Horse Blankets and Reins

A willowy bend of arm and a heron's hand of grace brushes the loose curl from her cheek. This woman knows the steps in front of me. We listen for the beginning in each other's voice, and yet, we hover around permission to sink. How carefully the threads are chosen; how immediately woven. The feminine Now finds me in her story. So goes the benevolence of our meeting. Remember my first Twenty Sentences? Surely you cringed. Yet daily I wrote, finding streams and birdsong and eternity undone. You would have argued infinite worth and I kept muttering, “but how?”

hawks gazing at the strong and withered alike

The teacher becomes dandelion seed – wishes turned to life renewed in the next. Sentence. No more old letters to love. No more last kisses to claim. Now wins.

So the pastures open, to new teachers with old horse blankets. Or old teachers with new reins. Either way, we've met. And now I know how close it all is.

Flip the Script

My body fails who I think I am. Her red hair shimmers over saluki-slim shoulders and in the moonlight, her gown dips into the edges of a soft sea. In the daylight though, she is swaddled in gossamer, exhaling prayer and peace. She rescues the barren on their knees, retching forth the pain of existence. Her voice drifts in the dynamic stillness with clarity and knowing: end your seeking and suffer no more.

But there are none to save really. And no freckle-faced, world traveler, writer wannabes. There are only stories underway, parts acting out scenes. Location-less plays arise from a puppet master that never really existed. When it all collapses, I am not the star. And my leading man is simply ink, drying on the script.

It is all okay, though. Compassion abounds because nothing ever stays the same. My character blooms and fades with the illuminated east and departed west. And she is beginning to see the comedy inherent in the entire show. LOL!

Jester, take a bow. Luna, turn your spotlight stage left. Winter, blow your tragedy to studio B. Jessica has had a costume change and is poised to bring down the whole goddamn house.

More simply now. A black squirrel shakes his tail at the dog and a lady oriole drinks from the brook, peeking just beyond a lily sprawl.

The wind makes a leafier sound.

And I was hoping to see my roses bloom before leaving, whose four buds ache with opening, yet do not.

But nature has it all under control.

There are times when I walk with the entire blackness of the universe between steps. Seeing with the eyes is confusing against the velvety curtain. So I try not to notice the speckle trimmed butterfly. Or the rattling of woodpeckers on oaken oars. Or the pinecones you keep leaving for me piled at the foot of the porch.

The day's motion gives a choice: step in or refrain. Though I'm asked to dance, there is a contentment in cupping the periphery. But I'm thinking about LSD lately and how it might help treat depression and I'm sure I would find the willingness to join the dancing then. That's what they say, anyway.

June brings in her gifts and there is so much light now that there may even be extra. Every day a decision arrives to shake winter from my curving back.

A limp betrays and summer smiles still remember skin too cold to touch

I'm walking home now anyway, and the trees are bending in my favor. One takes the gifts offered and does her best to reflect the presence as is.

Traveling Light

Pruning around the cardinal's nestall yesterdays fade into place.

Moments lack boundaries as the continuous slips.

All of these words to say the consummate hello.

My purple suitcase is carrying folded expectations and carefully sewn destinations. Goodbyes are hellos in the same way that the clear, crisp moon is a window in the concrete night sky. Or something like that.

Ten thousand miles west for trails and mountains fjords and lakes.

Footing minded. Poetry lived.

I'll see the sunrise before you, and send its benevolence towards your dawn. And as the night writes proverbs in my eyes, I'll carry on a bent sleep ahead of your weary mind.

Glacier and gorge. Rainforest and reef. Our touch will recognize them all.

No matter how the body travels, one must renew the mind away from moments until the seamless continuance nullifies our farewell. Still everyday I am departing from the desire to wonder. Wander?

The passport to peace says our village is the whole world and evil is the slave to good. I'll carry that edict in my purple suitcase until the obsession with borders and maps is shredded by “yes.”

Okay?

My Sleeping Side

Dawn diffusing.

Sheets ripple in white drifts over legs and thighs and my sleeping side. These days one can rest in that which follows night, light after dark. Even a blackened marathon produces a glittering reward for endurance.

I stir because I am reminded

Lately, a soundless voice is better. Yet I still open a reading that isn't given, like the sparrow tapping at my kitchen window. Stop watching. Waiting? Silly girl, no pleasure is innocent.

The yellow archangel tremble with bees and the quickening of spring's desire towards completion. Orioles fall to the ground, locked in a mating dance; I stir my coffee and blush a little. Do I even mention the frogs? We are living and dying all in the same breath, respiring towards a truth that grows up through chapel floorboards and cracked sidewalks and tumor-ridden organs. But I don't want to know any of this.

Rather, I want to float on fuzzy seeds to become fodder for nests or next century's field of wildflowers or tomorrow's nectar for the delicate grace that always returns to live. To live. To live.

Spring can remind one to forget, if the slant of light is just right. That is all the waking I need.

Prattle to Pieces

I.

Too much rain.

The seed has lifted on muddy foam, giving way to swirling eddies that tamper with the proper ratio of loosened soil to grounded fertility.

Watching it all flow towards disappearance, one wonders if the silence is ever total. There are still whispers in the pine's feathery heaven. There are yet footsteps rustling leaves and pressing down the pebbles of a shared path.

II.

A hawk is preening in the landscaped creek.

He remains free to be the truth. Weren't we all of the same flesh once? Now we squabble about pilgrims versus wanderers, despite the knowledge that I Am/ where the trail/ is not. The words are washing away too, my traveling friend.

III.

Amongst storms, I childishly await the mild.

Summer will arrive while we are away, trekking in a foreign winter. This new lash and chill will be oblivious to our near death escape of its northern sibling. Is any other proof needed in regards to the futility of waiting on anything but the present? Even winter's thin light must suffice for the impoverished.

IV.

The light of thought, like stars, is not really there.

Our eyes shine in twinkling brilliance as if the guidance leads us anywhere. Yet I cannot call you darling because you are not really there. Your long-ago-light picked my head up for a midnight kiss, when beholding was the entire point. How tiring the wretched existence of the mind!

Sipping Higher Air

On the morning walk, a rain burst had its say before we were ready. Cold and uncomfortable became acceptable; that's how acquiescence works. I tell myself all kinds of things on walks like this. Everything is acceptable. Everything belongs. We tap it out to a pileated beat. The writing doesn't have much to say these days, choosing instead to stay tight within buds or buried deep in root. Spring's busy and renewed unfurling matches a poet's yearning to give, yet all that can be heard is the dissonant squawking of her silent juxtaposition. Perhaps it is enough to unbundle the cold weight of winter, giving gratitude its full way in every step. My god, I am so thankful.

warm air and cherry blossoms - love's nomination of me for queen

My essence knows how to follow the lark these days. Sipping the higher air changes the view. But there is always a home to which one must return. A nest made of shredded maps awaits on the cooling forgiveness each departing day. Tucked in and settled, trees cradle the obvious secret I pretend to hear: rest and be done.

Hot tea waiting, my wet clothing hangs over the side of the bathtub. A day begins with Michigan water. And a song I cannot unhear. And a gift I can hardly bear.

I yield.

Beneath the Great Pine

Beneath the great pine, a pulling and tearing at what doesn't belong begs the work. Vines already threaten to choke, even before the tulips bloom. Still on my knees, the mail carrier addresses his friendly voice with unfriendly salutations: no mail today. A postcard should be here. They said so. Waiting to hear means a gnawing inquisition of who I am beyond body. I have new shoes for the trip and am breaking them in every day. Flights, fjords, whales, and the observatory on Mount John – all calling. All waiting. I have things to do, Mr. Mailman. My life in a backpack. My kids, my husband, all shoulder-to-shoulder with me. The what-if game creeps and tangles into the holy place. One begins to question the remnants on the altar. Incense you say? A half a dozen crows say otherwise.

Dirt falls from my hair into the drain; a long day is its own reward. We share a path for a time, hoping for the confirmation that we are so much more than this. At least, that is one way of looking at it. The sun sets on my work beneath the great pine and perhaps, that is all there really is.

Yellow Arrives

I've thought too long and too hard about the ineffable. I've mismanaged the unobtainable. The dog and I walk without the befriended ache, without waiting lifetimes for the sun to pass out of tree shadows. We escort the escaping night back to its doorstep and kiss it sweetly on the cheek because suddenly there are tasks and directions and responsibilities marching in on dawn.

yellow arrives on pine and petal freckles and floor

Night spreads in the spirit like ice building to a walkable thickness. Its dull distance covering everything but what lies overhead. It is not until that lift of light and fissure of day that spills its molten awareness unto every portion of life that one can hear her voice

apart yet a part

Like a miracle or magic, April looks nothing like March. Rebirth and regeneration gains speed so much so that one can hear the daffodils stretching. Today, I heard the daffodils stretching and I knew that you could too.

Traversing spring means mud flakes and waking acorns and fewer paper pigeons carrying the thoughts that will not hibernate. The goose guards the nest and the blackbirds go hard as to not waste any moments on their summer vacation. It is time to arrive. It is time to leave autumn's decay to the worms. It is time to lose hours in the light's whimsy and shadow play, forgetting winter's dayless insistence.

the dog and I the husband and I the kids and I

They who moor my drift of being know not the winter they thaw.

Towards the Nightingale

When morning arrives on birdsong, the day takes on a chipper hue. One can consider human imposition on nature when making such statements. Then again, why bother? There is something in the rising sound of “yes” in a spring melody that floods the present. That is it. As poetry arrives on budded branches and in the flashing of chatty brooks, it is easy to see how one's life is bound up in transient images. Personal feelings culled from the impersonal; we turn in this dance between noticing too much or not enough. In the end, or near the end, it all touches something so very mortal. Or, immortal? Philomela weaves her robe so that all in need of mending can be tended. Her restoration of voice comes through art and, ultimately, on the songbird's rise.

Winter now hangs weakened towards inevitability. I know the feeling. The fence will need repair and fresh paint this year, though I doubt the daisies will mind the wear. It has taken a few seasons in futility to see that the gardens and the yard never arrive at completion; they simply require the benevolence of tending. My season of outward care begins in the clearing away of winter's corpse. We bury the dead and life goes on regardless of what we think we know.

Sappho's nightingale prophet of spring – thank you as is and always

The Way is birthed open-handed and in the spring and summer, it is effortless. The lesson of my winter has always been a clenched fist fighting the cold roar, and until they are equal, I am listening to the birded chorus in rescued relief.

To Make You Near

The grinding of thought – a formula of observation followed by some sort of gravitational need to anchor it into place. The slant of the sun suggests spring, yet the air cuts my eyes and tucks my cheeks into coat collars. So what? Spring is a process. My mind plays games with it all: every piece of matter does its thing regardless of thought. Can't I? Attention to change now is like breathing. The creek swells. The robin arrives to sit on the wires. Our Christmas tree is now mountainous in the fleeting snow. But I can't observe without an unintentional emptiness – an ache of longing that resists root and barrow.

Today's mottled ice is tomorrow's potting soil. I can't get over the coils originating from my glance. How impermanent it all is. A walk is just a walk and birds are just birds and I take care of whomever is near. Now, to make you all near . . .

For a long time I have been bending words to reveal that I am impoverished – a beggar in love with the intangible you. The truth remains unhurried and unmoored by such effort, asking only when I might take a chance on the nothing of everlasting bread.

As spring takes hold, we put away the boots so precious to our comfort and survival. For what need will we have during the shoeless jubilee of summer?

Inking Life

Finally, life is life. Undreamt vignettes find impersonal rest. It's the realized jargon that refuses to be relegated to peace. Moments of slanted light threaten to end it all – a perfect shattering. In the warmth that requires a witness, there is you. Always you.

There's a refusal to claim the love-note tucked in the pocket of the secondhand shirt I bought awhile back. I unbutton it just the same, revealing stars on the shoulders that deny maps and the lonely inksters who hideaway to draw them. Yet the note exists and so do we.

In winter's night, the house frame crackles and snaps. A pretend reason for staying awake might have something to do with destiny or some other mythological foray into what is not. A more transparent genesis is a what-if fear of one's own naked behavior. Bare trees scraping the black sky creak out hollow advice: swallow the silence pill. It seems to be best for everyone.

The moon-drifter heads back to bed; there is nothing beyond the dreams teasing in the dark. There is nothing in the space between ache and satisfaction. There is nothing more than life's unfolding with or without you.

Twenty sentences remain too many, yet a presence left for tending. How grateful I am for any who help with the gardening of every season that must nourish and destroy. In the end that has no beginning, life is life – a growth I no longer need to fear.

Filling Teacups While I Wait

Dormancy fulfills existence aided by what must be so. Yet, I'm to make nothing of the slow build – the crescendoing sun, the mounting gush below the ice. Have you ever noticed that it is impossible for snowflakes to miss the beat? Winter's coat hangs next to April's umbrella and the purgatory makes no comment. This is beside the point. This is all just beside the point. Lately, words evolve in an infinite combination for everybody else, but all I can do is wait. I wait In recognition. I wait in wonder. I wait in a sort of implied monasticism that won't be un-muted. Other poets soothe and scream while I hold up the wall with my back. A new rhythm is not unhappiness, though. So the guru speaks.

In sleep, hints of the sea. My best translation is a picture in the sand, washed away by the watery score. Pillow barricades. Untraceable sun. These days are only days.

And so what if I cry? Never being alone means that my tears collect in teacups at the ever crowded banquet table - seating for all.

Best Take it Down

Don't arrange the flowers in some grandiose display. They are a pile of death. One or two will do, a reminder of the beauty that we see for but a moment. What is lovely cannot be seen with outside eyes and it is past time (always past time) to correct. I hear Baba Tony laughing his morning greeting to me, “Mama Leksi, you have left your laundry to sleep with the moon again.” A certain laziness, sure. But also a hypnotic billowing and sway of a thinning veil, filtering the sun's rise on top of the world. Yet such delight comes with a price. A storm or uncouth Colobus or perching swallow or candied fingers could undo all the work – a delay of back breaking proportions. Best take it down. Sooner rather than later.

In the past, when nearing a spiritual chord of understanding, dissonance intensifies. Though the winter-scape keeps adding blankets of sleep, a restless banging of tin cans and broken wind chimes hinders the recognition of melody.

I am a slow and cautious traveler. And I am also the path. Yet I grow fat with inertia. “Mama Leksi, you are eating too well. Perhaps, reduce.”

Okay, world of my own world: I relent.

Now let there be peace . . .

But For Love

Over-worn pajamas and an unmade bed; I'm so tired now. Winter helps to discard what I am not. At least there is some sort of tangible purge towards something lighter. Or maybe I'm just the nothing I pretended to be. Either way, all kinds of identity is now falling with the snow. The day's terrain rises and falls in forms that I'm learning to surf – a loose, wet texture that never seems to behave as expected. If one manages a mindless seeing, observations can pass through. Winter can lose its teeth. Names can begin to empty into the ineffable. Even Jessica.

One witnesses snowflakes building upon each other all day in dull duty – that is, until the light arrives. With a crack in the gray ceiling, the sky's yolky genesis opens another dimension of brilliance too elusive for capture by word or brushstroke or shutter. Somehow this primordial freedom is always there, in the heartbeat of life.

Gray to glorious.

Pining to paid.

Bitter to benevolent.

Watching the birds at play just out of reach, I am reminded to forget all I ever thought I knew. But for Love. That shall remain.

A Wintered Annointing

Some times one can see the months coming, exchanging old outfits for the new. January to February stays dedicated to winter's cloak without a hint of anything different. These weeks stretch beyond countable days and I find myself imagining the still distant cries of red-winged blackbirds. Feeling phantom rays of the closer sun does not, however, lead to t-shirts and bare feet. I still shiver my request for heat and light. To love me is build fires today, even though tomorrow's wood dwindles. Woodsmoke on the downdraft is to winter like hamburgers on the grill in the late setting sun are of summer. The truly grateful appreciate the context before them; Yet I think on garden cilantro and fireflies and night-swimming while the tomb of winter lies still. There is work to be done here. How I long for happily, happily.

Light and life must not quarrel. Behavior must match belief. Bridge metaphors catch my breath because as usual, my interior life does not just belong to me. We must arrive at the other side because the unbearable pull of the safer shore is splicing the wholeness I am beginning to remember.

He is busy today yet pokes at the fire to wish me warm and draw me closer. Love does not triangulate; we do. Instead, love bends all of life's tensions into a circular oneness - never losing sight of what always was.

I am so loved. Yet I am also bending, curving towards the very nature that saves us all.  The delay is excruciating and so one must ask, again: how?  How does one surrender unto that which refuses understanding? I pour these questions at your feet, offering my hair to dry our tears.  For I know you have always cried with me.

Yet A Slave

Some kind of mental dust collects and settles over whatever clarity I've tried to maintain. Another dark dawn leads to an unalloyed gray. As a prayer for more light, I clean the living room windows with slow and measured intention. One can't keep waiting for the sun; the memory of its pleasure only brings pain. Teacher tells me to want what I have and care not for what I don't. It seems I am yet a slave to more than one master.

what flows between

banks of pleasure and pain -

love's clear expression of

I AM

Lately twenty sentences seem too many, especially when stumbling clear of confusion. Who doesn't read reveals an abeyance I am unable to reconcile. The compass spins. My heart protests. What remains unformed swirls around my spiraled heart cage like the melted wax of holy candles. I watch the flame drown in the pool of its own making and despite the effort to keep quietly alert to the real nature of Self, it is very hard to breath these days. Peace is a promise that must be kept.

At the window again, I watch the softer cardinal share the rhododendron with gray juncos. The jay bullies his presence onto the scene, scattering the trance and reminding me of the day's calling. Birds seem to reveal a presence of the undivided heart, singing songs void of restless meanderings and renouncing all that disturbs what is. I need them longer than I expected. Perhaps I am not ready for home.

letting go

yet frozen fog clings to branches

early declarations

Zen and Vodka

The cardinal climbs heavy pine branches, not quite settling in one place for more than a moment or two. I hear her higher song and listen for her mate. A white world covers the notes of what was once alive cauterizing the spaciousness of my heart. Snow hangs in sheets over the pergola, unable to stir in dawn's movement. My god, how I long to trust the simplicity of love! On hands and knees washing floorboards I hear the Bible-study ladies' admonishments rising with every filthy wring: Do everything as if unto the Lord. Pretend you are cleaning for Jesus! I asked them what it was like making love to God; maybe that had something to do with their reluctance to commission us to Africa. In the end, I scrubbed floors for Jesus in Kenya, her red dirt turning my water to blood.

More days than not now, life is sterile. Everything righteously put in order. Yet what tends towards chaos creates a perception of lack. Still. I am eating from the plate of everything I ordered.

Studying the zen voices brings relief. Though in the same way vodka abates, the tenor of their smooth answers allow a temporary distraction, followed closely by the surround-sound of my heartbeat ripping itself from the comfortable cage.

So it seems that one must surrender to the idea that winter remains choice-less.

So it seems that this theology on the rocks is deemed sufficient.

So it seems that my designated meal is satisfactory without dessert.

What a liar love has made.