OK, let’s go down the rabbit hole (a compilation)
- Feb 3, 2024
- 3 min read
If I had a secret code,
it would be one of eagles and roosters.
Of stars nesting in blackness.
The simmer of an arced flame and the slow drift of chords through a screen door.
It would be one of time spent with earth between toes.
You see,
there is a wild within.
I find her on dirt roads and highways unending.
Horseback in the desert,
high on the mountain and low atop the mesa.
She’s there in the barking of coyotes and the sway of a yucca.
When skin touches skin.
She flows through the canyons of my soul,
carving her way. Hiding in the brush.
Attacking without warning.
Face to face our eyes meet.
I grab her by the muzzle and breathe in.
Gasping.
Why do you deny yourself, he asked.
But when the full moon is obscured in the shadows of what’s right or wrong
one can only guess.
And so,
I let go.
I let go of those who bring the rain and hold tight to the sun instead.
I learn to love myself.
The hard parts which used to be soft.
The soft parts which used to be hard – there are so many now it seems.
The voice whispering behind closed doors
never spoken and only thought.
It hurts just the same, doesn’t it?
--
I am not a cowboy, I don't profess to be.
I am somewhere between horse girl and wanderer.
Between stainless steel and a rusty nail.
I live for the wind and sun,
for the crisp dry mornings.
Riding through false passes and dead ends.
Pistol tight in the small of my back, reins laced between callused fingers.
But always forward.
there is no rear-view mirror on a horse after all
We follow the road for a bit and then turn to cut back along the draw.
Chasing a game trail which never ends.
Weaving through creosote and mesquite
and there I let the horse find his way.
We push through the brush.
Through places where the earth has turned upwards and rocks stand on end.
I stop to let the horse graze and the dogs rest, watching the animals look back and forth until my own stomach growls and we move on past the draw and back to the road again.
--
I’ve been torn by this book we call life.
Lost in its pages and chapters.
The skin on my hands still cracked,
and the furrow between brows unchanged.
I press on it to stop the pain.
Looking in the mirror always seems harder than looking through a window
We’d be less than human if we weren’t blemished a bit,
imperfect in our perfection.
A constant cast of lovers and haters.
But sometimes looking away is not enough,
you must stay gone a while. You must stay silent.
Fighting the storm.
The wind surges and sea swells within.
And so, I go.
I just go.
I go where the air runs wild,
tangled with musk and pine and the faint memory of campfire.
Where the clouds lay like whispers in the palm of the sky.
If you’re quiet enough you can hear them.
--
The moon is early tonight,
and sits like a giant hole in the fading light.
Tempting and teasing as if you could just climb this ridge and walk through into
Narnia or some other equally fantastic place.
And in my mind I do.
And I send a message - that the eagle has flown,
That fuckin’ rooster finally crowed,
and a single star fell – one lonely flash of light across velvet.
But the music,
the music never stops
and it rekindles the flame.
It quiets the rooster.
It sets the eagle aflight again.
And those toes…
Well,
those toes will never be clean.
And nor should they.
The line “I let go of those who bring the rain and hold tight to the sun instead” gives the whole piece its emotional hinge. Everything before it feels like confrontation — the wild self, the animal face, the denied desire, the uncertainty of right and wrong — and everything after it begins to move toward release. Not easy release, but chosen release. That is why the ending works so well: the toes will never be clean, and they should not be. The poem does not end with purification; it ends with belonging to the earth. That is much more powerful. For people who love land-based writing, even practical planning tools can become part of the ritual: a square footage…
This piece made me think about how often the body knows the truth before the mind has language for it. Earth between toes, cracked hands, furrowed brow, skin touching skin, stomach growling — the body keeps interrupting the abstract parts of the poem and pulling everything back to lived experience. That is what makes the self-love section convincing. It is not a neat affirmation; it is a difficult act of accepting the “hard parts” and “soft parts” that have changed places over time. I found that very moving. In my own journaling practice, I sometimes pair reflective writing with small household rituals — converting recipes with a cups converter, checking a growth chart for family records, or using a Chinese calendar purely…
The structure of this compilation is fascinating because it moves in fragments, but the fragments know each other. The opening establishes a symbolic code, the horseback section gives the code a body, the mirror/window section gives it emotional consequence, and the final moon section gathers the symbols back into a kind of rough benediction. It does not explain itself too much, which is why it works. Some poems weaken when they try to translate their own mystery, but this one trusts the reader to feel the heat, dust, and ache. For analyzing writing patterns, I sometimes use a correlation tool to compare revision habits with output, and a mixed number tool when dividing long projects into manageable sections. A density calculator is useful…
The sound in this piece is underrated. Everyone will notice the visual imagery — moon, mesa, flame, dirt roads — but the soundscape is just as important: roosters crowing, coyotes barking, chords drifting through a screen door, music that never stops. Those sounds create a second trail beneath the visible one. The poem feels like it is being heard as much as seen. I also appreciate the way profanity appears only once near the end — “That fuckin’ rooster finally crowed” — because it breaks the spell in exactly the right way, not by ruining the beauty but by making it human. When I work on audio-adjacent writing, I sometimes use an aspect ratio tool for pairing text with video visuals…
The contrast between “stainless steel and a rusty nail” stayed with me because it says so much about identity in only a few words. There is toughness here, but it is not clean toughness. It is weathered, scarred, bent, useful, and maybe a little dangerous. The poem understands that healing is not always soft; sometimes it looks like staying gone, staying silent, fighting the storm, and choosing the sun over the rain-bringers. The section about looking in the mirror being harder than looking through a window is painfully accurate. It speaks to anyone who has found it easier to analyze the world than to face themselves. For personal reflection, I sometimes use a body type tool not as judgment but as…