Coyote Wind

Jan Wild Moon

Coyote Wind

Did you hear the wind last night
howling up the creek
whistling in the snowy, twig shaped shadows
of January’s full moon?

Did you see the moon
last blustering night
brazenly brightening the deep sky
dark of clouds?

One time, when the gale quieted
and all sound was frozen silent
I slipped outside in time to see
a Screech Owl fly stage front shrieking
“Wild, wild everything is wild!
Everything is wild!”

The wind rose again as I huddled under a tree
It pushed me through a tunnel
into the reckless freedom of space and adventure,
shattering the stale sameness
that orbits everyday life.
It sang a new way into being and then,
returned me to my bed, freshened,
where the barking spirit of Coyote
stalked my sleep
and dreams dripped into an awakened life.

©Carole Fults photo and poem

Bittersweet

Bittersweet              

A Perfect Storm

Once a six month storm tore at her shutters
a hot and turbulent wind
pummeled the untanned hide that sheltered the door of a dark cave
wherein lived one of the world’s most illiterate hearts.

As she allowed the wind to help her dance in the trees
Her toughened pelt became soft as velvet
and as pliable as priceless leather
limp, whipped and limber.

In the aftermath of the thrashing torrent
tears kept her hardness soft
and as she walked in the forest
she saw Bittersweet
strewn on the path under her feet
and she rested with her eyes wide open.

©Carole Fults photo and poem

Periwinkle Wild Flowers

periwinkle wild flowers_edited-1

Periwinkle wild flowers
dying now
Drifting on the wind
a chickadee sings her winter song
Knowing I will also die
I listen.

©Carole Fults

Prayer Takes Flight – Sunrise

sunrise

Prayer Takes Flight (An Artist’s Statement)
This morning poems and prayers appeared in the paint
as I smudged colors on an unfolding canvas.
Verses of joy, gratitude and aspirations for truth and life
jumped from the luminous hues
and when I chased after them
I saw yearnings, previously snared in drying pigments,
rushing freely upward on beams of rainbow suns
shimmering in the snow.

All today I searched to see where my fleeing hopes had gone
and now, in the evening skyI see where they have landed.
There are the poems of my heart bouncing in the star lights
and my desires are taking voice
in the cries of the night hawk.

And my paintings have not ended with the departure of those prayers
for, no longer trapped on a canvas
the visions sparkle with renewed awareness
of their Heavenly Source
and return to rain stains and pictures of love and holy light
upon the flat cloth surfaces of artists
and the rolling skin of earth.

©Carole Fults