Experts at the Fall

Acorn hits bring me home from the horizon. September is here before I am there. What else can happen when one measures the truth in calendars and maps?

Apple blushes feeding on lilted light. A greater hunger wakens with ripening fruit – the kind that fully feels its peak just ahead of demise. Experts at the fall. We acknowledge all of this with eyes and mouths, yet the mind must have its way. Our birds will sing longer than we can wait. Our fruit will fold into the ground.

Sometimes that is what autumn means.

And yet . . .

Maple songs and knotty pine. Windswept hair tangles with woodsmoke and ashen leaves. Heathered scarves seducing the neck. October makes a play.

A clearing has been made, soon covered in the sodden rot of fall's debris. Winter's appetizer here and gone before any has a say.

But I shall gather this manna each day before it spoils, Beloved, in faith that you will place it on my tongue and in complete contrition whisper Body of Christ.

Tomorrow at 10

Together alone.

In summer's set, I catch a glimpse of the bedroom from outside in. Everything is recognizable yet once removed. My scarves hang from hooks behind the door. Books pile on the dresser and nightstand and ironing board. Closet doors open like an accordion drawing breath, as spacious as an arm's length.

Life is that way just now – accepting the light through tendered windows. My existence viewed (skewed?) from humidity staring inward.

It's hard getting out of bed these days. Purpose wanes to a foolish belief system. How my heavy limbs and anchored heart betray expressions of the unsaid. Everyday the goal resets: rise, avoid, descend. Yes; something must be done.

The water boils, but I cannot see its tiny eyes. In the pour I am saved. Have you considered the process instead of the result? My wrist only stirs the tea once, but in the action my soul is forever turned. Are you busy tomorrow at 10?

take tea with me / that I shall know / we are together / alone

Green Barely Holding

Twilight stolen after a long run of simply being the resting place before darkness. In this venue, the truth can unravel to reveal the reaper. Really, isn't that who is in charge? Know thy enemy. Thyself?

A little lighter now, because perhaps it is more palatable when one doesn't stare right at it.

A downy woodpecker mines the bedroom sill as I fill his cavities with sleep. Afternoon gushes but I can only stare into the western window. Green barely holding. The memory of happiness clinging to blue effusion in hushed tones. Summer pens a lessening geometry. Yet I am here. Still.

When one breaks the night, it's not so crazy to expect dawn to rise through the shattering – crisp gold highways shouldering that elusive ladder towards anything but here. Instead, grey upon grey. Rain in the ocean. Thunder in low vibrations.

Some leaves are already curling. I'm trying my best to ignore the tick-tock tap of acorns falling. Fall. And the sentence that follows.

You / named for the Sea / the wandering Dylan / gravedigger and ghost / let's be friends

Climbing Silk Walls

The waning moon on my back.

Finally night cools in the way of shared sleeping bags and crickets softening the edges of the crinkled days.

The end of lightning bugs and the end of yesterday's this.

How empty the days seem when held high into summer's sun, arrivals not scheduled. Autumn left as she was.

I am surprised by the fullness of the roadside sunflowers tied with homemade twine. Is it time already? October can only hold scarlet promises, you know . . . maple flames and blowzy cheeks revealing us all as we are. I wanted more than I could say but therein lies the lie. Yellow is never the new red.

Spiders in my shoes and back-porch sentences; neither stay long enough to make a difference.

After the tornados, I knew the nightmares would return. But nowadays the dreams end with a voice saying: you are afraid of tomatoes?! The city repairs itself and so do I. A soundtrack repeats: every little thing's gonna be alright . . . with or without you . . . I can't live. 

The writing only exists in the hints of sunrise – that eastern light which must do what it can to wake all who prefer to sleep under patchwork dreams and heron rain. Heroin rain? One climbs silk walls until after midnight. Only exhaustion will do.

The petunias are done and soon the beloved begonias. There are no choices here except the one where I hug apple trees and say thank you and nap in a lower sun to recover from all these dreams.

This way and that.

Another Sonorous Signal

A needed rain withheld.

August birdsong opens a bit, now arranging a fullness in decline.

One sits under the humidity yet cannot divine a single drop of water.

The dry storm growls east sending the release onward.

Geese overhead.

Another sonorous signal of movement complying with destiny.

To love unconditionally may seem like a choice but as the cardinal in the elder pine and I discussed, Love simply is.

This and other quicksilver threads braided down the middle of my back.

Last December I remember water turning to stone, yet the evergreens and holly and chickadees remained vibrant to dismantle the myth of death.

Yet, this one will wither; my choice-less season in the accompaniment key of Chopin.

So today – short sentences of latent potential in the here and now.

What arrives now is truly a mystery, for more than a muse means more than everything combined.

The field of my thoughts runs dry as the sky-fallen sea withholds.

I shall stagger to river's edge to kiss its cold mouth in hopes of dousing this dusty lament!

Then when will I be empty?

A moment in the waterless moonlight suggests the kind of never that eclipses both hope and despair.

They say that in the death of Pan, Christ is born.

I say that in the birth of Christ, Pan collects Selene for the last time and disappears into the soft white distance that can never be claimed.

Lunar night, dawning bright; I cannot undo the wish I wished last night.

Make for me this sweet ending and you'll know me on my knees.

Two Birds With One Stone

Coffee to Coltrane.

A black silky reminder of where I am not.

These pages turn towards tomorrow's come-and-go, and it feels like violence.

Summer cherries and pits and that thing some people do to the stem with their tongue . . .is that sexy?

I did not choose this desire for blue.

water / sky / mood / moon
and the way my heart must be buried
when the bluebird words you used to write
forget me not

One flutters above the fray yet can't help but notice the catastrophe of bodily proportions.

Of which atmosphere do I belong?

Yes, all of it.

Everywhere's community of false lives.

Coltrane to Carruth.

Are we listening?

Hayseed acid in your throat.

Harvesting has begun.

The muck fields hold a heavy onion breath and the sod farm rollers crawl in the linear existence that makes so much sense.

Line by line he also calls attention to a lavender Christ and thickening apples and the first flushing of maple.

Do you remember the time I fell down at the mention of how a maple must turn red and therein lies its beauty?

Carruth and cinnamon.

The tinge of rust that arrives bit by bit, a lesser red blushing the fallen.

Let's meet behind the barn, for it's the only reconciliation that is left to address.

Two birds with one stone – the cardinal and the crow.

Skip pebbles with me, won't you?

Cinnamon and cabernet.

Swill a bit.

Stain with the bleed.

The drunken rose will spill unto the forest floor as we grab for water to dilute the permanence.

And there it is . . . the return to the Water Bearer and all his many forms.

I know no otherwise, dear one.

Selah.

Parsed Light

Summer shifts.

The August canopy allows shadows to sway in that hue resistant to naming.

In the low breeze off the Great Lake, a grief speaks in wind chimes causing a certain regard that is hard to ignore.

And the remains of letters burned on the beach under lilting ladles and the roving bears of my heart.

Parsed light.

The gills in the privacy fence between us allow golden-green beams to pass.

I am engrossed in this light and make all things it leans against to be real.

Is this how Love creates it's own necessities?

Hunger strike.

Satiation leads to sluggish contentment, a hazy drift in mid-summer's heavy lake.

Yet the starving opposite leaves one to flip the coin of happiness and sorrow.

Perhaps now it is time to welcome life as it presents – cheese and cream, or black marble coffee with crumbs.

This Way.

I see now that it is the search or longing that destroys the peace never not offered.

Maybe the cold kiss as woodsmoke clings to autumn falling apart.

Maybe the tapping of letters from the writing chair snug in the corner as one writes in, past, and through the current of arrival.

And maybe none of it.

Just love.

Accept what is.

Like clouds in the sky.

Here and not.

Uncollected Hallelujah

From the room of windows, two yellow butterflies startle morning's yawn with a tango. The rise and fall of black veins give and receive an infinite gift – justice in the macrocosm of existence. How they hover in divine movement! Yes, yellow seems to be the way this time.

They push the slightest breeze towards attention. Why does their dance need wings? Help me with this body. Hungry questions beget the wreckage of storm-torn trees upon endless beaches one must visit from time to time.

The dilemma paces between the insignificance of the physical form and the spiritual wavelength emitted and recognized in another. Only a few have made themselves mystically known within my vibration. Fewer still match the unsayable steps in this unicursal labyrinth. And there is one who sees me, even without eyes.

So then, what matter is the body? If the height of inner honesty and oneness can be recognized without having touched my living barrier, then what purpose shapes the sloping shoulders or moves the watery lips towards another? Which conception asks for the other?

The spiritual confluence of cardinals and questions and trips to the river just to see, is a fuel to my constant flame. Winged Beings beware.

butterflies
climb the sunbeam's prayer -
an uncollected hallelujah remains  

Possessed by the Course

In the middle of the grocery aisle, a man holding hands with his two young daughters was being pulled in opposite directions. I waited to pass, enjoying the moment in familial recognition of all things parenthood. When the father noticed me he said, “ Oh, sorry, sir.” The playful summer storm passed by and I took a few minutes to determine how the mis-gendered apology made me feel.

Fat. Unwomanly. Not me.

An aisle or two later, the father tapped me on the shoulder to say that he could see I was not a man. He caught me out of the periphery of his eye and misspoke. With his girls at attention, he apologized in a lavish, heartfelt manner.

Lately, an awareness of an infinite loop. Birth, life, death, repeat. Elephant, Egyptian, Ghost, Housewife. A man ends them all.

Though it is the body I rail against, it is not skin that holds me inward. Or the miles arrowing into the horizon of sunrises.

As any highway can tell you, the undulating cadence beneath the tires takes one both away and towards home. Closer and further into being possessed by the course.

For is it not the essence of sameness beyond the skin and bones and motel rooms that will finish the traveling? Let us all simply nourish the softening gate that opens in recognition of God. Her warm beckoning eating the miles until there is nothing left to consume. No where left to go.

 
in this place
I am fugitive words
spilling the presence  
that will never be contained
in the breasts
or hips
or bones
of me

Leave a Little Room

Lately when it comes to words and sentences, I feel bound to the consistory. They exact devastation in their surgical flow while some manage to birth an entire universe in a single word. One could die in those moments. Instead, a battered crawl, knee-to-fist unto the altar begging for life everlasting.

The pounding storm at dawn says: write!

There are two reasons I don't ride horses. It seems a form of violence to mount holiness. The other reason will have to be shared over coffee in that little cafe that offers sunrise on a slant before the day takes what it must have. We can rest our cups on the white flags of surrender. A celibate affair in acquiescence. Who couldn't use an abiding friendship about now?

Well, it's okay either way. To express one's truth is to reenter recognition – an intimate touch transcending what is believed about love. Maybe that is why this is here. A written account of enmeshment so that the author might trigger the clarity of her own vision. Christ's sight of unbroken heartship.

Zucchini bread. Caprese salad. Blueberry pancakes. Summer yields the desires born of the earth. We consume our own perfection to find the totality of Self, deliciously and wonderfully made.

At least, that's something to laugh about over the house coffee . . . leave a little room for cream, please. 

Black Butterflies

It sounds like this.
And now it looks like that.
I'm writing like everyone else these days.
Maybe my truth isn't all freedom and love and slightly bad days giving way to rainbows and lilies.
Maybe I am owned. Distorted.
Falling through the crashes.
Unto here?

I delete what is real and put forth what is almost there.

Black butterfly / the grill of my car / love unto death

I moved the books from the nightstand to the shelf. Yesterday that didn't change a thing, but today is today. The movement is a mere conduit of everyone trying to do the right thing.

Choosing the unused side of the bed for now until maybe finally very soon I will wrap certain texts from the shelf in that blue satin ribbon cut from the dress that she said looked so beautiful on me and place the whole bundle in the locked box in the back of the closet under that pair of sexy shoes that kill my back.

Maybe if I can't write the real thing I can at least say that.

Immunity Over Compass

Jays, chipmunks and chainsaws before the sun reaches the end of the driveway. Cue the dogs who never seem to run out of things to say in the round. What have I chosen to learn in this suburban temple? Trust, perhaps.

Do you trust me?

The feeling of discarnate expansion wakes at 4 a.m., despite the boundaries I imagine for myself. Hints of total freedom quietly crash through the body's appeal for sleep. Who do I join at this hour? We embrace and I hear the whispers of undivided unity. The holy hour is not mine alone.

A later dawn. Which pockets will I slip my curling fingers into when fall arrives with such acuity? The proof is lacking, but I am trying to remain in summer. Yet as we swim and plant and the turn humid pages of heavy books, the signs of advance are there.

Do I trust myself?

Well, one thing I look forward to is soup on the stove, steaming up icy windows. Highway thoughts return and so does the chance to choose immunity over compass.

And yet . . .

a certain kiss
of outdoor lips

an inquiry
of what is underneath

a moment meant
for just that

lingering

Where I Begin

I never skim love letters.

Instead, the wrists of the blindfolded author are surrendered and tied to the cold, plastic chair arm. One wonders if the cosmos delight in the slow assessment of frame and slant and helpless solicitation. Perhaps the collective is just hungry enough for a show. How obsessively I drink in the way its body breathes, shaking a little as I stand over the lap of intention. You already know where I begin, yes? The neck bends both away and towards, ever so peaked beneath the breath of sublime titles. Each word demands its own pause. Then all together, the full calamity of murderous sentences unleashes the DNA of the sender. We all spill for gravity.

It's too hot for this far north. The begonias bleed all over the back porch and the lavender spires of hosta blooms are now anchors thrown aside under the heat's oppressive command. I stay inside because melty me takes hours to reconstitute.

Butternut squash, curried, over brown rice. A side of ginger tea. Summer gathers a fullness of flavor which tastes best in immediate consumption.

So it is with this life. One bread. One body. One elongated missive of love.

This Muggy Hug of Rainless Anemia

I can afford no sympathy for the storm which both arrives and dissipates before unleashing. For once, I am clear minded and step forward thusly. Without waiting.

Therefore, another day of watering. Another turn of prolific heresy, coiling through perception's nagging atmosphere. But in this muggy hug of rainless anemia, I am happy.

In the exam room, Billy Joel vomits through the celling speaker . . . Darlin' only the good die young. Did you know that red-heads bleed more? The doctor remembers after the first incision. Gray walls. White floor. Her red Mary Jane's shuffle around the table for better stitching.

One considers a pressure cooker for beans, recipes for restoration, and how to make things palatable without sugar. See? She isn't waiting for diagnosis. Or rain.

A sharp moon bores through pine filters with an effortless certainty. No matter what is decided, the moon has the last say. Tonight, as he cups his hands around my face, I am forbidden to look away.

It's really nothing more than this.

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.