It was only yesterday that I discovered a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope, and I had to put that in a poem. So I started thinking about all the beautiful, strange, and poetic names we give to gatherings of animals—murders, parliaments, flamboyances—and how each one carries a kind of quiet unity. This poem is what came out of that wondering, and maybe a little loneliness too.  The Ones Who Gather A kaleidoscope of butterflies, turning air into stained glass, wings brushing wings in a hush of color— they move as one, a prayer held aloft by sunlight. A murder of crows circles the edge of dusk, black-threaded thoughts sewn into the hem of sky. Even in omen, they arrive together. A parliament of owls sits in the cathedral of trees, silent but listening, wisdom not as one voice but many held in counsel. A pod of dolphins— spindrift and shimmer, laughing through salt and wave, mapping the world with echoes answered. A mischief of rats in the alley’s forgotten script, bol...

 As I embrace the life of a hermit, a recluse, and a writer , I find myself engaging more deeply with the world through ideas , not presence. These ideas don’t always arrive fully formed—they come in fragments, in twilight hours, in dreams I half-remember. You’ll find them in my books, my quiet thoughts, and sometimes, in poems like this one. Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/sunset-across-seat-301494/ Worlds Between Worlds I’ve lived my life, Many lives, In the twilight. Not that space Between day and night, When the sun escapes Over the horizon, And the moon shuffles To its nightly observation post— But the space between my eyelids, Blocking out the day, Preparing to transition me from one world to the next— From the world of the living, To the world of the subconscious. The twilight is the world that exists Between those. It is that world In which I have so many lives. A rancher, a recluse, A holy man, a hermit, A lover, a fighter, A man of power, a man of me...