What is the name
for these lights
that sparkle and shimmer so
off the surface of the Sea
when Father Sun blesses Her
in just such a way?

What is the name
of these 100,000 little suns
dancing across the breast of their Mother
so enchantingly?

I watch these 100,000 children
of dancing, sparkling, shimmering light
and become enchanted
forgetting time altogether
and falling,
falling deeply in love
with the Sun and Sea
all over again.

These are the sparkling, shimmering, dancing children of divine light
sent to remind me to forget
so that I can remember all over again
that this planet is constructed of love
and that we all swim, dance and walk in this beauty
and that it is OK
to just stop
and breath it all in.

And weep into the sand
of Old Man House Beach in gratitude
for having been brought all this way
to be right here, in this perfect moment
hauled out and drying off in the Sun
like a contented seal
after an exhilarating and lovely swim
in this Sea; whose 100,000 dancing children of light
have caught my eye
and reeled me in
like a big old fish;
to be splayed open
and feasted upon.

Let my love and passion be as much a feast
for Father Suns 100,000 dancing, sparkling children
as theirs is for me.

But while I sat
suspended in timelessness
something happened!
Because I see
that the tide has not stood still with me
but has again come in,
covered the shells
and pushed Bainbridge Island back into her previous position
way over there, where she rightfully belongs!

And if the 100,000 dancing, sparkling, shimmering, children of light
some how manage to hook me
and splay me open in timelessness once more
the tide will go out, right before my eyes
and I may not notice.
And I could become the enchanted old woman
of Old Man House Beach:
who came one day and remembered to forget
so that she could remember
all over again
that it’s OK
to just stop
and breath it all in.

Cathie Jo aka Shar Shk Buk
Sept. 10th. 2015
Old Man House Beach, Suquamish, WA

I feel you there

scratching at my heart

as if, it were your very own

personal birch tree or
maple
as the case may be.

And that, if you open

my heart
just, so…

my nectar, which is The nectar
of the Gods:
the very sap of my being,

just. might. issue. forth.

And you could drink of my essence

and I could feed, this love
which feeds me.

Cathie Jo aka Shar Shk Buk X
August, 9th. 2015
Suquamish, WA

It is a beautiful gift to wake and find oneself in the woods; among pines so tall that there is no one patch of full, unmuted sunshine to feel the sharpness of Father Sun’s rays. To sit on the porch and listen to the mingling of sounds: the birds various songs; the intermittent sound of traffic over and down the hill; the sad confused cries of a small child trying to grasp the world and somehow make sense of it all; all of this punctuated by the high piercing scream of a saw cutting through what surely once lived here giving shade.
I am in a mood. My heart, oozing down the steps is trying to catch it’s breath, lying there on the porch near the little sleeping dog, who is in a sense that very heart; walking and dancing and laughing on four legs. Very old now she sleeps hour after hour, slipping ever so slowly away.
It is the space between the trees that has my divided and shifting attention. It goes at first unnoticed. One tends to focus on things: on bark and limb of tree; a shingled roof collecting pine needles; the deciduous trees, pale and bright, among the pines; the Great Cedar whose truth is even more profound. They are the true elders in a sea of wisdom flowing over these hills; crests and troughs, waves who never break but slip silently into desert or diminish into mountain peak. The Cedar: their bark; holy flesh to our humanity. Their robes of wisdom they wish to open to us in gentle embrace. They have called me here to rest and breath in this sacred space between their kind. God is the sunlight filtering through the leaves and needles to the floor below. Every time I focus on the trees God slips by, unseen, right before my eyes. The Jays are Gods way of distracting me from the pure divinity I seek, lest I vanish into the woods and forsake all.
Don’t let the bark of the Mighty Cedar, thick and long, fool you, they are light and porous and think of us as beloved. Even in our insanity we are beloved to God and the trees.
Just as the tears that my heart cries are more healing than those that fall from my unseeing eyes, are the rain drops that fall not just once from the sky but kiss and roll gently from the Cedar’s delicate hand and bless with an added measure of grace.
I feel the heat now, filtering down from above, it does not reach the floor of pine needles but releases new scents of every kind and they are moving through the space, which is God. All of the forest scents mingle, released by the Sun’s heat and shifted by the currents moving gently through this sea of green.
I breathe in this holy sea like a natural born mermaid and look up to the surface which is the blue sky above. This sea of green in which I sometimes float and otherwise rest upon it’s floor is for now home. My heart breaks for all of the people who live in cities and slums and prisons and do not breathe in this holy green vibrant divine air. Just now a deer realizes she has some how inadvertently walked up upon a person sitting silently in her path, as she turns and walks delicately away, I send this blessing out into the world to all of those who live in cities and slums and prisons and have no way of experiencing this at this time. I unwrap the cloak of the Ancient Cedar and cast it wide like a net over the world, blessing everyone equally.

Shar Shk Buk X
Sunday June 7th. 2015
Pollock Pines, California