I Am Withheld

The pines wave as if to reiterate that one cannot go back.

I want no grave, no headstone to chisel, no plot to purchase or pray to or protect. Yet dead authors call us to their bone yards, or so we think when the wind carries just right through the purpling hills of passing seasons.

One bottomless moment stretches from horizon to horizon. I can smell autumn's transition to sterility. Damp pavement to decaying leaves to woodsmoke to nothing.

To meander around the banks of a riverbed, following the rise and fall of whatever the land has to offer, is to feel something. It is to love more than the mind allows. One could even forget to ask why.

Have I been distracted by teachers this whole time? It is so easy to say that the world is bound and suffering. But then words and images arrive to point towards a beauty and freedom – a moment to moment reckoning of dark and light. Yet we do not trust them! No, not “we”; it is I who does not trust.

I saw the photograph of myself and did not recognize the woman. This and other ways I am withheld. In my dream, we were at Mass together in a long oaken pew. We recited the prayers from our childhood, word for word in sync. But behind the words, we offered up the fullness of the universe with our eyes. A smiling nun. The disrobed priest. How the steeple claims the view!

Night plunges all at once, and so light huddles in houses and bakeries and workshops. Ginger snaps and chamomile tea. The impermanence of consumption can linger warmly in the mouth. Maybe that's what happens when I'm brought to my knees.

No Water and No Seeds

All night the wind shreds piled leaves ready for pickup. Ice pellets pepper the bedroom window, breaking dreams into high pitched shards. Then a milky dawn, softer. And the first snow fall. Sometimes the work we meant to do must rest. Did I ever mean to do any of it all?

In the surgical waiting room, my sister called. It was hard to speak about how he was doing or what the nurses said or the briskness of the surgeon. How the sun and moon dance around my children! Without one of them, everything would be in fact unlivable.

I love hospitals. Everyone has a role vital to healing and well-being. When we are most vulnerable, even the simplest kindness is seen as a great miracle. The drama of emergency and the unknown outcome of trying this or that to save a life calls a person to immediate and unflinching attention.

K. goes for Starbucks and I scroll through poetry wrapped bite-sized brevity. The authors couldn't have known how they held a trembly mother that day. We sit side by side in plastic covered chairs waiting to know – too nervous to hold hands or talk about anything more significant than the predictions for a snowy winter.

The creek in the backyard is broken again. Water slips away under a sad song dead of leaves. The birds don't visit now because there is no water and no seeds. One can only ask for repair so many times. What I cannot fix myself has ramifications. That's the way dim eyes see it for now. Snow piles. The sun hides a bit longer.

I drive through my racist town, but the men hold the door open for me and carry my pizzas to the car when my arms are full of soda. Women fill shoeboxes with gifts at Christmas for the needy and children ride their bikes from church to church to do service projects and mission trips and overall do-goodery. Yet they pray to the orange god of capitalism, exchanging their soul for food on the table and Christmas gifts under a slaughtered tree. What is legal takes power away from those who cannot breathe. How does one walk through this terrible dream? I want to fall away. I want to fall. I want to. I want. I.

We've underestimated our enemy, friends. And overestimated our friends. Paul and his poverty points out my blackened knees: Lord, take it away from me!

Playing Opossum

A dim day clinging to bare branches. The smell of fog and the way one can't quite see or hear the world as it was. Beauty and injustice, hidden all the same. The way I see it is not at all the way it is. Perhaps we would kiss like that, at least once.

The cashier asked if the asparagus was green onions; this and other ways to fall in love. One walks around in a white haze and wonders what the world would seem like without the clarity of news feeds revealing exactly how it seems. Must one be untrained to love? Unplugged? I've studied cause and effect long enough. Can we just let it be?

I have a thing for wooden beams – rough hewn, strong, and dashing in simplicity. Growing up in the A-frame loft, the pine walls came to an apex under a single large cedar beam running the length of the house. I remember apologizing to the dead trees and thanking them for protecting me as I slept under their care. So much is left to tell of this story. Can we talk all night? It will take longer than that, something you have always known.

A small opossum plays opossum in the back yard. The dog doesn't really know what to do with it other than bark. This and other small delights in the delay of snow. In mid-November I am walking without a coat and can't help but adore Michigan and her strange reluctance for sticking to the plan.

Tamped Too Soon

East into a criminal moon – stolen words and breath and hearts. The women in the front seats spoke about Yale football games and climbing northeastern mountains as I snoozed from one reality to another. We'd stop in Cleveland this time but every cell begged for the murderous surrender of the Tidal East. They asked what I wanted to do if I ever made it to Connecticut. It was not poetic to say, “head towards Emily and my heart.”

Small acts of love as an answer to paralysis. How clearly the teacher beams light these days! Is it too much to ask for more? More please. More.

In that way maybe the new darkness is okay.

The leaf pile is taller than the old red Subaru, and there hasn't even been time to address the fallen in the backyard. We won't reach them all before the snow and so it is that spring is already sabotaged. That work, a futile waste. Yet through the toil of fresh decay and its comparison to the passion of being, a clarity asks after the teenage girl curled in the corner studying MLK's every . . . single . . . word. Do you remember her?  Born with a fire tamped too soon.  

That girl resists the futile. And that girl also insists: now?

Dawn sneaks in behind a frosty fog. Blowers before daylight; machines grating against an already serrated countenance. A sandalwood candle for love's sake and the aftermath bound by an empty pool. Libra sets to work in weighing an escape towards peace against the actions for justice. Though one searches for balance, isn't even that dualistic? One against another in the hopes of neutrality.

I guess in the middle of all these words and weighing, hope.

And certain prayers.

And always the immeasurable moonrise in my east.

The Woman's Work

Winter's delay means the air tastes like leeks longer than usual. The breeze now does the work, each gust sending missionaries out to save the world. This and other generosities of trees.

I am guilty of hating – of matching difference and injustice with anger. A ripple on the pond some say. Yet I begin to sink, lower than the swale. Under the muck.

Love. Yes, Love. I recognize the spark igniting, just like old times when it opened the door to the universe. More please.

The coffee and I, watered down a little too much. One writes from a lesser place. Yet there is no scrawling apart from the moment the moon turned his face down to answer me. Always this.

The son's surgery and the daughter's mononucleosis. The dog won't drink water unless it is from a creek and the husband wraps a braid of work, global heartache, and family life around his neck. He's angry with his wife and he doesn't know why. The country flinches under the new regime and there is more abuse rising. Each inflammation consumes its host. Yet the woman collects the maladies and tucks them in her basket to be carried every where, every day.

She must not go down.

Some say fight. Some say love. Some say deal with it.

The woman just asks for help carrying the basket home from the river.

Nothing Turns Back

Plainly, I look up to find untouchable light. To the eye, all light is light. Yet to the skin . . . distance does end up making a difference, no?

Hot green tea and a peanut butter honey sandwich. My (yes, my) mustard chair faces the pew, and with the steady steam of falling gold against today's inexhaustible blue, I am indeed reminded to pray.

But I confess nothing. No sin comes or goes. No contrition calls out for bloody knees. I've let my heart burst when it must and ache when it recognized a piece of itself in the other. Attention was given and paid to light and dark and east and west and blankets and ferns. The thought has crossed my mind that I am not the woman anyone believes me to be. How long will this theatre endure? How long does the river hold one's scent after wading ankle deep? Knee deep? Waist?

The odd warmth November gives. The payback winter exacts on the greed of hopefulness. We'll never get all the leaves up. K says that the pine on the west side of the house is dying and I say that I know. Has asks why. It embroiders my bedroom window (yes, my) and there used to be days when all I could do was stare at it for hours from my bed. So I said I killed it with my humanity and he mentioned that maybe I don't have the special powers that I think I do.

Clocks turn back for light's sake. But now my son is 6' 3” and my daughter visits colleges and I hold them longer than they hold me. More than ever, the second hand deafens in a hushed house.

Nothing really turns back.

How the red-orange light piles onto itself with even a hint of autumn breath! And despite what the man on top of the mountain knows, I am working my way up, counting every color that falls before my feet.

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.