Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:43:44 -0700WeeblySat, 14 Feb 2026 03:12:47 GMThttp://www.climbingsun.com/blog/resume-building​résumé building
 
have ye yet to be run through by a slick sword
know this: absorbing sudden shock makes
for a great résumé builder
 
consider dropping a fly ball in right field
with the game on the line just to smack down
your imagined skill   your identity   your self-worth
 
can you check this box: you’ve fallen so completely
out-of-your body in love with another   when the rug is pulled out
you spin so hysterically inside yourself you hear your soul start to tear
 
the whole point is to collect as many intense escapades
as your off-beat being can assimilate—only then are you allowed sprinkles
of hot joy to build an undying blaze on the perimeter of your psyche
 
so   never fear to stand before a crowd of thousands
using that unique instance to play   sing    recite   until
the marrow you’ve been gifted sloshes from overwhelm
 
always let yourself down in gentle collapse
not like the one i noticed when you launched on a whim
from that mesmerizing precipice knowing
 
profound freedom for several eternal seconds
until your freakish impact so impressed the judges
they sent you straightaway to my grooming substation
 
let’s get to work   stand here on the sand
don’t move   take ten very   deep   breaths   yes
that watery mountain speeding toward you   is   a tidal wave]]>Sat, 14 Feb 2026 01:55:59 GMThttp://www.climbingsun.com/blog/february-13th-2026Fri, 09 May 2025 12:57:00 GMThttp://www.climbingsun.com/blog/moon-party-song​California Coastal Dwellers have made an art form from the rising of the full moon. They say it started when, as one harvest moon rose, a hard-of-hearing farmer sat under his arbor with its grapes about to burst. His friends hauled in their music, started a blaze from scrap wood, staked out some turf, strummed like monkeys on steel wires or picked out melodies with tortoise-shell shards. Others blew into mouth organs or through hollowed-out branches. One beat on wood blocks with sticks and another fiddled on catgut strings.
 
Some opened their throats like bawling songbirds and swished around the rim drunk on motion, while others urged their hands onto the stretched skins of dead cattle. Dogs on the periphery howled in four-part harmony.
 
All leapt internally because leaping was the reason for breathing, All were trapped
since being trapped was a prerequisite to this rhythmic bliss. Those in the center wept, knowing that never might they hear such ingenious, elusive music—until the next full birthing of the moon.
 
No one asked where the song came from, knowing only the moon-burst sky would keep playing them too flawlessly for anyone to decode any stray notes. Except the shocked farmer who, after warm rivers of wax ran out of both his ears, heard every complex note begin with a low dissonance, instantly becoming as full and perfectly ripe as the grapes directly above his head.
                                                                    
]]>Thu, 25 Jul 2024 17:59:32 GMThttp://www.climbingsun.com/blog/afterlife-of-trees
I
after I tore off my roof on purpose
i built a stairway from the liberated rafters
milled out of the last giant cedars from the everglades

now they are treads
walked on tenderly until that distant day
they will be cremated to make electricity

small puffs of their windblown remains
will be inhaled by other generations
whose own liberated atoms will nourish the ground
perhaps enlivening future trees

II
in japan doctors prescribe forest bathing
to build bonds with the trunks and limbs
leaves and canopy in fair trade for undying wellness--
which the soul will keep enfolded well after time ends

color therapists join the fun
unravelling custom stress-relief shades
be they lime-khaki-jade-clover-kelly-olive-
emerald-mint-shamrock-fern-moss or sage
enough choices to make a self-contained green rainbow

III
before your judgy mind can stop you
become a planetary citizen
admit that you’ve fallen in fondness with a sabal palm

confess that you’ve hugged that ageless oak
into which your younger self carved a heart

divulge that you cried when your prized cypress fell over
in that storm punctuated by thunder and dizzying wind

​knowing these moments eternally burn in your inner campfire
you—like trees—can translate sunlight into cool shade
rain attraction climate composure
and beyond even to your own forever-enriched behavior
in which these gifts shall live on
in human in earthly and especially in star-field
consciousness

This poem first appeared in Poetry in the Park: Nature of Place, an Anthology, 2024]]>Fri, 20 Oct 2023 19:57:09 GMThttp://www.climbingsun.com/blog/ocean-poem​from decades of looking into
this magnificent creation
i have come to see the ocean
as something of a big brother
who pushes me
into more joy than is mortally fair
which makes me wonder
what he sees
when he looks into me?
​
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