Learning the Cost – Refusing to Pay

Going back to gaze-less nights but not you; you go back to a world lapping you up in licks.

I add a fried egg to leftover root vegetables. A pinch of shredded cheese. A side of chocolate. All of this is inadequate in love's presence. Please tell me know this.

Learning the cost.
Refusing to pay.

Sooted forearms, controlling the burn.

The Western mind formed in the Greek cosmos tells it one way, but what about the Near Eastern sophia perennis? What if there is an entirely “other” frame that allows kenosis and eros to transform in stages?

We've embraced what deceives us. Remember: not one, not two, but both one and two.

Image as the primordial template, where spirits become bodies and bodies become spiritualized.

Beloved, I have channeled the grandmothers. They sent messages which I have delivered. I am not the woman I was. Come find me and be at peace.

And do not forget to seek the integrative wisdom which flows in contrasts to opposites; to yes and no; to acceptance and rejection; to here and not here; to lover and loved.

Like Mary Magdalene, strip thyself of clothing and leave them folded neatly on the bank. Leave your accuser behind.

Cut the Net Already

We are opening the container of our own answers.

The difference between god and demon is our reaction. She rings her hand-bell and taps her drum as reminder that one can bring light to even the inner most dark. Reclaim. Heal. Be free.

We are not separate and we are not made. How the space connects. How the distance disappears. My body is a bridge as the world moves through you. You have my pulse.

I draw a heart in the condensation of the bathroom window as sun blares through the final prismatic beads of January. Days lengthen a little and I try to understand my relationship to the room. A bad mood settles into my pores like a fine silt. I can't give my body what it needs so cut the net already.

Chopin is not my lover. He is my father and that is why the world tilts in a minor key. We are innocent, my love – we are. Maybe if I could have just one more chance next to the river. Maybe if I leave the light on at night a little longer.

A Hook in My Mouth

For New Englanders it's all in the eyes, and maybe also in the tails of dragons. Give way to lineage and you'll only find recycled moonlight. Come, won't you? I'm just here pretending I'm alive. These heavy feet climb love's spiral staircase into a dishwater sky. Cannot we just say it plainly?

I think of boredom now all the time – a monster creeping behind wicker-rattan chairs and hanging loosely in the closet filled with black coats. I have more things to learn, yes? I can be there as early as Saturday. This ache in the emptying. That old Nihilism causing me to thrash about with a hook in my mouth.

Sitting cross-legged on the round braided rug. Old photographs of Kenya hook me like a half-moon. Mama Joan holding Joan, with Lexi's head leaning into her chest. The Rhodesian Ridgeback and her giant paws glaring at Colobus monkies high in the trees. Baba Tony stretching a smile for the camera, but also, that is just his smile. Tigoni's red dust. A chameleon wrapped around his wrist. Who calls me back? Who begs me to stay?

What if you begged?

Hungry but Clearer

Winter gardens asleep under a hungry but clearer Wolf moon. Pain loses its bitter quality when the body finds the bottom. Does my song reach moonlight's ears? Does my surrender glow like the blue snow in your midnight? In the night of my senses the answers are clear. Sunrise is always coming.

Sleds sleeping in snow banks and azalea leaves curled tighter than a cigarette. Arctic air sinks from the top of the world as wood-smoke tries to find a way higher. January makes a play and all I can do is kneel. I've never seen a winter lacking this many birds. This and other sorrows that have no choice but to be reconciled.

But there are still summer weddings in Vermont and rivers always running from their source. Garden plans and compost piles hedge the barefooted chill scuffling through the house. Things are so quiet now. Even my heart. Even these filmy nests which used to hold the intentions of us.

Blacker coffee and brown sugar oat meal, both steaming in a perfect dance. Has love sunk to the soul, beyond the senses, to find its mooring? I'm trying to offer peace, beloved. Show me what I want.

Wish You May, Wish You Might

I guess it is like white tailed deer drawn to cedar twigs in winter time or books that begin with a map.

Mystical love is an insanity that possesses, transforms and tortures the lover in agony. This is infinite desire. And this is the love that must be forsaken to taste Love at all. So sink lower. Further. Fall into vertigo. Empty the soul and then empty it a little more in order to unify with the divine abyss itself. Only then will the soul remember who she is.

Animal tracks become reservoirs in softening snow. Kneel to drink the sky.

There is a purification happening and it involves living without a “why.” Reason doesn't have a say, beloved, wish you may, wish you might. Such cunning attempts interfere with the ties that bind one to God's heart and mouth. Our lovesickness has a cure, though it is not for the feint of heart. Physical oneness is the call of the Trinity. Can you feel it?

What lies beyond the suffering is the salvation of the love our human heart can only begin to clamor for. A winter prayer in the voice of Mechthild: May I live with Mary Magdalene in the desert, finding all alien to me other than Beloved alone.

A silver squirrel sits atop a sawed-off stump using his tail as shield against winter wind; I, too, am cold.

Soft Red Portal to the Cosmos

January dawn lends its own kind of blue. Windows sigh with light as the world gets ready for the daily grind.

These silent moments spread like honey and a galactic exhale gives rise to the transmission living in my heart. What is within will save me and it will save you too, if you allow it.

They begged her to share the truth, but she was not believed. She wept over this vulnerability and sorrow. How long must the feminine power and wisdom be discounted despite having been touched by Love Itself? How long will our bodies be the only thing that is true? A red thread as a reminder that the message is true and worth has nothing to do with it.

Sparrows flit around shopping cart wheels and empty plastic bags wave from dirty snowbanks. We've forgotten how to be one. Human prophets are not heeded in their own lands but neither are the emissaries from outside the borders.

My godmother will not wear a mask in the car with me, so now we will no longer be able to discuss Mary Magdalene or the ways in which the Divine might have breasts and a soft, red portal to the cosmos.

Winter tea cups and icicles to stir.

Candles as spells or prayers or light-on-command.

Dad's vinyl records wait in three boxes next to the desk. The stories they tell want to be written. Are 131 chapters too many? And not one of them is Dylan.

Where Do We Live

I'm weird about my love for soup.

The love of elephants is different from the love of Chopin's mastery of the minor key which is different from the love of soup.

I let my nails grow longer, which is the same kind of anomaly as a dragon's cave or a small child's ability to compose concertos. I am surprised by the shift in attention caused by stilettos at the end of my fingers. Talking hands can say sexy things. The integration of body and mind is a tangible thing, but it is also confounding.

We talk and swim with the ease of a river but we can't live there. We must eventually climb onto the banks to dry in the heat of day or lay down full beneath a toss of stars to let night do all the talking. Turtles cling to logs and tuck themselves into soft, silty envelopes, opting for a hiatus from deep dives from time to time. Where do we live?

What is the human experience freely chosen and freely lived? I do not yet know this but the Matriarch will not let me sleep all night long until I understand both what I want and what I am missing.

I quietly read and write as he sleeps on the couch, despite January's blustery tantrum whistling just outside the wall of windows. Adrienne Rich tells me that no woman is free until all women are free. No matter how much further there is to go, it begins with me. I've not used my privilege to better understand the history of the Feminine Rising.

A silence drips and crystallizes in the sub-freezing air. Before warmer days can wrap themselves around these daggers, the hammer of interpretation will shatter these words and let them fall unto the white sea. Make this life count, for all of us.

And please pass the soup.

Bones, Bridges and Body

Who I am in another's eyes, changes. Who can gaze into such a sea and know anything anymore? The image is provided as awareness, once removed.

Not a goddess, not a witch.
Not selfish. Not distant.
Not the beginning. Not the end.

She said to me once, “the body doesn't lie.” And I thought, “have you ever been de-boned?”

Who doesn't read the words any longer knows half the story. What happens after Gretel kills the witch? Well, happily every after, of course! My tale is done, there runs a mouse, whosoever catches it, may make a big fur cap out it.

Do we not already know what lies between soul and spirit? Truth as a phoenix.

Jesus loved Mary Magdalene because she followed his example and became the love that he was. This human love made an unending bridge. Take my hands and it all become so very clear. Connecting in body is also connecting eternity.

Bound to One Direction

Her soft snores coo in spirals at my feet.

At 5 a.m. I build a fire against this winter storm and in the pulse of flames, the magic of breathing dances.

White falls on white into white with the only exception of color being the stalwart trunks of our great protectors; their green, piney lashes peaking out from long sleeves of snow.

my red pen
a mensuration
of love letters
this common blight
on the purity
of our call

Snow falls piece by piece, a little like ashes escaping an inferno, this time, bound to one direction. I can't leave and yet, I do not forget names of Vermont rivers or the undoing they require. They do call. They do ask. So then, who answers?

Glittering motes swirl, specs of diamond-light spilling from snow laden boughs. Magic would look like this if you could see it.

My father's records wait in the corner, some in a Boone's Farm cardboard box, labeled “Weather's” in red Sharpie marker. Some are in an old brown milk crate. And more are in a fancy woven basket. The cover art is my childhood and the music is some strange amalgamation of my parents' life before I existed and the early years of Jessie-the-lake-girl.

I don't need a bad guy and I don't need rescuing. I just need to know that I can end this world of glitter and guts in exchange for that which never ends.

snow/veils/glitter/falling/for good