
I wish for you the real things
that lie below the clichés of love and happiness.
I wish them for you
and I will be them for you.
 
Because I love you, I wish for you.

StoneTosser © 2006 

The little wisps of thought come.
Echoing on the air
hinting of

something.

Suggested dreams present,
wavering outside,
only known
through
practiced
ignorance.

To focus is to lose them.
Counterintuitive of
the rational mind
Tasty resonance
for the
spirit.

~Elf 384

(c) 2008 StoneTosser
Originally Posted on LiveJournal 2008

One moment I am happy, the next I am in heaven.


Perched on theline between land and sea, floating among little color cups, blatts ofhue, reaching skyward on delicate tendrils of green, seeking the sunthat will not shine until morning... I am writing. Yes! Me!  Writing!Words. Images. Thoughts. Feelings. It's drivel, of course, just theelves out on vacation to play, but it feels so good.

The sky ismisty over my head, the foggy air swallowing great tree limbs thatreach above the flowers, sucking them into the gray beyond, pullingthem into the space above the ocean that laps upon giant jewels andtiny stones both. That's when I feel the sky descend to touch my handsas they anchor my fingers clicking on the keyboard. Just littlesparkles of water touching so softly, a whisper of the moisturesurrounding me, deigning to land on my skin. A kiss. A welcome.

Beingme, I try to capture this moment, the second in time I was welcomed toearth by the sky and encouraged to fly once more. And here the wordssit, cuddled together for me to find again someday when i want thememory, the flavor of this experience. What will it taste like next?

I think I'll post pictures just in case.

Originally posted to LiveJournal in 2008

Is there really such thing as Inspiration? I feel like its ghost visited me sometime past. I have memories of it. The whirl of energy sweeping before it left me giddy and perched so high that crawling down was a frightening thing. Why didn't I just let myself fall? If I ever get the chance again I shall fall so happily that wings might sprout and lift me on air to soar. Or crash. Even that would be fun I think.

If Inspiration IS out there still, it's forgotten me in its rush to someone worthy of its gifts. Life goes on and washes me with it along the halls and street corners of my day. And weeks pass and I've gone nowhere. Well, I have, but in this little corner of my brain those travels are not so interesting. Other lands await this corner where the elves live. Other lands....

Must prepare for the dinner guests. Interesting people we've known for years and see not nearly enough.  I will enjoy them.

But the elves... they don't want to make dinner, catch up on others' lives and sip wine as we shoo the mosquitoes away. They want to explore other lands tonight. Except that when I come back to them as the moonsliver hangs in the sky, they will be all curled up around each other, the big burly ones snuggled around the little scribblets, protecting them from the darkness that comes each night to suck the energy from my bones, pulling me down into such welcome oblivion.

Maybe tomorrow. Other lands don't go away; they lie under the same sun. Maybe tomorrow I shall take my walking stick and explore, seeking the elusivity of inspiration under a few stones along the way.

Or not.

I can imagine it, though.

Originally posted on LiveJournal in 2008

Where did the elves go? They were right here a minute ago. I hear them, but they won't come out to play. I would pout but I don't have time. I am so frustrated I could spit. Except that I have no time. The elves whisper that I have no time for them so they don't come out to play.

Time is supposed to be fungible and expanding, a trick of space as it warps and undulates around and under us. Why can't we slide into the troughs of space and find the time we need for - everything? Wouldn't that be exciting? To slip and slide through time as space falls out from beneath us and ribbons up, snapping us to fly through time until another ribbon catches us and swirls us around centrifugally until it, too, tires of us (or us of it) and flings us into another gravitational field for sport? I can see us now, passing on our flights of fancy, high fiving and waving as we tumble in the darkness filled with light from a thousand suns, back to where we began so we can do it all over again the right way, or do something completely different just for the hell of it. *waves* Is it fair that only dreaming physicists can see these tricks of the matter and emptiness around us? I think not. I would like to petition the universe to give poets that ability as well.

*petitions*

*silence abounds*

Guess what I got is what I got for today.

Time's up. Back to work.

Originally posted on LiveJournal in 2008

....let the tide wash by me. I no longer fight it, hoping only to stand my
ground.

I'm speaking of email, of course. So many email addresses, so many
identities to maintain. They are all me and so they remain.

And yet I am overwhelming myself with myself.

But I like it. I like the connections...

(originally posted on LiveJournal in 2008)