"The Many Hands that Move"

(A long form Haiku written in the High Sierra, 2014)

The witches have gone
Into the old twisted trees,
Waiting out the age.

The trolls are boulders,
No longer changed by moonlight,
Fully calcified.

All the Hidden Folk
(Gnomes, fairies, subtle spirits)
Have slipped out of sight.

Swept from the corners
Of our homes and wild places,
Lost or abandoned.

Or perhaps they work
Tirelessly and in toil
For our attention.

Our poor feeble eyes,
Hobbled by a mundane world,
See precious little.

The seductive screens
Benumb imagination,
The most human sense.

A dull instrument
Makes only dull measurements,
A poor way to judge.

Yet we trust the view
That life is only what is seen,
Perhaps even less.

Meanwhile magic waits
Patiently behind it all,
At the center too.

The unseens beings
Are numberless I don’t doubt,
Busy in all things.

Summoning the wind
To shake pollen from pine boughs,
Scattering life force.

Stoking tiny fires
In the hearth of every seed,
Quickening, bursting.

Grinding stones to dust,
Subsuming mountain ranges,
Belching up islands.

These are the duties
Of small gods and great ones,
The named and unnamed.

Who could hang a word
On the many hands that move
Through Creation.

"The Dharma I Yearn For"

The Dharma I yearn for
Is the child of pine branch and wind
Born from the marriage of the unseen and the seen
A quiet, ceaseless, ancient
Shushing of all our chatter
So vast, fierce and refined
That every poem
Every song and scripture
Is returned to dust
And yet I can rest tenderly
Below breeze and bough
And walk on
With a heart less burdened
By this frantic, fragile life

"Mångata"

The baby wakes us just before dawn. It is her natural right to do so, in accord with the ancient agreements between our animal bodies and the Earth... not to mention the agreement between parent and child. Gazing west, the Moon is setting slowly into the Pacific. Her long reflection stretching out across the water. My ancestors called that “the Moon’s road”, mångata.

Today is Samhain and my ancestors are close. So I say “thank you” to them, and offer them blessings of peace. A few I know by name, some I’ve met in visions, many are utterly anonymous. But they lived, and I live only because of their love, work, and resilience.

Great horned owls call from ridge to ridge, and the acorn woodpeckers cackle amongst themselves to start the day. Time for my morning ritual: strong black tea and a dance with my tiny daughter.

"A Poem for Poison Oak"

Ah, Poison Oak
Mighty keeper of the Present Mind
Your presence demands my own
Tending tirelessly to the boundaries of trail and awareness
Lest we stray too far off
In thoughts or footfalls
Wandering minds so quickly returned here
With the gentlest brush of a three-lobed leaf
Or the palpable “whap” of branch on cheek
Voicelessly you intone:
“WAKE UP!”

"ORIGINS/ursprung" – an essay from the “Unlit Trail” liner notes

The origins of “Unlit Trail” lie, partially, in my last record, “Cold Spring”. Recorded essentially in isolation on the high coastal mountains of Big Sur, California, “Cold Spring” is composed of over two hundred multi-tracked layers of tape, and utilizes dozens of instruments, processes and sounds. The album was the culmination of four years of recording and place-based practice – hunting for songs, cultivating intimacy with a patch of local earth, and sensing into the liminal aspects of that primordial landscape.

In preparation for a series of performances to support the release of “Cold Spring”, I set out to compose a solo multi- instrumental piece, which refers back to sonic elements from the album, and includes reworked songs. Through much deep listening and experimentation, “Unlit Trail” began to emerge with its own agency and numinous qualities.

The composition contains leafy bits of the spirit of Big Sur, but unlike “Cold Spring”, it is not rooted in any one place. To come into its own fullness, "Unlit Trail” must unfurl in ritual dialogue with the land upon which it is performed. At the best of times, I feel as though I slip slightly between worlds when performing “Unlit Trail”, and those oft-neglected, subtle beings of place join in to help shape song and ceremony.

At least one human being (myself) is always present when "Unlit Trail" is performed, but this is not just music for the strictly human. I welcome the swaying trees outside your window, the sleeping mice in the attic, the subterranean river surging deep below the city street, as well as your ancestors and mine, to gather close and listen in.

"JOURNEY/resa" – an essay from the “Unlit Trail” liner notes

In the Autumn of 2018, in the company of musician/ composer Chuck Johnson, I criss-crossed Europe performing “Unlit Trail”. After our final concert in Olso, Norway, Chuck boarded a plane to California, and I drove two hours south across the Swedish border to the home of my dear friends Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin. Mariam and Andreas were leaving on their own tour in the morning, so I spent the following three days alone in their woodland cabin.

Not far from the cabin, a well-trodden path thread through the hills to a cold, mysterious little lake – sitting between two ridges, tirelessly reflecting black treetops, luminous saplings, and blurry stones. I made a drawing of that wild place, which serves as the cover of this record. If you look closely, perhaps you will see unlit trails tightly sewn into the shoreline thickets, trails that can only be crawled upon and offer only darkness as a destination.

During the fleeting daylight hours of those three Fall days, I scrambled and scraped amongst boulders and birches, thin Scots pines and low-growing junipers. At dusk each evening, I set to work recording this album by candle and firelight, while my shadow drifted off to explore the trails hidden within the high, black lake.