Category Archives: Essays

day 307

Autumn Fading in the Foothills…a Call to Let Go
~ kat 2025

the trees know
.
the
true tyranny
of
this season requires
letting go as the nights grow colder,
darker,
a call to surrender
to weather winter
purified,
stripped of vanity

~kat

How easy it is to lose one’s soul to smugness. A few clean sweep victories for the blue team and it takes every ounce of decorum I can muster to keep myself from gloating. From wanting to poke those I know of maga persuasion to remind them that they are on the wrong side of history on this. Fortunately, it is a battle played out only in my monkey brain. I’ve lived long enough to know how fragile opinions and long held beliefs can be. Misguided though they may be, there is nothing I can say to sway the status quo. So I just let it go, remember to be kind and practice silence in mixed company. It’s not a hill I am willing to die on.

But that does mean I don’t care, or that I don’t do everything I can to right the destructive direction we’re on. Democracy still matters. It’s worth protecting and fighting for. So I voted. With millions of others, and this time we won. It’s a small glimmer of hope. The encouragement I needed to keep going. Gloating doesn’t serve anyone. But edging us a wee bit closer to the perfect union we aspire to where all people are free, cared for, and treated with respect and compassion. I know. It’s a lofty goal. But at least for today democracy showed signs of life, and we the people found our voice.

I know it’s not over. We have a long way to go before we eradicate the hate and greed that has overtaken so many. By letting go of my need to be right, by being kind, I just may spread a little light. That is my hope for us all. To hang on until dawn after this dark long night of the soul of our nation.

much love, peace, and glimmers of hope to you!

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


day 306

Do you need time?

Do you need time?

I need time
to heal
to feel full
and whole
to embrace
what is real
and true
and good
to stop
apologizing
for being different
a black sheep
for being me
because
I am enough
not too much
just right
and it’s taken
a lifetime to see
no one gets to choose
what I need
who I am
how I live
but me

~kat

I am recovering my friends, from surgery. The cancer that interrupted my busy life is now disposed of as bio waste. I don’t miss it of course even if it took a bit of flesh with it. I feel grateful for the ease with which a good doctor was able to remove it. But today I am tired. My body is telling me take time to rest. You’ve been overdoing life for long enough…rest. Sleep. You’ve earned. You deserve it. You have always deserved time for you…just you. And so I pass along this bit of wisdom to you. Take time to rest, to recharge, to heal whatever it is that needs healing in your life. You deserve it. Just because.

Much love, peace, and healing glimmers to you. Yes you.

~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


day 302

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

open minds

never stop learning
we don’t know what we don’t know
fools insist they do

~kat

I attended a social event recently. The table conversation was quite enlightening and disturbing. (I didn’t say much…just listened). People declared such outrageous things with such confidence and assurance of validity of their truth! It was shocking. Their remarks were right out of a certain propaganda playbook. I used to think that intelligent people surely saw right through the lies and what’s happening in our country and the world. But I was mistaken in that assumption. My wife corrected me when we spoke about it after I got back home.

“Educated does not always mean intelligent,” she remarked. Wow! That perfectly explained it. There’s a reason I limit my time in public and prefer the company of deer, squirrels, crows, and trees.

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you!

~kat

Today’s glimmer is the view out my window as I work. I love autumn! 🍂🍁✨💚✨🍁


day 300

the circus

the elephant is sitting
in the middle of the room
having left its corner though
no one seemed to notice…
an elephant is no small thing
but we were distracted
by flying monkeys and rats,
so many rats, termites gnawing
through the walls, ants and roaches
reducing the foundation to dust
it was the elephant
in the middle of the room…
an elephant is no small thing,
perched on a pedestal,
a blue ball balanced
vicariously on his snout
that held our attention
as the walls came tumbling down

~kat

I need a glimmer. When this happens I head to the hills…(out my back door) and dear Mother Nature draws me in. She’s fading these days into gold, orange and crimson, as if to say, kat, what you really need is a good long nap. I’m not entirely convinced that is a good idea with winter’s blight closing in. But she shushes me with a lullaby as soft as new fallen snow, and whispers as I drift to sleep…spring is coming.

and just like that…in my dreams the circus disappeared, as circuses do, leaving only sawdust in its wake…

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you. ~kat ✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨


day 299

Describe a family member.

in the aftermath…where heroes emerge 

she is
I refuse to dwell
on who she was…
strong, full of life,
because she is
all of that still
though muted by adversity
the injustice of incompetence
of a system that values profit
over people, bottom lines
over excellence
a system that moves on from oops
to oh well…good luck…next…
there’s nothing more
we can do for you

these days, she lives with
unbearable, relentless pain
these days, she still manages
to smile, to give, to care,
I have thought, and even
said out loud on occasion,
I don’t know how she does it
but that’s not true, I know…
because she is…
strong, full of life,
and that is all you or me,
or anyone needs to know

~kat

My wife has CRPS brought on by an act of medical neglect…incompetence, that has changed our life and plans forever. They call CRPS the suicide disease. For a reason.

Over the past several years as we have made our way through the stages of grief for what we thought was our plan for the future, to settling in to what I had called the new normal. Silly me. There is nothing normal about living with a debilitating disease that brought everything that we thought we knew to a full stop. It has taken a while for us to realize that while everything changed around us, we didn’t. In fact, we grew stronger.

These days, I’ve stopped looking back, determined to make each moment count. Like everyone we have bad days and good. These days the good days taste even sweeter, and glimmer even brighter…because…life.-

Much love, peace, and glimmers to you!

~kat

✨✨✨💚💚💚✨✨✨

My Glimmer…