Foliage Hidden

For they do sing in suggestive breeze,

still discreet in foliage

their lives depend on a travel,

readying swift reply to the wind.


Watch out your windows such

is preparation of a Creator,

grace upon our planted wilderness.

An imagined love in autumn


Sweater in hand time for a walk

In the quiet air of an arid migration.

© Thom Amundsen 2019

Autumn Sunrise

Picture silent beauty of the fallen

cascades over night in morning’s fresh dew

Would we lives would suspend among such few

swept in a seasonal breeze unspoken


While lives do merit certain ambience

having understood time in element

sweet farewell of arid temperament

with knowledge shelter a vortex of chance


In morning humanity know each day

means a spiritual guide wills a solace

swift is the timing of fortunate Grace

will soon a blossoming might lead our way


Demands seek urgency’s mortality

Cycle of life bestow such is beauty

Inner Peace

When stars align

a meditation

spiritual sojourn

When means love

is universal

beyond you and me.

The tempest of our lives

a barometer

choice and circumstance.

Inside our heart

know love,

a soul might reappear.

Sunsets are conveyers of whom

A pale, autumn moon, our tomb.

Thom Amundsen 2019

Sunday Night Moon


If I could, how my body winds


inside a cavernous


I might truly admit to feeling


rather wish to imagine my life a



A Sunday night and here I go,

winding down

like the moisture in a culvert

draining toward

a bitter end,

and yet in a moment,

I glanced outside.


A moon, in its spectacular

Autumn rise,

A Hunter’s Moon,

to light the forest

so precious

is the moment

when the human condition,

might find life beyond

our own.


I watch the moon,


the world around us

we are all glancing in the same


hoping to find our eyes

have similar ideals,

sweet remains

our favorite


A Question of Authenticity

All my life,

a struggle has ensued,

when papering my walls with legal pad writings,

one after another after hours, after years,

until years later,

the wallpaper came down,

storage boxes collecting dust and shadows.


Someone said once,

who do you see,

what might you feel,

in a glance in the mirror

when the moment before,

you felt a single tear.

I wonder if we ever realize

when that day is near.


I glanced at the moon tonight,

it was profound in its full bounty,

the Hunter’s moon it is known,

to light our forests,

cause our hearts to gasp.

I wonder about this august,

seems to follow me,

on nights when

minds might



bay at the night sky,

feel a gasp in the wonder of



I wonder about the moon and a clear night sky.

Ground Breaking Rules

When in childhood,

I once stood in the forest,

friends having descended the trail,

a night of surreal

exploration of the wood,

a morning fire,

a quiet reckoning.


Having forgotten a knife,

knowing it to be on a rock,

the rings of stone,

suddenly erupted

while coming upon,

the late night stories.


There is a blessing,

in the revisit,

perhaps a spiritual


a sense of

realizing Nature

needs such attention,

as my barely covered

feet stamped out

a reality of tragedy.


The reception of my friends,

a fatigue of waiting,

I recalled the story,

their laughter infectious,


if we had all been part of

an innocent scheme

to wipe out wood,

kept the lives of

eyes that met our silence

in the quiet of night.


We all do face our demons

in vivid flames of abandon.

© Thom Amundsen 2019

My Issue With Vaping

Recently, I presented a collaboration with colleagues on the dangers of vaping. Alongside we also explored rhetoric in advertising. An examples was a fifties picture of a pack of Viceroy cigarettes, with a dentist promoting the idea of using filters to protect our teeth and body. The premise was meant to identify safety in ingesting tobacco. We live in that time again of false representation, or we might easily acknowledge the practice has never gone away.

I remember as a child, or young teen, cigarette ads were banned from television commercials because somewhere along the line, someone with influence managed to convince the producers this method a dangerous precedent, especially given the impact on teenagers.

I was a heavy smoker from my late teens until around 15 years ago. There have been many gifts to my life that have occurred because of my decision to stop smoking. I can breathe again, without rasp, without a chronic cough, without the fear of blackening my lungs. I had a medical procedure nearly a decade ago. I had quit smoking a few years before hand, and so during the testing I feared they would find spots on my lungs. I was fortunate to live with the resiliency of our body’s capacity to recover their full health. Certainly not always the case. No spots, no memory of years of cigarette smoking.

So what does all of this have to do with vaping in today’s society? In my own personal life I feel fortunate to have quit smoking years before the trend began. Had I been a smoker I would have been one of the first to buy a vape device. I’m a trend junkie, and it would have been the right transition because it might have seemed and looked rather cool. I feel fortunate as I read the increasing evidence of its damaging impact on society, people, our teens.

I write about this today, because I came across a picture of this young woman laying in a hospital bed with tubes, diagnostics and oxygen at her nearby. The commentary to follow the photo is sad, supportive, hopeful and at times cruel. The idea of a person in a hospital clinging to their lives as being weak is reprehensible. The very nature of what we do not know about vaping and its unknown ingestion of chemicals just in simple terms scares the hell out of me.

So, two things pop into my mind about this picture. One, my immediate compassion for this young woman’s welfare. The very fact that even if the picture is photo-shopped or exaggerated, the truth is there are people in her position in hospitals across the country experiencing her condition as we speak. The evidence exists. This cannot be considered weak, it needs to be understood as dangerous and fact.

The other piece even more frightening is the practice of using pot, or THC to be hidden inside the wonder of a Juul. People laugh about it – they can walk anywhere and hit their Juul without being detected. The reality their body is impacted matters far more than a hidden treasure in the midst of a public audience.

So today, as I watch this phenomena in its still early stages, not even peaking with intrigue, I think of the young people whom are so easily drawn to the dangers of vaping. We know lung cancer is what it is, rather than directly connected with smoking or not. Imagine what will become common knowledge or memory for the lives of so many people caught up in the seemingly safe and potentially life threatening rave that is vaping.

Yes, as much damage as cigarettes did and do over the long term, vaping in any regard frightens me to no end. Those that have lost their livelihood, their health due to such an unidentified habit, my heart goes out to all and I only pray for their strength to overcome the medical consequence that may lay ahead of them.

We just don’t know.

© Thom Amundsen 2019