If you ever lose heart and the earth seems as distant as stars fading into the noise of your busy mind, know this. That a tiny island exists in the blue hands of the ocean. That a tree grows upright into the salted clouds. That two eagles love each other enough to spend their lives greeting the morning sun together. That two eaglets stand in their nest, gazing at the heavens. Looking down to the forever ground. They eat and sleep and flap their wings. And one day in July, one by one, they will jump into the air. They will know the difference between existing and what is beyond. They will hold onto nothing. The hurricane will come, courage catching their pinions on fire, as they mount the wind, climbing ladders into realms of the invisible.


--T.L. Stokes






Sunday, January 15, 2012



Brief Coyote and the Thumbprint of Snow




Soft sounds, thumb printing snow,
singing as it comes down
oh, spacious innocence
and crystal faces,

are your eyes open or closed?
Your singing makes the woods
put on white coats,
tucks the grass
in for naps.

Slipping from invisible doors
brief coyotes hunt for an hour.
Yoga pose and meditate. My eyes
are grateful.

A shadow calls from thirty years ago.
I answer. I remember while talking,
the boat clutching the wind, the music
of your voice, the color of your skin.

We both apologize
for not being kinder.

Gray clouds rock the sun to some other country.
Still, the white goodness keeps falling.
Candles and flutes make the black dog
sleepy.

I turn from the window, my eyes full of white.









for Sundays

Friday, January 13, 2012

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

From the Belly of Winter





I want to say something to you
that you've never heard before
and yet you've always heard it
somewhere inside of you
and you can't forget it
and you never want to
and you can't help
reading it
again
and again.









for poetry
and those who read it

Miracle: The Hen



Twenty degrees makes the night immediate.
The hen screams the end of life song: Repeat!, repeat!.
I'm coming and find her with her head stuck in the lattice,
by the front porch, where Linus the brown poodle left her.
I chase him off hollering. He catches another in the woods.

I gather her wet brown black ruffles in my arms,
circle her stillness, my voice coming down
around her like God. We find a plastic moving
crate, tilt it empty, fill it with a green fleece
and drag it with one free arm, the other full
of hen.

Inside the cabin I clear off the table. Put the crate
on it, cozy the fleece and slowly lower the hen.
I can't seem to move my left hand away. Honey
words come from me like breath. The dog
wonders about everything.

We sit back and wonder. Put on flute music. Begin
to warm chicken soup and rosemary loaf from the
oven. Periodically, I lift the blanket over the crate
and the hen looks up at me. She lays still and quiet
in the dark softness. Her life comes back
to her like this.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Sunday, January 1, 2012

The Room of Winter






Night of the first day without you
comes like the river when we're not looking,
the field silently waits the first snow.

Horses have taken their hoof-prints
and speak no more of the wind.

Roosters line their warm round bodies
in the tree, coo and say night to night.

My heart is a window. It is not cold
when you belong to winter, or watch
wild things and the wood grow taller.