Birds Tell the Truth

Dawn charms its way past curtains and pillows. The truth is I've been awake long before now. Expanse blooms in this time alone. Gratefulness builds.

At the edge of the woods, fallen timber molders. A bare birch tree bends a little towards the east as blackness falls apart.

I remember asking priest hands to pray for me. Magic comes from what you believe. That summer a boy did not have my permission, so I guess magic can only protect you so long.

Pools of mulberry and mauve gather at the base of pines. The far off hum of morning traffic begins to rise. The train and I sigh as the world wakes hungry.

Back through the neighborhood, the skeleton of a hydrangea bloom skips across softening snowbanks. This and other scattered remains of summer surface for a brief time – perhaps as a sign of hope?

Chickadees and cardinals make the walk home enchanting. Sure, there are times when I can feel your fingers count the vertebrae down my back. But in this moment, the only moment that is real, birds tell the truth.

Over tea maybe we would discuss walking along the sea. Or how the purple moon blushes across snowbanks at night. Poverty presents in different ways. Tell me about the last time you let yourself go.

In the greenhouse, I carry a thousand baskets into the lean-to. This and other ways the body takes on the shape of work. Sweat-soaked shirt and dirt collecting around the ankles. This place has no magic – only the sweet agony of everything growing towards home.

Little Cups of Distance

Between waking at 2:00, 3:15 and finally 4:00 a.m., I dreamt about an owl. The image lingered long enough for me to search: what do owls mean in dreams? Sometimes a secret; sometimes death. There is a sense that I am wiser for having received the message.

Michigan weather continues to live up to its reputation for being unsettled and chaotic. Freeze – thaw – freeze; bones and roads lead you back to repair. For repair? When neighbors bring down the old oak, its landing shakes all the windows and floorboards. This tree is gone but you wait on the greening of others because such a faith has been earned. Warm passage of breath and blood is coming. The fall of our mouths into the earth's deepening tilt. The drift of our gaze into detonated stars. Sunlight browsing for freckles. It's okay to ache for summer. Let your heat swaddle the bare trees and bring February's frozen lakes to a boil. How else would we intercept this lack of light?!

Lately, veggie roll sushi. Sticky rice sits full in the mouth replacing an acute hunger. Turmeric for the inflammation. Meds for the pain and fatigue.

East-West highways painted blue on the wrist. Heaven waits on a kind of touch – the trace of a finger – eyelashes against the cheek – lips skimming. In the little cups of distance, snow fills to the brim. We women are the dangerous ones. When self aware, we will devour you whole. Is it enough to die happy?

Fated Flame

In this order: wake, feed the dog, make coffee, build a fire, sit.

The last first kiss curls and billows as I jostle the fated flame into climbing. Today's build required a little extra attention of which I was happy to give. Tending fire has become an extension of love. Ministering to its needs is to attend its chaos; yet I serve in great peace and joy. Beloved, I am here. Where else would I be?

When the sun arrives, it never goes unnoticed. Light dazzles off snowy shoulders, casting diamonds everywhere. A hint of mist lifts off the pine tree trunk as the sun warms its back. On the way to Mt. Pleasant yesterday a cardinal was just sitting on the side of the two-lane highway like a red sock in a snow bank, inadvertently left behind. My heart said, “ be careful, beautiful one!” Beckett turned up our favorite song to sing together on road trips. How full a moment can be. How heavenly. How death could come and it would all be a beautiful deliquesce.

We continue to fill the greenhouse – day by day – plant by plant. Friday was planting Night Sky petunias in pots on the conveyor belt, then carrying trays of six pots each from the belt to their growing place on the greenhouse floor. My body aches after 8 hours but also, I am set free in the pain and goodness of it all. Plant, carry, repeat. It's warm in there and I sweat. The dirt from the filler is super fine and very light; it sticks to my skin and coats the inside of my ears, nose and lungs. I cough at night because of the dirt and I'm awake because of the sore body. I see your 2:15 a.m. and raise you 4:10.

On the way to work, I saw the moon for the first time in months. Like spotting the cardinal on the side of the road, I was like, “oh, hey!” and it caused me to remember all things you said about the moon and its strange locations. Anyway, maybe the metaphysics don't really matter as much as they once did. However, there are things you cannot say, things you know that you know that you know. The last first kiss hangs in the morning sky, thin at times, full and bright at others. But it is there, making molehills out of mountains, writing this love letter and the next.

Lavendar is Involved

The horizon at dawn is singed with color I cannot name, but lavender is definitely involved. In these silent hours you look forward to the words that are being nourished deep under ground. And you also wait on the absence of words which gives a transcendence from the sunken.

In the psychological mode of love, that which is beyond form is made conscious, and I recognize it in the other. Yes, a certain resonance at all levels is present, but there is more. A deeper level grows in awareness. And, in the retreat . . . in the distance . . . in the gap we've pried open together – the end enacted does not destroy what is now awake.

Desire without need. When romantic feelings arrive, they are beautiful and welcome. Tell me everything about the apple freshly fallen from the tree sitting on your windowsill and how it might gleam in western light. Tell me about how if left there over time, it begins to soften and wrinkle and release its blushing perfume. The image ages; what is unlocked in its beauty does not.

One day I woke up knowing that I am complete. The ashes of burned maps are finally cool to the touch. God . . . it's all true, Beloved: yes, no, not yet, maybe.

Picking at Scabs

Untouchable politicians.

In 2007, my family was living in a country where a sitting president manipulated election results to remain in power. Without the ability to be heard by the government, the opposition party and supporters began to protest. Peaceful protests fell on deaf ears as the sitting president swore himself back into office on national television. In addition to nonviolent protests, the opposition party went on a violent killing spree, mowing down supporters of the president. In retaliation, police shot and killed hundreds of protesters on live TV. Because the president and his party were of one tribe and the opposition and his party were of another, killing escalated into targeted ethnic cleansing along both tribal lines.

As an expatriate living there, this wasn't our war. But on our compound, we housed friends from both tribes. When the government blacked out all media, we woke the next morning to shouting and gunfire at the gate of our compound. A posse of armed people were going gate to gate demanding that residents turn over any members of the “wrong” tribe. All of the sudden we were housing dozens of people who would be killed if they left our property.

We were trapped in our house. There was no gasoline for vehicles or airtime for cell phones. We had to stay away from the windows in our home to avoid stray bullets. Tear gas and pepper spray hung in the air. We couldn't leave even if we wanted to and despite our families' desperate pleas to return to the States, we didn't want to leave; there were people to take care of and feed and house and keep safe.

Within days, stories of husbands killing wives from the opposite tribe began to spread. Friends killed friends. Thousands of people began migrating toward their tribal homelands in order to be surrounded by those who would not kill them. In our area, literally under the dark cover of night, 5,000 people arrived at the police station ½ km from our house. The police station was no bigger than a 7-11 convenience store. In the highlands where we lived, nights were damp and cold. It rained a lot and getting around was not easy. At the police station, women were giving birth in freezing temperatures with no shelter, no food or water, no medical assistance. The sick got sicker and the children cried until heartbreak and fear became the new normal.

Our family mobilized to help. It was impossible to remain in lock down when there was a bottomless canyon of basic needs outside our door. We gathered all the rice we could find on the compound and spent a day cooking in huge pots. Another neighbor had access to a water truck and filled it from rainwater cisterns at various houses. We arrived at the IDP camp/police station and nothing could prepare us for what we saw – thousands of hungry, cold, injured and terrified people. There was no bathroom or water or shelter. Some sat on belongings that were wrapped up in sheets as luggage. Some cradled babies on their chests and backs, patting and hushing and whispering calming songs. Some were wailing for all they had lost and for all they might lose at any moment.

It is not easy to imagine what humanity smells like at this level or how the heart breaks under this pressure or what it sounds like to lose everything overnight. I cannot even begin to scratch at it here and I believe I will spend a lifetime continuing to dig at the scab I've been trying to ignore since those days. To write is to remember the machetes and the bodies of children bleeding in the streets; it is to conjure the smell of smoke in the air after thirty souls were locked in the church and burned alive; it is to hear the faint sounds of screaming off in the distance as the four of us cried together in one bed all night, every night for weeks.

There are a hundred stories to write about this time, but I struggle even to write one. Yet as I watch what is happening to the United States right now, I cannot feel anything other than deep despair and fear. I've seen what can happen when power is left unchecked. I have watched families turn on each other and witnessed a nation hack itself to death. To think and say that it cannot happen here is a symptom of a nation fast asleep at the wheel.

We have untouchable politicians at the wheel. Whether they are of your “tribe” or not, I promise: you will rue the day you fell asleep.

Repeat

The sun dangles slightly right of the backyard pine. In some sort of winter aberration, the temperature is not warm but it's not freezing, either. I step onto the back deck barefooted and short sleeved. Immediately steam rises from my coffee mug and the ends of my red-gold hair glow in my peripheral vision. My shoulders and chest curl inward at the sudden chill; it's much colder than it looks. The dog catches the scent of a large opossum crawling along the back fence line. The opossum has the chance to escape through a missing plank in the fence into the neighbor's yard, so I let the dog run after it. All she can do is bark; she fires off six yelps in a row and then looks back at me. Repeat. Repeat.

On my day off: roasted root vegetables, pot roast and swearing off coffee, again. Yesterday's shift at the greenhouse tested mind, soul and body. MAGA-mongers and halftime haters made conversations difficult. The last two hours of the day were excruciating on my body. The work isn't the problem; the disease is. Let's see how it goes. Let's build stamina. Let's decide later if it's possible. The body makes its own plea: Advil, icing, arnica, stretching, Epsom bath, roller massage, turmeric tea, CBD cream. Repeat. Repeat.

Clouds gather and pile like day-old ash. West Michigan falls back into her normal, tucking sunlight away for another day. With cold coffee and aching hips I think about it. This. And how all ideas can be affirmed and all ideas can be negated. We live in a world of relativities and cannot assert any thing or idea beyond a conclusion of subjectivity. Yet one keeps on trying to imagine this way or that. We ask questions that have projected answers and we fold and refold maps that only show estimations of where one could possibly be. Why do we allow our minds to hunt for that which life does not offer? One travels in these coils. Repeat. Repeat.

Moonlight and starlight remain at a distance. I miss how stars would fill the lake on a summer night; how I could swim to the moon in warm, black water; how crickets' perfect lullabies would even float out to the sedated raft. Longing for the beautiful things does not mean I don't remember how frightening those same times could be – imagining huge dead trees and stacked boulders under the water, giant muskies lurking in the seaweed forests, and the inability to see any thing or any one. But in the deepest, darkest February nights, the memory of water is a comfort. Checking for stars, swimming in sleeplessness, remembering you. Repeat. Repeat.

daylight opossum –
a lumbering gray
hesitates

Feathered Magicians

A warm spell allows a patchwork of green islands to appear here and there in the front yard. Juncos by the dozen dart around a cardinal couple picking through latent grass. I haven't seen the male cardinal all winter, despite having heard his chirp through the kitchen window. I'm not sure if it's the same couple that nests in the rhododendron just off the front porch, but it is always ever only cardinals. It's been weeks without sun but a least these feathered magicians invite February with an abundance of good will.

The greenhouse work starts Monday. Thusly this week is spent preparing good meals and reading and writing just a bit. Soon there will only be aching muscles and errands on off days and rest when possible. I look forward to growing things and not being so damn cold. Spring mimes her intentions beneath frozen earth but at least winter will no longer free fall through the months.

Sleep walking through snow drifts. Lately, 4 a.m. bellows and chimes. Springtime is typically when that hour cuts away the sleep. Why now? Why not now? I read cookbooks in the middle of the night or listen to podcasts or pace on tip toes. At this hour the dog no longer leaps up to guide me through the house. My measured steps are old news. Did you know I planted forget-me-nots along the creek last year? Blue may be the closest we get. Thus sayeth the Lord.

Before the house wakes I feed the dog; make a fire; coffee; breakfast. I settle into snow falling around distant train sighs and writing. What if some day some one made breakfast or coffee or a fire for me? A certain distance compounds while another abates. The men in my life are complicated which doesn't say anything about them. While typing I see soot on my knuckles and feel the grace of my work. So I guess I am the fire builder and the breakfast cook and the coffee maker. Maybe that's what getting older is for – knowing what you can do for others.