Tag: Psychology
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Ushesh. The Recollections of a Megafauna Bear. Part 3: “Eshemu”
My mother’s name was Eshemu. She was a very rare ice bear, her fur adapted to the blue glaciers in our northern country. From a distance, my mother could give the illusion that she was the shadow of a cloud moving over the ice; when standing close to her, her blue gray fur softened the…
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Ushesh. The Recollections of a Megafauna Bear. Part 2: “The Goddess of the Moon”
There is no one, human or animal, who can pretend to divine the true nature of myth and reality during their lifetime upon Earth. The old stories resonate so strongly in our souls and captivate our hearts so completely that we want to believe they are literally true—that the gods and magical creatures really do,…
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Pomegranates
Pomegranate seedsHades’ trickeryPersephone’s fallEight months aboveWith Mom DemeterFour months below with HadesTricked and trippedBy unconscious forcesWe struggle to rise above
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The Archeology of Memory
Several times near the end of her long life my grandmother mentioned a time when she was very young and her new immigrant father took her out in a little boat on a New York City beach. Gramma didn’t give a lot of detail, but this was obviously a precious moment that encapsulated a feeling…
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Perfect Trust
I was pondering the sad, awful state of America one day when I suddenly remembered an amazing encounter with a pair of Bald Eagles in Alaska. These birds mate for life, and ritually renew their devotion by grabbing each other’s talons in mid-air and tumbling head over head down before releasing and soaring back upward.…
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Green Nostalgia, My Grandmother’s Kitchen
Like the lone albatrossCircling the unconscious seaI float over the memoriesSurveying the childhoodI once inhabitedFrom every perspectiveI’ve studied my grandmother’s kitchenBut it is the view from aboveThe seabird’s scrutinyThat my mind’s eye always favorsThe narrow back staircasePeeling wallpaper, threadbare carpetAge and decayYet fragrant with ancient spicesMysterious witch hazelThe old radiators, clanking and hissingWith the same…
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Resurrection of a Dream
A lost fragment of a dreamFloats into viewLate in the dayBelieved extinctIn the morningThe image is somehow rekindledOrdinary life recedesAttention rivetedThe image is allThe mystery is realInterior, transcendentThe cosmos in a dream NASA Webb Telescope image
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Good and Evil, Nature Psyche #18
Who woulda thunk America coulda sunk To idiocy and hatred Divorce from facts An echo chamber of lies Corrosion of truth Unconscious darkness Projected onto others Unconfronted ignorance Will this evil fade softly As an awakening From a bad dream? Wood block painting by Kawase Hasui, 1933 Nascent flowers Tendrils of democracy Seeds that cannot…
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Neurodivergent Haiku
It’s hard to imagine a more unabashed or showy flower than the California Poppy. And they’re tough—well adapted to long, dry summers. Once in a great while, however, a plant puts out a cream colored variant. As soon as I saw this flower it struck me as a perfect expression of what it so often…
Haumanu Speaks/PoetiCalli 