The Beautiful Unbearable

The things we cannot bear, we bear.

Everything green is now covered in a copper blanket of after.

What life is this that we are allowed to walk around saying this and that when all along we each carry the mountainous weight of being a wish?

Lately, beyond speaking. Words can fall short leading some to question their talent for certainty.

Do you know those partings that come without pain or promise? I don't either. Even grass and butterflies and certain birds leave a space to be filled with whatever is nearby. That is where the perceptions settle; that is where the image reveals itself to be a moment of a moment only.

Turkeys in the field, feather-stepping the loam. Fog settles and now I. How sincerely the future looks back, begging me to turn around! Where is the firebrand? The scorching wood resisting the suicide of abatement?

As the canopy thins, more and more light enters the house. Daily, a new slant against the pew. Tell me, after all of this reading, how does one have a true voice? This and others things I would bring to a cohort of teacups and winks.

Some day, a reparation for the way in which the beautiful unbearable has opened my heart. At least this act of humanity remains.  

Now Through and Not For

To compass the very center for a thousand lifetimes is the life's work of one who writes for and not through. This poetry of purpose must find a way to break the ribs. Perhaps now.

Sunlight seeping through dagger holes, softened by the gauzy blinds. What bleeds will repair to bleed again – a self-generating reformatory of the babbling fool. The gods grant permission and so I turn, turn.

The jangling rise and fall of the mail truck engine chops its way through leaf-blower din. All you November jump-the-gunners! I say wait for the work to finish before you finish the work. Growing irritation is a sure sign that my constructed rind has become emaciated.

The shaggy cedar walls of the lonely cabin, calling. Your bitter moon brighter, turning. The faces in the woods, laughing.

In the sense that the everyday flattens beneath my feet, I need to walk. My ankle isn't healing, but whose fault is that? The robot faith that keeps my work tall and ordered is the path before me.

After I was raped, the idea of sitting alone in a bar has never crossed my mind. Riding a train with a book or walking at night and hiking the hills in the way I have always dreamt about is not manageable. A lifetime of being careful is not enough. Yet half of an entire nation is getting ready to vote for a man who rose to power doing as he pleases. Taking what he wants. Poised to learn from my oppressor, my head is down as I try to dismantle my own desires to take what I want.

Now, more than ever, I hear the leaves falling.

Monarchs and Maple Leaves

Hunger created by words. Can I translate without metaphor? So many rivers and churches and cabins and moons! I am honestly afraid I cannot say this without saying that anymore.

Butternut needles on the rotting deck and dying begonias adding a deepening red. Colors seethe before they leave and in the middle of it all, one never wonders if it's worth it.

Instead, an ineffable joy bleeds into expanse. Soon enough, charcoal trees will poke at a relentless sky, and all that was livid will cool into dross. Winter will descend with its irrefutable claims, listening to the beggars with his stone face. 

But not now.

Now we have what is lavish.

And here, a cardinal at my front door! I watch him pick seeds from the scrolling dogwood leaves. He will leave if I move, so I stuff the desire to reach for the camera. In the quiet of watching, I am affected.  

All turns bring me here. A conversation always flowing in a continuous leaving or entering translation. Do you have any idea what I really want to say here? Please tell me you do.

On the way home from town, the dazzling beauty of monarchs and maple leaves, floating on fire until the end. This kind of perfection is never achieved by doing or praying or asking; It only just is. Seen. Known. Processed and recorded by thought.  These strands I untangle create a space for more, but what is undone and why? 

That missing chord, which is nothing at all, unwinding to find the endless end of just being here.  I don't know what any of that means.  But are you with me?  

Even a Poor Man Needs a Dog

The wind and I thrash all night. Autumn's debris slams against the roof with thuds and calamity. Insomnia arrives which angers my plans for Tuesday. At 2 a.m., a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich with a side of apple slices to accompany a book reaping. Thoreau wins to endure the howling rage of night with me.

Dawn delivers a syncopation of 75 degree wind blasts and rest. The thought of New England is never not there anymore. Decision. Division. Danger.

The opossum family shelters under an evergreen bush to hide from the dog; she is obsessed with them. And a skunk sprayed the neighbor's dog, for which I am very sorry because I know what it's like to live with that inescapable fetor. Even in all of this chaos, one hears the cardinal beck and call, up higher and commenting on the show. I was thinking that he said, “even a poor man needs a dog.”

The wanderlust rises again, as it tends to this time of year. My unspoken plans carry east of the Hudson or south into the Smoky Mountains. Before snowfall, I need to see.

“Transgression for the greater good” doesn't settle well, but neither does carrying a lamp that has been ushered under creaky old apple baskets. I want, therefore I am not. My mother's voice injects something about being dramatic.

In the end, for all the bluster and storming, the girl who has a dog and a family and a dread of winter must engage some other truth before the death roll smothers what remains of the ginger gold light.

The Earth-grown Ponderous Man

Blankets still warm from sleep. One must wake despite the arthritic grip of preference, inflamed and swollen. In my dream, a man in the company of his young son laid down the pavement, struggling to breathe, trying to say, “I am fine! I am fine.” Sending his son to get help, I asked the man (the earth-grown, ponderous man) a spray of medical questions, to which he answered, “you may take care of me.” Of course, there was nothing I could do for him outside of kneeling at his shoulder, engaging his eyes of awareness, and painting the thin air with disappearing ink.

True or not, I began the day saving a life.

An odd warmth for this time of year settles just beyond the big lake. All signs still point toward autumn like a train that must arrive, one way or another. Yet morning's damp cloak hangs as a white sheet – the grave-clothes of suburbia's best intentions. The earth sighs so deeply that I can smell its breath, that sweet prurient smile giving way to decay.

I know things in those moments. I know to arrive here and say this. I remember to gut the mind and reach past the entanglements, on towards the waiting halcyon. The inescapable palpitations are tapping out the phrase to nurture.

How open my heart! How loud its cries! The poetry paddles through the mystical river finding itself always further than imagined. My dear, don't listen to my lies; I've taken a lover I can't touch and the only way to give her back is through . . . 

Spacial Striations

Deleted words arrive in another's sentences.

Somehow this is natural selection at work in a being that may not exist apart from me.

One perceives and prattles.

The image mollifies what exactly?

Objects of consciousness bend the reeds of understanding exactly cultivated for survival.

Means to an end, which is really continuation, and one must begin to consider if living is actually the endgame.

And gamers, I am not amused.

Nor am I heartsick for happily ever more.

I've made no decisions about whom to be, instead waking to meet whomever is present to immigrate with this spilling soul.

No soul mates; only the recognition of Soul in the labor of life.

Beloved, walk as you do; away or towards. Go to the river and kneel. Build, destroy, teach, and restore. You've pushed me above the fray and it is well.

In the end, if ever there is an arrival, the heart of existence will beat with or without that which we claim as necessary.

Or something spiritual like that.

A Walking Morse Code

When the earth tilts just so, an affluent moon rests on one hand, sunstar on the other. In this balance, I disintegrate. On the way, sunlight strobes between steps. I pretend to send the universe a message with a walking Morse code. This way is okay.

Geese as splitting wedges, dividing an otherwise silent sky. Morning makes promises I'll try to keep. As the canopy disappears, I get greedy for light in the house. Screens come down. Indoor plants find their winter place. I thought the church pew should be in house; it looks good. With autumn's lambent slant, I can see all the chewing gum stuck under the lip of the long bench. One man's boredom is another's idyllic muse. Thank you for coming, Light.

And again the impossible moon.

October and her harvest lamp
making amends
for all that is
to come

The Orchestra of Reading

Copper collects in corners around the front door enclave. The leaves seem to fall in groups, still attached to each other. I add a sweatshirt atop a long-sleeved shirt which makes me feel warmer. And restricted.

I've sat in this chair in the dark corner writing about autumn and the coming winter one hundred times before now. The calendar changes yet continues to mark the very same days.

October ripens in the newly unrestrained light, pouring into the places accustomed to hidden life. Tea cups and Tchaikovsky's letters prefer to be handled by palms, not fingers. The orchestra of reading wakes a hibernating immigrant and she is famished!

Notebooks and pages and the way words become crowbars wedged into the slightest give. A lapidary solace emerges to remind the reader of how she has withered.

Bringing the outside plants in, along with spiders and earwigs and other various crawling things I'll never know the names of. Have you ever noticed how the wind tells one how to feel? In this way I believe I have lost all neutrality. I do care, little nuthatch!

Bees, skunks, and predawn rabbits – I enfold you into my days even without a word.

Every Day a Beggar

Already my skin hurts on top of cold bones. Half moon, half hearts. The nights open with full breaths, inviting sharper stars and crackling lungs. Autumn becomes a season like the rest, as the idea of special anything fades. New bookshelves and new books; the décor begins to reflect more of me. Of us? Guitar on its stand, an african drum so far away from home.

I remember the women bent over sloping tea fields as far as the eye could see, carrying baskets tied to their backs and children  across their breasts. The colors of Kenya like confetti hovering over vigorous, high-altitude green. One U.S. Dollar and eighty seven cents per twelve hour day. Skeletons bundled in Goodwill rejects, layers of misprinted t shirts, mildewed woolen jackets with holes, threadbare winter hats thin enough to see through. Everyday a beggar. Please Mama Leksi, we must eat. Please.

Our home bursts with first-world privilege. Even the framed mosaic reminder of workers in the tea fields cost enough money to pay for a month of meals for Mama Rachel. Samahani rafiki zangu.

Politics cloud and curl like ink in the water we drink to live. How can each soul matter unless we recognize ourselves in the other? Light given for free yet squandered darkness. I am part of the problem, brothers. The circle returns my generosity to reveal the selfish gap between the beginning and end. Heat, land, shelter from the storm. My fingers grow fat around the gold band of existence. All the while, leaves give up, smoke snakes through the canopy before disappearing into the gray horizon, and all that is green gives way to the ordained death of what is.  

This, my decaying audience, cannot be otherwise.   

The Honesty of Envelopes

Rain.

And the navy scarf embroidered with summer. Tucked around my neck, tucked around my heart. The heat kicks on after months of idle wait.  Winter winks, but first, a flush of rosy joy for leafy trails and long drags of pine.

The pages long for the honesty of envelopes. A reader, a writer; postage paid to go home. Dearest, I cannot believe summer is gone. / We should rent that cabin in the aching woods; I heard the river sings lullabies and the fireplace heats soup. / The cooler weather is a relief, but one can't help but feel the pending granite of winter. / Well, I must end before the evidence of my gravity spills all over this brave paper. / Please be well; it is my fondest wish. / Love, J.

The cardinals are chatty despite the on-again-off-again down pour. Weather, birds, letters and dreams. All of these words shaping a boundary I'd like to remove. And not last night but the night before, did you see the 4 a.m. moon bearing down on the horizon? The thumbnail slice glowed just enough to hint at the fullness balancing in its cup. Hung rightly in the east, I thought for sure I could hold him in my two hands.

a shy light –
just enough coverage
to reveal it all

The Familiar New

At the flea market, I'm drawn to lavender, honey, and basins. Can a bowl be any more magnificent than when holding water? My hands hover over hundreds of things I've never touched. How familiar the new can be! Storied and almost forgotten. A box of prisms in all sizes, $1 each; like I need another reminder of something loved at a distance.

Today's sky sears September into the part of presence I always want to know. Pine needles shimmer with fire and dew. Leaf smoke laces the curling gaps between muted hydrangea and rusting mums. I devour fall and use both hands to waft it all into the center of the coil. Give me September and October wrapped in aubergine, a side of butternut squash soup and sourdough bread . . . it would be more than enough.

So many spiders these days. They write with me from the corners of single paned windows and undisturbed intersections of light. These lines are spun as poetic currency for posterity's coffers. Yet they begin as something else entirely. I've yet to give them over in the raw.

Thoughts let me down. Maybe so do words. Another way remains.  Untouched intention reaching over my familiar new.   

My Hands Interrupted

Death as an expression of change. The funeral of illusion is adorned with the blooming fragrance of regeneration and realignment. Spring holds a promise despite the long, hard winter of doubt and loss. Is it too soon for the electric blanket? I'm only asking because my bones tend to shatter in the cold.

In the dream, you were humming along with the music of the spheres. My hands interrupted to offer you warm, brown rice. The satisfaction gave way to the continuous stream of contentment that moves shorelines and mountains across the never-sleeping earth.

These words, a proxy. I have no more spiritual practice. No mantras or incantations. No monasteries in which to cloister. Everyday I Am exposed.

To be honest, this writing isn't saying it. Intentions count despite the mile markers pointing this way and that. Perhaps a long talk over tea or whiskey?

Apple and brussels sprouts hash; the champagne vinegar and honey make all the difference. I can be in love with food and fall and red wine and the sick bass drop that tears out my guts. And I can be in love with that which is afraid.

As the day wanders, I rinse the rice longer than necessary; to hold you in my hands is the gratitude of the immovable word. One gives thanks for dreams and the grace bestowed in belief.

Just Walking

Caught in a slate blue rain. At first you hurry a little because getting wet drop by drop can be unfamiliar. But after the drops spread out and your shirt grafts against the skin and your socks get wet inside your shoes, you surrender. Then there is just walking.

Under the half moon, just walking.

Into the sublime sentence, just walking.

Within the dialogue of desire and healing, fear and love, emotion and intelligence, illusion and reality, just walking.

Clarity of purpose in the everyday awareness. One breathes life into a thought. A prayer? The sky calls us upward. Outward. Beyond. The ground grates against the tired sole, “one more step.”

And between the two, you, my favorite color of blue.     

A Whispery Oh

In the thinning meadow two fawns hide and seek. Their spots have faded into autumn's red coat, a sort of grace that buckles knees and evokes a whispery “oh.” Soon I'll see their trail in the frost and be reminded of a presence one can know but not touch. Teachers always abound.

After midnight, I count some part of every hour. The mind/body war rages until 4 a.m.'s white flag. In my dream, car trouble on a dangerous stretch of highway. The steering wheel stiffens as I try to make it one or two exits further.

At lunch with friends I hear myself quip about this and that, realizing in several artless moments that I have become socially awkward. Why do I open my mouth? The stress of being me makes for excellent napping conditions unto which I oblige throughout the afternoon.

And since when do we not say goodnight to each other? I rage against the day's perfecting blue by planting wildflowers. How strange that it has come to this: cultivating what should be overgrown and free. This language will not be reduced. Hardy chicory then, giving what I can not.

Amish Acres

Violent storms all night give way to a compensatory drizzle at dawn. And yoga beneath the white noise of a million leaves catching and releasing rain. An awareness further. Deeper.

The poetry is gone. Those aching moments branching outward from the chest into the center of the throat have diffused into some sort of vacuous condemnation. To mourn words only highlights the foolishness of their play in the first place. At least, one tells you that in order to proselytize.

Even sentences are some sort of open window, catching a current heading somewhere else. My selfishness is tempered by the other, and I think that's why I was born a Libra. I want to go. I have to stay. October stars anchor what I mean to loose.

At the wedding we slow-danced to one of those timeless songs that always makes you feel like you can be tucked into each other's chest forever. The old Amish barn, a heavy harvest moon, the smell of hay and bundled corn stalks mingling with peachiest pie I've ever tasted . . . why not celebrate vows and commitment and two young hearts choosing to farm the land together? No one's asking, but is the marriage form something to believe in? White dress, best man speeches, tossing the bouquet; we keep it all on repeat. Partners hold fast to an institution that resists change and infiltration. Yet every moment in life is new, pressing against expectation and boundary.

Balance. Weighing the means. Libra bones rattling the cage in the name of Love.

October bears down on the core, and she honestly cannot tell you what is going to happen.

Starry-eyed Tea

Four a.m. melted under the last of summer's creamsicle moon. In a way, you kneel under the stars whether you mean to or not. Untouchable yet there. In utter darkness, we cannot live. So this gratitude for even the tiniest pinpoints of light gushes forward, first as awe, then acknowledgement of being. My words play in the romance of tip-toeing from one starlit tide pool to the next, but I assure you, my deepest desire is to meet light mouth-to-mouth.

Morning lags behind the air breaks of school buses and the competing conversations of dogs outside before their breakfast. How hunger breeds intensity. The day presents itself as steadfast, so I get on board with that which cannot die.

Thursday / tick-tock / the train's conductor / taking tea / on hiatus

I think I just want to speak plainly now. The simple easiness of what is really here. And there? The storytellers weave and bob, but please tell me the truth with an impoverished tongue.

On the way towards noon, a Cooper's Hawk watches from the depressed telephone pole, a sinking reminder of the futility planting anything but vegetables in the muck fields. We see each other and it matters. I think we want the same thing.  

Tonight promises to be clear from here to there. Meet me for starry-eyed tea on the back porch, okay? I don't want to kneel alone.

Gravel and Grain

Crickets and katydids rattling the residue of predawn's fog. A singular sound wielding power that rises above utterance, beyond observance. The physics of being present and gone are not so hard to consider anymore.

Tree bark holds the dampness after everything else has cleared. The day takes a flow I didn't orchestrate and as always, a feeling of insignificance rudders the tide. Though incidental, peace. And happiness these days.

I wouldn't have chosen Joe Cocker crooning in moonlight but the evolution of his rise and fall made a difference. An ongoing lunar affair means my breath is stolen and I am not the only one.

Punctuality as a fetish. The moon, a maple in quiet flush, the forced hibernation of those beholden to the rhythms around them.

Bees in the chive bloom, but also, ants. It's still warm enough to be barefoot, you know. Walking the pavers warmed by September's generosity – small stones collected into one rounder. Real gravel and grain in a fabricated form, yet no matter how it comes together or why, it is both false and true. I think that's how I see it all.

Acorn rain. Expected yet startling. The lessons of embracing what is, while letting go. Always a winter to follow.

When October arrives, embrace her for me; she'll be carrying a love I can only write about from here.

Passing Through

Hummingbirds in the hibiscus under a stained glass morning. Focused, or seemingly so. How bizarre that one's day-to-day nothingness leads to the accomplishment of being! Days drain from one smeary landscape to another. More than ever, I am merely passing through. Everything thinner.

October asks and Love answers. When the unbeatable cancer was looming, only one sorrow collected into a pulsing nerve center around the heart. One syllable sinking into the river, racing. Now distanced from death, on the embankment of safety, why not give thanks for the dry feet before the winter sets?  And yet . . . 

Clouds collect and turn green; a storm is unavoidable. An oppressive heat fogs the glass and causes my lungs to faint. Wilting is a problem, but not at 4 a.m. Everyday for the last two weeks I make use of my camouflage, working hard undetected in the early dark. What happens when I get away with it all?

The female hummer hovers long enough for us to recognize each other. Here and gone. Repeat. The earth finds a way to let us through.

Second Hand Stars

Hours before indigo gives way, the stars exalt a sort of bewilderment. Stunning silence. Untouchable extension. A happiness settles one's place in the labyrinth. How does any sentence compare to this?

I wait on dawn's busy hands. The constellations thin into the elongated light of summer's last stand.

On the rosebush a single shoot towers over a flowerless homeland. Yet at the end of the mast, a crown of four blooms – yellow bravery signaling peace. I remember shaking the farmer's hand during mass, thick and rough. His hold was in a hurry as if it was already too much time spent away from the tasks of the farm. Peace be with you. The elderly widow's touch, always cold and translucent, seemed to ask for my other hand to come along side as to offer support and warmth or an extra moment of communion. Peace be with you. The attractive teenager's hand, always warm and moist; was he shy like me, dreading the forced recognition of our shared benediction? Peace be with you.

Our hands, a continuation of the walk we are meant to take. A paradoxical expansion of healing and murder. Violence and peace. What cannot be said flows through two hands connecting the starry intricacy of the expanding universe. What is good or bad fails to register as anything bigger than the imperceptible ghosts of atomic design.

Full daylight now and it channels the first coolness of autumn.

A time of inanition begins to recede as the body wakes to September's staccato dance. Aroused nights; jeans and covered feet; all-day soups on the stove. Can you feel the Connection shift? Stretch out your fingers and turn the soft of your wrists up towards the light; I've seen the answers in the palm of your hands.

The Jobless Gardener

Midnight and all the hours in between. Outside, a milky shroud covers everything in the dark, the weighty noose of lead about the lungs. My glasses fog and everything familiar becomes alien. The ankle isn't quite right yet so I hobble past the rabbit family, the last of the rose blooms, the dying gardens and the sleeping churches of suburbia. The hush of empty consciousness makes it better.

Love and gardens.

It is peaceful to water where a thing grows naturally; otherwise, manipulation, dishonesty, and the hard work of managing death. Love pushes through the black soil and quickly the mechanical mind adheres a label: selfish, ordained, forever, foolish, safe, thirsty. We transplant and graft according to our own design, negating the origin of birth. Love cannot be destroyed, so it ages in cultivation. Yet what of the native, wild swell that must expand and exist outside of our beliefs? The jobless gardner could only sit zazen as a conduit in front of the effortless amplification of that which must grow.

Instead, work – not altogether unhappy or meaningless. But what would happen if the plants decided? What arrangement of love would reshape our yards, our fields, our toil?

Perhaps the salvation of the world starts with a small willingness to let it grow.