Ode to Cactii (day 2440)

Your prickly spine
Prickles my spine
In a rush against the senses
How can nature be so seamless
So soothing in times of need
Yet out of her
Births aggressive opposition
Protection in sharply fine armory
One that stops each passerby
In awe and reverie
Looking on to comprehend
How such can exist amidst the sun
Amidst a sea of warm winds
And lizards who lazily
Pass by taking caution
Yet dare not touch nor approach too close
Respecting the sentinel
Standing tall, standing strong
And playing its role
In nature, steady,
Sandy roots and resevoir.

Freckles and Moles (day 2378)

What would it feel like to have your neck in my lips
Your skin so close to my heartbeat.
Would your eyes look up at mine
From the top of your conscious gaze?
Would it be your fingertips or mine
Tracing entangled veins, tender areas
Upon a dreamscape of freckles and moles
A back opening up like hidden pages of a precious diary.
Would we’d twist and roll
Like two logs in a well kept fire
Burning as slow as we could
So each new ember could linger upon our tongues?
Would sensations erupt here?
Down our traced spines
While our roots began to slowly grow tighter
In a full surrender to our nature.

Autumn’s Wick (day 1937)

As Autumn’s candle blows clouds away
Sharpness enters into this day
At the cost of blue one cannot say
The geese should fly today.
But as Hermes doth say,
“Winter, come our way,”
So must we abide by nature’s law.
And here we are amidst the fray
Swirling leaves on an Autumn day,
And frost spreading it’s silver lining
Along the open grass
With little paw prints
Bustling here and there,
To prepare for Winter’s deep lair,
Shelter and warmth bites the air
Though Autumn’s wick doth get shorter.

Autumn's Wick by Ned Tobin

Ode to the Soil (day 1755)

Sweet dirt, my soil;
Great bounty of life.
Breathing and heaving and turning delight.
You break down my blossoms
And decompose your own waste
To help nurture all life
Balanced, and full of bugs and worms.
Your kindness is forgiving,
Your consistency is staggering,
Your patience is humbling,
Your vitality encouraging.
Even your air is enlivening –
Quite literally in fact.
And if until forever I had
Betwixt my fingernails and toes
Your rich presence to look at
Your heart in my hand,
I’d forever be full
Of everything I’d ever need
Until the day at last did come
For me to join thee, forever free.

image of dirt, grass, a section of spine bone, and dandilion

Extraordinary (day 1508)

The minds of others
Are so extraordinary
Nothing normal
About conscious thought.
And even if it were,
Even if extraordinary was ordinary,
Was so mundane it
Barely passed as thoughts,
An outlook would certainly
Be something other worldly,
Something I’d spin my head at,
Look twice
And repeatedly question…
Because fact is
It just wouldn’t be my mind,
It wouldn’t be consciousness
And that truly is
The remarkable condition
Of human nature mixed with existence.

Mother’s Heart (day 1385)

When winter swells have chased away
Fleeting moments of bright sunny days,
A gull shall float along the shore
Reminding her of nature’s cyclic core.

For in blasts of thy deepest torrents,
In rain and wind and sun and clouds,
In darkness and in dull fog thick,
There exists forever a chasing of
Heart to the next heart.

Where one began the next shall start,
Just as the last lingers on,
Even the strongest of hearts, aghast at last!
Behold, a tulip before the first of March!

She comes with her an army of life –
Carrying about to and fro,
That march with purpose through every strife,
Conquering even her very last blow.

Ned Tobin - Cariboo Hill Flower Basket

Delirium (day 1067)

I do not know where the rose petals fell;
Floating from my conscience as I lost sight of all.
Leaving an impression, like tail winds trickling
Into the evanescence of my breath.

But you who art sight! What cometh of thy history,
Lost into thy pool of still waters shaking.
I fell one warm, kind day – a moon’s length away,
Into the feelings of a warm blooded kiss.

My littered floorboards of mother natures spoil
Tickled my memory while I shook out my whiskers.
I laid there and laughed for the whiskey surged my sour,
And love settled down beside me, for I was delirious.

From this Ledge (day 1000)

From this ledge I looked out beyond,
I surveyed the stillness.
Waiting,
Expecting,
Un-avoiding brief glimpses
Of society’s marks;
Transport trucks rumbling
In and out of earshot.

From this ledge I held onto a hand,
I held on so tight to remind me
That in spite surmountable distances,
In spite out-of-control conveniences
I wasn’t alone here;
Alone in my thoughts.
This wasn’t my diary,
This was my acceptance refusal.

From this ledge I plotted.
I took every hemlock and spruce
Inside my heart and nurtured their spirit
To grow with me as I carved my initials
Into their supple skin, raw so real;
Nature entwined my soul and became me
And I became it.
And I lept from this ledge with eyes wide open.

StawamusChief-2011-06-04 (149 of 310)

The Sapling and I (day 919)

Windy meadows that long ago
Were stripped of all their life:
Elegant firs, long needled pine
And birch that peels around.

They’ve all been reaped
Into a heap;
Grinding and turning
Paving and spreading
Strip malls and sidewalks.

All in the name of progress.
In belief of and for
Settlers heading west.

But where was I at these round tables
Where was my voice of reason?
Was I asked for my steady thoughts
To protect our mother’s children?

For now I am to blame.
Here to suffer
To pull at breath and
Leave my anguish at the door;
Kick off my factory shoes,
Step into my factory warmth,
And yawn my factory toil.

I am not anymore the savior sun;
A strong branch upon a tree
Deep within the forest.

But I am a sapling reaching up
Into the sky above.
A sign of life, natures life:
An orb of sweet Gaia

2013.05.09 - Prince George Spring (63 of 100)