Trespassing Over Death

I remember swimming over the boulders at the bottom of the lake, their outlines made clear by the sun's unrelenting ferocity. A certain terror pushed my heart and limbs to flail. Though entombed twenty feet below, surely I was trespassing over my own death. If I can't see what is at the bottom, what is there to fear? My front crawl stroke needs work.

Lately when I sit to write, there is nothing. Reading makes more sense and so a return to tea leaves and open-mouthed scripture.

In the distance afforded, the journey from home to home makes a lot more sense now.

Unconditional love, what we are, without choice, walking in the meadow, free, abundant and clear-eyed. The texture of the moment complicates nothing.

Tonight is autumn-cold. And to know October is to know thyself, so in this way it is strange to catch her smiling in July.

The shiver under my blankets reminds that expectation instills suffering. Plans may serve the flow of life better if drawn as rough sketches, lending to the radical openness of what has never left.

Suddenly, the dog shifts; mice play Plinko in the wall behind my headboard; the leaky tub faucet keeps the cadence of insanity; and in a few heavy blinks, all of it yields to impermanence.

Only awareness reifies.

If allowed, this buoyancy keeps one at the surface, floating face up into the boundless salvation of peace.

Free from sunken boulders.
Free from black trees long dead at the bottom of the lake.
Free from the fifty pound tiger muskie waiting to nibble on deliciously tempting legs.

The Final Lee

Now for the truth.

Does the almost kiss bring peace?
Do words of longing ascend the spirit from which they are loaned?
And do not the emotions of good intentions limit the amount of light visible from our own front door?

Today's dawn tangled me whole in light-soaked sheets.

Before drowning, I swam to Sunday's lighthouse and threw myself upon her rocks.

And finally – the final lee – joy and peace.

The paths are cut off.

Our hand-drawn maps rendered useless.

And so I kicked dirt kicked over the embers before heading towards the river.

Where else would home be?

–

I spent the whole day in the room of windows, stretching into the fascia of solitude, sifting decisions. A recalibration was birthed from a bohemian beauty that words refused to scratch, despite the effort of ravenous claws. What tender bravery and courage rising to claim I AM!

Shadows and clouds came and went. West off the lakeshore; east to the sea. But at every moment, I remained.

Love in the reflection of the river.

I see myself now, bending over the water in gratitude for what has been encompassed on the way – a retried pilgrim safe in the cloister she never left.

This is the truth, brothers and sisters: we are all done here.

Almost Naked Poets

My ankle gives way to the steep riverbank and I am reminded that the body sometimes must practice a surrender to distance. It's time to change my shoes because the journey's end is unseeable; a preparedness may be in order. There are trails I know by heart and there are those that lose me. Either way, one must walk. That is the gist of what these mid-summer days say in their sea-green hearts of shimmering haze.

In the shed at the bottom of the black pail, a dead mouse. The absence of life is a lapse in memory. Or so one says who cannot remember being born or anything that comes after the nowness of tiny burials. Are we really as blind as we think? The lesser light of dawn and twilight pierces my chest and pulls it towards that embrace we cannot call up with mere grammar or paragraphs or jots. Of course I am babbling with the current!

It is worth considering that the more she reads, the more she must hang in the wind like a kaleidoscope kite, lifted by the accord of breezes. Perhaps it is better to think on the flight of birds or butterflies which weigh the given lift, yet move with intention in the direction they must go. For now, the scribbles of almost naked poets carry on into the full, wet air of summer's work.

On the day of rest, I watched three minks hopscotch the rubble near the shore. Play and hunt. Work and live. They know nothing of preachers or church. Yet they make holy the everyday manifestation of what each is made to do. Everything else is just a different sentence saying the same sacrilegious thing: love remains.

Always Digging the Well

In the untended no man's land between neighbors I cleared some breathing room by weeding and tearing vines. Today, there are red lilies in a place that I hadn't seen them in the six years of working this lot. She uses the leaf blower at 9 a.m. to clear out the firework debris, and I am still in bed after a long night of soothing the terrified dog. In some moments, the collective idea alludes me. But then again, that's what ideas do.

He said that true words always come true and it made me wonder how many of my words are true. So much is unasked for and yet, arrives.

One called me beautiful in such way that all untruth fell away for a few moments. That is the only time I ever believed. Perhaps that is why I am here, writing thousands of words until the true ones ring with the brave reminder of who you said I am.

The light is the thing, no? Everything else undulates towards an appearance or a vanishing. A bridge to cross over. A mirror with which to see a reflection of truth.

Only when the one who saw me in truth dies will I be able to live on without the wonderment of it all. Until then, I will always be digging the well. . . enjoying the work, taking breaks, following the beck and call towards water.

The lake yesterday morning seemed infinite in stillness and it broke my heart. I knew that the fisherman would come first, then the early morning skiers, and lastly the recreational boaters who like to go fast and party and play music loud enough for the entire bay to hear. They are all part of this, but am I responsible for their violence?

No one and every one; our existence makes the ripples we long to quell.

Beholden to Purple

Finally, the daisies. I take no offense that my favorites wait until I leave to bloom. Returning leads to an unexpected delight and in that way, one ponders how expectation and joy manage a garden.

And also, the milkweed flowers. No management required and yet, one is beholden to purple.

My father moves around the family like a wasp, dropping in and out with edgy intention. Easily startled, he makes a lot of noise when afraid. We sing “Happy Birthday” and eat apple pie before he moves on to gassing the boat, washing the car, and other tasks unrelated birthdays.

The family bundles are frayed and with all these reminders of death as of late, I remain alerted to the practice of seeing present moments as my own private islands in an endless ocean. At least, that is what I tell myself before arriving. On the way home, I count red-winged blackbirds and follow the hawks up into columns of summer sky.

In the car K. nudges for my hand and asks what I am thinking. I'm replaying the walk in the pine forest, remembering how the wind whispers with sharp clarity when all the trees are the same. So I say: oh, nothing. And I'm not lying. Because on one hand, it is everything. And on the other, it is the insatiable and sedating black hole of no thing, devouring whatever the mind tries to claim.

And even now the shadows of the backyard pine trees rock back and forth across my face as if fanning a drowsy Cleopatra. She's a part of me, you know . . . entertaining the asp, and all.

For now, I cut no flowers on this snake-less island, sweating in the pine-scented heat of a lover who is closer than touch.

An Intercourse With The Day

My fingers follow the curves of a carved flower. Blooming away from the center, two concentric circles birth the ten church-window petals, pointing in every direction I want to go. Its mandalic pulse moves through my fingertips in a way that recalls an ancient priesthood, saturated with incense and prayer. A man with tame eyes and a wild beard sold it to me at the flea market this spring and it sits on a side table in the room of windows. When sun sets through it I am lost in adoration. Or maybe I am found. Either way, such hypnosis leads to an intercourse with the day.

So many rabbits this year! I see the small ones daily now, displaying a loss of the usual timidness one expects from those that hear it all. There is that heartbreak too when they are dead in the road; it makes sense in the number's game, but still.

Despite a restless day of walking from room to room in a search of sorts, peace falls with the lesser light. The back room cradles what is left of the West and I happily sit in the swaying lullaby. Newly, this is my favorite time of the day. The drowsy hushed-tones soften my bones.

I've reconsidered this arrival a thousand times. Beloved, what exactly is lost by embracing the spill?

An overflow of now seems uncontainable in rise. How nearly we almost see it all – the mountain peak breaking the mist, the reflection of sunrise in a waking lake, the paper moon hanging on to the last bit of indigo that cannot bear to say goodbye . . .

Well, it's one way of looking at it. And by “it” I mean the ever present blossoming of that which cannot die.   

Yet Eye to Eye

I wake up to it, like depression or allergies, fully realizing that the cureless can only be managed with hard work. It's easy to tell when I let down my guard; words drip with a glazed sweetness, the aftertaste of innuendo. Walk it out. Meditate for peace. Read and write less. For the expression that comes close to uncovering the truth will release a holy fire not fitting for families with pets, or gardens in need of tending.

The butterfly moves in a cursive flow stopping here and there to finish the sentence. What is not to love in such exotic grace, such weightless delight? Our bodies are so heavy. Yet one can't help but lean toward the lighter spirit of our borderless endings. That's how we met, you know. Barely tethered through text, a springing into an infinite version of self. To be that alive. . .

I still flinch a little when my arm is brushed. I have this breathable boundary, erecting and crumbling without architect or design. A very external event marinated and seasoned internally. I've had Husserl and Merleau-Ponty for tea, and I can't make any sense of it.

That lilting breeze from the South asks if I would change it all if I could.  Smile to smile, there are no more answers. Yet eye to eye, there is no question of what I would do.  

That I May Breathe

A buoyancy today, which is unexpected after so little sleep. Two opossum growled and hissed throughout the night under the back deck; an everyday creature making an unknown compilation of sounds. Were the sounds themselves terrifying without context or did I automatically paint a picture of hideous creatures, mouths open in battle, waiting to tear each other apart, v-shaped bite by bite? I don't know. And at 3:20 a.m., it doesn't really matter.

Afterwards, another tornado dream. Why is there always someone who will not listen to my pleas to take cover? I wake later than usual, sweating and quite sure that the molecules of childhood trauma never quite slough off and die. Somehow I go about the morning as if nothing ever happened. Isn't it kind of like that? Some part always remains, no matter what it looks like on the outside.

I walked ahead of a cauldron of clouds, surprised by the cooler start. The woodpecker seemed to mirror my long exhales and I was happy for the company. The day asks of me, yet I resist. A creamy love-seat in the room of windows wants me to sit all day to read greater works. To write better letters. To listen to life and death and the inky myrrh before and after them both.

the sentences still soothe
lifting my face above the water
that I may breathe -
the writing of me  

Alive as Love

Insects I don't know rise and fall in the forest spotlights. Everywhere green, because of the sun. I realized yesterday anew how the sun is a devouring energy, giving only as a by-product of existence. My heart swells and chest rises with it, yet Sol takes, too. How comfortable it would all be if one could convalesce in the give and take!

Last night in the dark behind my eyes, points of light vibrated with color and direction as if calling Whoever is me left the body and traveled into another open darkness. We embraced as Soul and spread out like hungry amoebas. Alive as Love.

The only way now is presence. One drops boundaries and sees that in many ways there were never really any there.

Barefoot all weekend, watching the flashing of water. The lighthouse stood at the end of the pier, a red arrow against the meandering blues of water and sky. I've thought about this extension before, the request for safe harbor and the words as gulls hovering, floating, diving around it. This, the backdrop of my origin. The sand and shore and trees and dunes . . . they all bend in an arc facing west, still reaching north, sheltering east. Can you see through the density? I am no longer in danger of running aground.

Are we not lighthouse and keeper? Sea and sky? Piney breezes on the upper bluffs?

Reconsidering Windchimes

Saturday yawns as I think of today's unbearable blue.

At Lake Michigan, I saw the pines up on the hill. Too far away to save me from the perfect sky, they waved. But maybe that is exactly how one is saved from so far beyond the reach of rootedness. If I'm honest, the only real lesson for today is that I wither without the shade. And it isn't pretty.

Sunburned lips and freckled reflections recalling the way a body feels below the surface. I didn't swim because I didn't take off my clothes and I didn't take off my clothes because I don't know how.

In the relentless light bearing down, I cannot see – or be – myself. Maybe that is the point. But more and more, all these letters and words and sunny days and perfumed offerings merely fold and unfold a blank sheet of paper.

I keep saying this is more simple now, yet each thread I untangle is attached to another and another. I'm trying, friend. Tying?

Last night, hanging in the air, the woodsmoke mixed with lilies. I reconsidered my stance on wind chimes. And immortality. And the usefulness of a book I refuse to write.

But mostly, alone in the dark, I fall into the closeness that my arms and chest cannot complete. This I know how to do.

Woven and Wreathed

I do not handle found feathers. Sometimes the nearness to life is so soft that it hurts. Pine cones on the other hand are fair game! June's very small rabbit spent time nested in the coil of the garden hose beneath the pine, nibbling stray grasses. What I collect is only known in the moments passing – a sort of singular expression tick-tocking into awareness.

Evening is woven by threads of gradient light slipping beyond the boundaries of daytime eyes. The last birdsongs fall away leaving only bullfrogs to offer final vespers. I am already there, before the fade. Before the songs. Before my own reflection in the day's last cup of tea.

Perhaps what is left for these words is the plebeian occupation of description. The excavation of meaning or wisdom or direction or entertainment simply exhausts the existence that simply must be.

Cannot this expression merely and purely give a wordy account for that which has no otherwise? I think that I am beginning to believe the tangibility of the letters representing not me, not other, not universal truth . . . merely THIS. My own surprise laughter at this startles the chipmunk sentries charged with keeping the world safe.

The composition of my soul is not holy or waiting for transcendence. It is simply the inhabitation of blue jay squawks, lawnmower armies, the aroma of a pancake breakfast. It's scared refugees, unstable killers, dead deer left on the road. It's these letters waiting, sent, read, or not. Each of my moments are touched by the others, even after they have passed, because that is how I have seen or heard or smelled or touched or sensed them.

Even all of you, ahead of and behind my reality, the stars of old light and the moon reflecting another source, the mapless trail blazers and the careful cartographers, we are wreathed light touching all that ever is.

Poetic Peek-a-boo

To start again.

Glacial trust begins stacking stones on the shore. No longer do talismans perform the work of grounding but they do make artistic pillars before the gateless.

The daisy faces are still tightly held, but not for too much longer. Soon their blooms will overlap each other in the breeze – a poetic peek-a-boo if you ask me.

Lately, everyone has a gravelly voice, except Eiseley. Reading him puts me floating on summer waters right before I sink in self-doubt. Uneasy amalgams, he says. Splashed pollen on the breasts of hummingbirds, too. He makes the growth of grass a type of foreplay that dampens the page.

Bracing.

My bones move like an enemy.
My mind expecting victory in death.
How the fullness of reunion forces bloody knees and hands.
That is where I'm going now.
Sort of alone, but not completely.  

Reviving.

Maybe one must stop treading water and get back to the damn shore already! This is me, flopping onto landfall after exhausting all other ways to cross the sea.

From here, Lake Michigan's sunset takes the cake and if I'm honest, I don't blame it one bit.

A Trail Towards October

Yes, of sky and pine-filtered rays. Of turtles and Orioles and lacy tea cup roses. Yes of tangled vines and toads and fireflies all bearing the weight of the bridge that had to be built. But at the lake it is clear that none speaks for my lack in the way water does. Everything else is other.

After midnight, I grabbed her hand outside of the grocery store. Binti yangu, you will never see a moon like this again. To which she replied, “the same is true of every moon if you think about it.” Wisdom leaks all over the place. Yet lately I am in no mood for wisdom. Or thinking. I just want to sit under moonlight, letting it grab my throat in the summer night's hush.

Sometimes there is no thought involved. I just fall in love according to the vibration frequency of Love incarnate. When I am locked in the icy tomb of February, I long for the marigold light that dances through June foliage. Yet, when I am in the swelter of July's suffocating blanket, I do not pine for the sharp crystal relief of winter. It's not about wanting what is not here. It's about wanting who I am.

So it is that I follow myself on a trail towards an October lake, fed by the river that must arrive. The question is, how still will the water get before it freezes?

A Beggar's Allowance

Just enough light shoulders through midnight's piling veil. Of course, the moon does not desire to arrive or spill into orbit. Yet a certain persistence attends for which I am grateful.

Under the gauzy spell, I dreamt of a horse with a coat the same white-gray as January's sky. Whenever I opened the door to his home, he was standing there asleep. With a few blinks he would wake to shared apples and wisdom in a timeless visit.

And after a night of blackened storms, a day of meandering drizzle. My hands move towards mudra and settle into a beggar's allowance. I shut down the distance and then I release the affection. None of this makes me immortal, only sane.

My vision continues to grow dim. So, new glasses and new ways to stumble around in the dark. It's funny how I don't scramble for my clothing when I cannot see a thing.

There is a monastery I visit from time to time but I cannot live there, which makes me less of a monk and more of a tourist. Shoeless footfall on cobblestone / the hungry stray under the arched sill / belonging less

Lemon ginger tea to settle and tented words under summer storms. I eat my first nectarine in years and it melts in my mouth like a first kiss. The lingering flavor seduces long past the press of lips.

A sleepy heart forgets to make the most of June's daylight. Perhaps for that reason alone I finally get out of bed.

Demons and Dawn

Sunday's day of demons. I'm older now, and more sure of what I don't know. Perhaps they saw a woman of courage. Settled. Reborn. But I know better; they embraced me as a lost sheep and when at home, they prayed for my fat, naked, lost soul as they crawled into bed. I've lied under less pressure.

Now Monday morning's suburbia returns to a low hum of municipalities. I have my own things to do, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why. Clip the grass, transplant growing things, tame the yellow archangel only to have it all go wild as soon as it can. There is little satisfaction in managing that which will not end.

And dawn delivered no paragraphs. Yet, a roadmap out of Orlando – where the noduality rubber meets the crimson my-way-or-the-highway. On good days, it all belongs. Yet on this day it is obvious that my body still lives with the blood which yearns for another way.

Mountainous sleep or glaciers of oblivion. The stony pilgrimage between is a fine line the Otherness must erase.

And what about now? This? 

The mourning dove nestles among gingered needles. How intentionally his softening coo cradles the untethered cries of the orphaned mind.

The Violence of Apple-picking

To be still, yet I usher.

Morning arrives on mosquito wings as high-canopied canticles loft certain reminders that there is more to witness. With imperceptible ease, dawn crescendos into chipmunk chirps and blue jay squabbles and in-ground sprinklers and garage tools and barking dogs.

Before breakfast, the neighbor's power-washer reminds that some things are easier to forgive than others. As I prepare apple slices and hard boiled eggs, I mull over the idea of nonviolence. Some where along the line, some one must pick the apple and take a bite. Eve has a few things to say about that and so it is that I hear a sisterhood gathering.

On a walk just after sundown, I came up on four people lounging in ascending hammocks, layering between three faceless pine trees. They asked to pet the dog and climbed down to be with her. I thought about the dog-less hiker and moved on accordingly to pay homage down by the creek.

Homeward, we passed the house that burned over a month ago and I could still smell smoke. The windows are blackened by soot and the glaring police tape flaps a little in the cooling wafts of nightfall. A sifting of sorrows makes me wonder about my turn.

I still read Krishnamurti from time to time because of his pace of intention. Every description of his surroundings sharpens towards a fissure of light that I slip into with grace. Not so much a teacher now, but a priest of communion welcoming a few more to the table.

And as the wafer dissolves upon my tongue, I think about the love that exists as a dimension . . . a place beyond turmoil and mind and thought. It laughs at me and says: stop thinking! And I finally laugh backwards and say: okay!

Another Catechism on Rest

Under the acacia tree the earth rests as it has been for thousands of years. Expanse whispers the impossibility of comprehending forever. Papery grasses rustle proving what one cannot see; the capture eliminates its existence. There are words like that – words that cannot be used ahead of their intended meanings. And that confuses my calling.

Tolerance for the unimaginable now has its place in the daily mundane. To interlace the strands is a way of building rest. It's just that sometimes the connected whole resembles a hammock, and at other times, it looks like that thick rope hanging from the top of the gym ceiling in 5th grade. So here we are with perception again. Rather, here I am with perception again.

I stoop down to see how things are growing, yet there are eddies of stars carrying another kind of light. The runnel reflects a pause.

a rill of sighs
hushed -
another catechism on rest

A squirrel dictates from the broken wagon wheel up against the oak and the blue jay fledglings have mistaken the windows for pathway five times already this hour. I sit alone but not unhappy as the fern unfurls its reach without my help.

The words matter, and of course, they don't mean a thing! Commandments and contracts. Permission and pleas. I kick the wordy can a little further down the road, whistling the tune stuck in my head.

Untangling Braids

All night the hard rain gave me dreams of a rising river inside my bedroom. In hopes of containing destruction, I tried to free the water's path, clearing personal belongings and opening doors. The flood didn't need me. And why can I never work a telephone in these dreams? My fingers always fumble to find the right number.

The wet tentacles of a chest-cold squeeze me awake. Aware of the long rains, I feel grateful. There is work my body cannot do, so this thirsty reprieve helps to buoy a girl going under. By now it is becoming obvious that tending soil and writing love letters is going to save the world. And maybe a little chocolate, too.

Breakfast with Kora before the house wakes. I float to the room of windows with citrus tea and a blanket in hopes of remaining unnoticed. From here I can see the pine tree I trimmed – whereby “trim” is a nice way of saying “cut” – yesterday; its fresh wounds seeping in morning's drizzle. The pine dust fell into me and I ate its bitter crumbs for its own good. Such judgement! God, mostly I'm just sitting here trying not to hear the pain I caused to this weeping evergreen.

Water itself, whose nature is as ultimate healer and destroyer, need not be aware. Yet I wrestle with how I hear the voice. . .

days and today / in the minutes of zero hour / untangling this watery braid for heaven's sake

The Expectation of Fireflies

In the cooling twilight I put on the kettle. My family grows thin and quiet, so I drift to the back porch. Slow sips for now, but the tea leaves say soon a mouthful. One considers the essence of each perception, each mile of the distance that does not exist. What does Husserl say about entanglement? Maybe something about the dense forest as a shelter, but little light.

Then past midnight, an odd dream of what it would mean to be over and under you. M. asks: of the two, would you prefer to love or be loved? Yet a state of being has little otherwise; love is. Happiness or suffering – the same coin in the infinite treasure trove of that which has always been.

With the perception of distance, I watch. I've thought about the shape of watery rocks from afar and how they seem to change as one stands upon them. How myopic our intellect! Yet, what would it mean to remove the rocks? The water would grow quiet and swift.

Well anyway, I don't drink coffee anymore and medical issues persist. My body aches from rescuing ornamental plants from voracious vines that just . . . won't . . . quit.

It is not winter; it is time to work.

summer's work
and the expectation of fireflies -
knowing who I am

Elephants in Starlight

I remember the elephants, outlined in starlight. We were aware of each other even in the dark, quieter than one might think. The nocturnal Mara, never asleep. Alive when others are dead, a disappearing began to teach. So it is that I am less . . . in full attention of others.

We travel east, under hawks, through mountains. The Allegheny river took me further than I expected.

unused atlas
and glaring sun
yet I know the way

And hotel rooms always feel like a gift waiting to be unwrapped. Sleeping together becomes new and old, a nuance that plunks down through the layered stillness of what is. You toss the pebble and I watch it vanish. I'm sorry, darling. Promises, promises . . . I am trying.

Trees and leaves and boulders and grasses and tiny unseen universes all blur as we pass. Water falls from the mountain's bent wrist as if waving to the place we just were, and weeds become valuable for their flash of color in the on-going whirl of green. Does image sweeten the distance between here and there?  I've tasted the asphalt and it remains as stones in my mouth.  

You know, this journey is not Kenya. Or Ashtabula. This is the ancient new in between the arrival.  

after
always this
beloved