Tangled for a Moment

Robins gather in the rain around a boulder in the backyard. And finally – crocus! The bark of the trees is stained on one side as an April wind bullies from the west. My daffodils have not bloomed but their green torsos now stand up from dormancy. The creek overflows and water keeps falling and moving and making a way. One sentence after the next, putting in the work of saying nothing again. Are you here yet?

Waking to sleet tapping at the single pane windows. The dog and I make coffee and a fire before anyone stirs. She curls in front of the fireplace like my favorite gingersnap comma. I'm happy when she's happy; that's the way love works.

And when I fell, he ran up the stairs and called out to me. I could hear him but couldn't answer. How tenderly he saves me every time – love works that way too.

A large pot of chili simmers throughout the storm. This snow and ice sets back my planting plans. I spend the day in the kitchen cooking for the week, stopping occasionally to spy on the sparrows visiting the new feeder for the first time. The robins are getting so fat, despite winter's effort to remain. Hot tea, curry chicken salad, and romaine – love wends a way in the bowls we serve.

The plants saved from the dumpster at the greenhouse are now planted and tended, awaiting better conditions. The pots take up space all around the dining room table and they make me supremely happy. Certain letters are never written, but that is love, too. Do you see?

By late afternoon, there is a lull in the storm. Ice melts off the roof and the old Subaru and the gazebo out back. L decides to sing Winehouse's “Back to Black” at the gig, after a few saxophone features. How worlds cross. How time stutters a bit. How we love our children even though they rise and dissipate into the world like winter woodsmoke tangled in pines for a moment.

I stoke the fire and remember January. I fold the clothes and remember vows. I take a nap and dream of the lake that calls for me. Love is like that too, you know?

There is No Otherwise

The first storm of April barrels through the dinner hour. Snow to thunder to daffodils to rain – Michigan is far from neutral most days. I take tea in the darker hour and hold the numen with both hands. Lips to rim to tea to mouth – the same thought arises every time and I swallow that too.

Morning unfurls a new coverlet of snow. It's a surprise after tending flower shoots and raking leaves on Easter. A fat robin joggles left and right through the deepening layers on the deck. Every year this happens after the softening begins. After the plans for gardens and dirt. After the thaw.

I cannot change my previous path. Yet, would I, if given the chance? I am fully me in any given moment and for reasons I cannot understand, there is no otherwise. At the bookstore today I remembered my affection for field guides. Did you know that the Cardinal flower can only be pollinated by hummingbirds or that the seeds of the Spotted Touch-Me-Not explode and spread in all directions when even slightly brushed? The books become my wildflowers. The image and the words and the weight make do. And I'm going to touch those seeds when I see them because that is me.

In tomorrow's greenhouse, I won't feel the winter or even think on its reluctance to leave. We'll ship the Night Sky petunias and fill bay #6 with begonias and pour dirt into 1000 flats before noon. In tomorrow's greenhouse, I will work hard and sweat through my shirt and sew hopefulness into a million emissaries I will never see again. My fingernails will be stained with soil and its black dust will cover all the freckles on my skin. In tomorrow's greenhouse, I will not think on past paths or how I will touch those who should not be touched; I'll just be Jessica in her own skin making the world a tiny bit greener. That is enough.

What if and Why Not

Lately, words in small bits.

Work in the greenhouse speeds up in a way that makes everything at home slow down. But the deck will be rebuilt and the fencing is to be repaired and the land needs more dirt, more “black gold” as they say around here. Dawn hints behind the tree line as I wait to be touched by light. The dog nudges the bend in my knee to go out – to pursue the rabbit and squirrels and Purrrl, the neighbor's cat, that she will never catch. It's like that, you know?

The unnamed swelling softens a familiar resolve. This morning's nuthatch, tufted titmouse, and lady cardinal jitter attention away from the vanishing blue stain of night. They say snow today. I will be cold in the dress I'm wearing to the wedding. Maybe I'll paint my fingernails black to hide the dirt that won't come out. Maybe I'll have wine and dance, or maybe I'll just get sleepy and walk around the edges the room looking at ghosts. I'd take a picture to share, but, you know. . . 

Etudes, concertos and Heiden's Sonata. Saxophones and hours and auditions. Her playing touches a deep well of pride and maybe ripples with jealousy. I wonder what if and why not. My daughter's passion and joy makes me a believer.

cap and gown / celebrate / Mayo Clinic

recollect / wait / move out

lily-born / my little girl / a star

Meanwhile, curried rice with peas and carrots, ginger tea, and haiku. The manuscript is ready, save for a title. My hardest part. I've been embraced and brought to the balcony overlooking the city. I'm too strong to be pushed now, but never strong enough to break away from the deep gaze into smoldering heat. When I'm honest, I know its all going to be left in ashes.

Rain turning to snow. The black dress feels good on me; I think it will be a fun night.

Pretty with a Bow

When a writer uses a certain turn of phrase or coalesces pieces of thought and experience into intoxication, am I devastated by the being or by the craft? I melt away under the text – paralyzed by the paradox of feeling pliable yet alive in a new and different way. If I saw you on the street or bumped into you in the market, your arms loaded with sacks of food for your family, would I give my Michigan “ope! Sorry!” and touch you arm on my way around, and think: whoa, holiness abounds? Instead, winter's celibacy. My own words. My own craft.

Black coffee, a bitter night in my mouth. I become accustom to the restlessness that agitates before spring. Nights are chopped up with fidgety legs and vivid thoughts. Owls and other noises ask for a part in the drama. 2 a.m. and then 3. The body resists a logical need for sleep and restoration. I resist the resistance. Magnesium, calming oils, a droll podcast. The Sun magazine. Nisargadatta. White embroidery on the navy quilt. Plans to add perennials with more color. No rest for the wicked, they say. I'm okay with that. 

With dawn, the end of choices –

{Ginger tea, yoga bra and shorts, wake the kids. Supplements, pack lunch, and stretch the back, hamstrings and hips for 30 minutes. Hug and kiss the kids goodbye, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, and put on work clothes. Pull back my hair, load up the car, pour more tea, wave to Kyle at the bottom of the stairs.}

And then, drive to work.

I stack the days like cards and voice my displeasure when the dealer gets out of hand. The manuscript sits, crying out: S.O.S. I'll wrap it up, pretty with a bow. But if you could have a hand in it, would you want to?

Instead, wine and Wheezer by myself.

The end isn't the end, ya know? 

Electric Blue

March is anything but flat! Spring one day; winter the next. Garden plans stagger drunkenly home. To zip the cowl of the jacket around my neck is to also think about being pulled closer, a hand pressing against my pale throat, with the forefinger and thumb tightening along my jawline. A hitch in my breath. Are you with me?

The road is always here, gathering the intentions of travelers and collecting the last efforts of every season. Soon enough the path will swoon with leggy grasses and lilies maybe. The bridges will cup chattering streams and the water will birth the fascination of those that cannot stay away. Walk with me.

My new shoes are for the greenhouse work. To save my back. To save the world. Electric blue. Beyond. Write it down. Fall in. Stay under with me, okay?

I may be unbearable – my shoulders and back – the flame of my breath – the pace at which I lean in to press on the sore places.

Yet if you tell me you saw the sparrows, the color of branches, lined up on the wire on Main Street

or that you drank whiskey in the hayloft with the ghosts of your grandfather

or you heard my name clinging to sunrise as it spread across the frosted meadow unto your kitchen window pane

then, we would kiss a little

and remove our winter coats

to welcome the unraveling  

of spring 

Soon Is

Michigan remains. White pines, sand dunes, and the first thawing trill of returning red-winged blackbirds. Hardy yet shifting – this land is a migrant of season and harbinger of change. And there is always water.

A fresh snowfall to cover brave shoots of daffodil and crocus. This time of year always spurs an affection towards renewal. Please send sun!

The greenhouse fills and fills, and I am aware of every plant. Thousands of times a day, my fingers invest deeply into pillowy dirt, soft enough to blow away with a sneeze. Geranium, licorice, bacopa. Fuschia, petunia, vinca. This job of adding plants into the world is medicinal. In this work, forgiveness, beauty, and grace.

Soon, a new deck and restored fencing. Soon, manicured walking paths and mulch and fresh dirt. Soon, to scrape the remnants of a long hard winter into brown bags and compost corners and yard waste bins. Soon is hope. Soon is the lavender wreath on my gray front door. Soon is treating the wounds of winter with a salve found in the renewal of what is meant to be. This is how love remains . . . in the blackbird wings of almost here.

A Moment's Economy

Tonight's moon brings about the pangs of spring. I remember several nights when we carried moonlight on our backs unto dawn. To be in love is not real. To be driven by elation and desire is madness. These and other statements corroborated by the passing light of March's first moon.

The snow is gone but will return in a bit. This is the way Michigan prepares for robins, fawns and fireflies. Yet in the greenhouse, we push and coax and foster life with our own bodies. Each day, we fill bays and hang baskets. We plant and pour dirt. Prune and heal. And each day, my back breaks and legs give way. To the other.

“Sometimes we must destroy a village to save it,” the woman said. I hate her less now for saying it, but I can not agree. Perhaps I have been saved, but in a moment's economy, that means nothing.

In Ohio, crocus and bees. We've not yet sprouted this far north. But my shoulders are stronger and almost ready for the earth work. The dog won't be cuddled or pet before breakfast. She simply cannot.

Beauty is calling; I feel her. Reading, writing, waiting. Wanting? Walking, remembering, and the ability to right one's self. I do miss the together feeling of 3 a.m., or was it 4? The moon passes through the oak and maple but gets caught in the backyard pines. By this paragraph, a new day. Light from the East recommends peace.

Peace be with you.

On and On and On

White on white on white – I shuffle up the street and notice all the windows winking icicle eyelashes my way. It is easy to think that winter is softening after spending all day in the greenhouse, planting, cutting, and eating dirt. Yet still, snow falls on snow. And ice grows from soffits and spigots. In single digit temperatures, the snow squeaks under my boots as I force sore muscles to move into that which is difficult. Maybe there is something to the rejection of comfort. Maybe there are many things to reconsider. The road barely rises, but it turns and turns and turns.

The writing lately oozes like blackstrap molasses – darker, thicker, slow in coming. But by the time it reaches the tongue, it satisfies with a bittersweet melt. How else is winter endured except for the imaginings of crocus or fresh-picked blueberries or a meeting on that old trail you always used to talk about? Jacket on sweatshirt on t-shirt on bra.

The chickadee percolates on the heavy pine branch, knocking off snow here and there. He sees me seeing him, at the table the with tea and books and tissues. I asked him where the cardinals are lately but his response is flight. My friends are vacationing in warm places and posting pictures of dancing with Dominicans and naked feet and water for miles. Hot water on ginger tea on Stevia on Japanese tea cups.

The neighborhood unrolls with daylight and like the universe, its contents are only fathomable with arbitrary measures and designs. I'm not counting on anyone to explain it anymore. Just walk with me in the continuous, away from the mind and its treacherous games. Treads on snow on squeak on ears on walk on white on white on white.

A Church Never Refused

Fifty degrees breaks a fast, unlocking the appetites of spring for a moment. Yet, after only two days of balmy reprieve, it feels like a betrayal when wind slips past one's jacket and under the shirt. Sleety fingernails screech down the bedroom window and I stare at it – waiting in the same place for a different result. Or though it seems, just before February.

But next week, the greenhouse work. I register the juxtaposition of two seasons separated by a thin, plastic sheet. The next morning, winter's new lace has me dressing for a church I can never refuse. But in the greenhouse, dirt and humidity. When clumsy snow melts off the vented roof, awareness of winter's parallel universe breaches what is. Every day is a greenhouse day, in that, one can always be pulled from one moment into another, aware of resistance and comfort and things that cannot be sutured, even for logic's sake.

Do you love when you are not in love? Are elements missing from the room? A sunrise meditation unhinges the soul from the imaginings of the body, and it all begins to coalesce or brim or swim in the essence of a secret. And we who meet in this secret follow the trail back to our very first poem, the first inkling of the honorable scandal contained within all of life. We take the path in order to be liberated from the destination. That is it!

So to stay at the beginning, through memory and longing, is to be mired by the end. For a freer now, it is better to be aware of worlds coming into one another, weaving new variations on love.

with me –
the shy joy
of eclipse

Map to Immortality

Day begins in an ordinary dark. Remnants of dreams suggest that no one can free you except yourself. It makes sense at 4 a.m., but the tangle of day knots another narrative altogether. You turn the light on and wait in bed for the next directive: feed the dog, take your pills, make breakfast, prod the teenagers to life. Earl Grey tea and apple slices. You sit to write but remember that you know nothing. The edges of words become mushy and their meanings matter even less. Instead, stacks of reading. You remember Nisargadatta and Singh and the other guru who knows the way home, yet has never seen how you are changed and satisfied in his company. Glittering dawn breaks through after a seamless gray. Nothing is a mistake unless repeated. So, a new way? Sunlight spies on you through the french door windows as you watch black squirrels kick snow all along the fence line. Finger-smudged light switches; dishes in the sink. Curry is the spice of life! From table to couch to bed to sink, you work and pace and settle and think. You sing “Zombie” in honor of the departed and play air drums and guitar at all the right parts. The snow plow rattles the windows as it makes it way around the cul-de-sac. There is no more longing for spring, only survival. Only this. The shower is a retreat from freezing, and the water's rhythm soothes the rough edges. You wash the body with slow care – a gentle departure from the rush of completing the day's tasks. Geranium Lime essential oil, purple underwear, black bra, jeans and a tired hoodie with loose threads on the sleeve. Socks, Adidas. The day is half gone but you are newer than that. You are wondering and awake – doing the right thing for each moment – being effortless, for a time anyway. A sprig of lavender is pressed as far into the crease as possible. Page break. Do you know that I nominated that poem for its map to immortality? Dinner, dishes, and the family's diaspora. You crawl into bed to part with the day. And the dreams, they lead back to you.

Arriving Off Book

In late afternoon, a fog weaves through the leggy limbs of backyard pine and oak. So close and low, weighted with woodsmoke, I want to touch it. You, born of winter, what do you see?

There was a certain mastery in the beginning – an ease of openness, a pure stone awaiting its name. Now, there is only a white path deep through the woods, softening unto the earth. The melt arrives off book, off calendar. I open the windows to air out the house. For the first time in weeks, the smell of dirt and pine and wet bark. I gather it and rise. 

Notes and letters bridged a second path, another life, all those days ago. It isn't too difficult to go about one's day in absentia. Perhaps the calling will always be that of a missionary: here and not, a conduit to another way. I was possessed by it all though, you know?

now I am grounded
like red wine
spilled

aimless
but not

lost

Opossum tracks glisten like little stars in the vanishing ice. I watch them walk away for hours and am satisfied when they disappear. While we sleep, everything will be replenished – snow, ice, tracks – the collusion says “now” and “not now.” What cannot be said remains and therefore, the metaphors stretch out longingly and abysmally and infinitely. We parted company in the mirror, you and I.

It's easier to say nothing – to work hard at going nowhere. The seeds become wet in all this receding and they begin swell in the feeder as the fog roils with a winter's intensity. Crossed legged, simple hearted, I have no questions to ask and no thing to offer –

except

maybe

this

Strip Already

No birds at the feeder; no rabbit tracks leading away from the deck. That there is shelter should be grace enough. How bare simplicity speaks in the strictest economy.

When it is this cold, one has to move to avoid the deep sleep that pools below the surface of things. Secular thoughts grow best in this garden of survival, or so it seems that they stretch across the skin in an effort to conserve heat. One deliberate step in front of the other in snow this deep. There is no quiet in that. Only work.

Naked saints lead to full contact. How they strip matters not to the bluejays or the cardinals, nor do the birds care what happens under the drifts. So just strip already.

before the gray
becomes a lake again
undress

Cold columns of wind plate ice onto the inside of the windows. Soup mutters on the stove. Bread swells in the oven. How winter swaddles the loose and restless yearning for April!

A thin band of sunlight breaks through just long enough for a thought. A holy hitch triggers an avalanche of gratitude. Yes, January stings. But where men's eyes cannot see, the remnants of last year gives way to whatever is next. Begin again. And again. What choice is there?

Anonymous Monks and the Graveyard Silence

A few sentences too many, perhaps.

After midnight, the moonlight turns bedroom blinds blueish for a change.

And with the sun now strangled, there are only the odd juxtapositions to consider, like snow on the boardwalk or houseplants staring outside at dead relatives.

Answers once etched in fragile frost are covered in the graveyard silence of hibernation.

Yet every once in a while the Great Horned Owl gives testimony just before dawn in deference to the anonymous monk that used to slide scraps of wisdom under my door.

Who isn't here matters. And yet, who is here remains steadfast.

I stretch out forever gray – beyond graves, beyond horizon – as wounded winter squalls cry throughout the night.

Here and there, moments of light dab the granite sheath one cannot shed.

Still, the intimate intrusion of poetry and image.

Or cardinals nesting in the rhododendron.

And the constellations' unframed cartography watching over the pulsating escape of heat.

It is all okay.

It has always been okay.

October Lacks Subtlety

The heart as a suitcase, carrying the things we have packed ourselves. 

For so many years, it has seemed that she bent to hear the center of her chest saying: this one or that one or none or all or yes or no or we shall see. And then later, down another path, one dappled with flickering marigold, the universe said: there is no she to hear the heart and there is no heart apart from every heart of every universe of every everything. Who is this one who is unassimilable?

Cold ginger peach tea because I am a sipper. In the grid of slanted light growing across tired floorboards up onto the arm of the couch, the last of the leaves finish act one of the shadow play. How October lacks subtlety. One must shuffle through scattering leaves to get anywhere these days. No sweetener for me, please.

Supramental consciousness. Can't we all just get along? Contrasted truths cannot be real, yet they add to the creativity of Oneness. Even winter is pursued by unity! I am tired of withholding, my love.

Colder now, the dog and I still walk. If unleashed, she would go further and further, not looking back until she had gone too far. The man on NPR said that the inside of a beehive smells like musty butterscotch due mainly to the influence of goldenrod. Lately I mouth crystalized honey in the fashion of communion wafers from the old days, but I am neither prodigal or Thomas. Maybe I am just a common sparrow eating whatever is left for me.

Lately, that familiar siren call to retreat. The calendar's permission is withheld and I am a sullen teenager brooding in the dark about it. Which heart is not yet filled to capacity?

The wind makes a fuss but the sun is full and bright and pouring down all over dancing decay. I must finish the tea and walk the bones as far off the porch as my world will allow.

Kissing Keyholes

The problem is imagination – perfect for art or innovation or whimsy or building a robot. Imagination constructs glimmering bridges of possibility and what-if and maybe. It is a pulse that has the power to ignite some way forward.

But it is also a cancer creeping undetected at the margins. How many hours spent tending a granite garden? How many picnics by the river fail to fold up neatly in one's backpack after the long, slow, first kiss under falling leaves or shooting stars or firefly discos?

Keeping just enough wine in the bottle to get to sleep. How imagination eats at the seams. How it hovers at the door, kissing keyholes. How it skips across the stillness in the lake.

We who listen to every thing will not hear the wind in the leaves much longer. At this latitude, in the tenth month, the mandatory acquiescence of a darker, colder dawn constricts every morning. Violet light creeps through branches in various stages of undress. Soon, only sky in its granite palette. Gradient gunmetal pushed upward by woodsmoke and deep sighs.

This family has built each member, each universe, into one another so that there is no peeling bark or extrication of a whole. What or who one touches, touches all. What one does, is done unto all. There is no otherwise. Yet, in the imaginings, there is no community – only selfish satisfaction of one moment existing as a bountiful island in a happy sea. Both truths refuse to be set down, like a pure white pelt carried further and further into January.

10 / 17

October arriving.

The gray squirrel bawls a raspy convulsion in a 3 second loop.

Dead oak leaves fall upon dead maple leaves in piles shaped like prehistoric continents – almost connecting an entire dead world.

In a dream last night, sink holes kept opening up on the road and I could do nothing to help others until I made myself safe.

The fireplaces are not in use yet, but burning leaves hang an ancestry in the air at night like a garland of bon voyage. October welcoming goodbye.

So Persephone naps.

For lunch, a chilled lentil salad with balsamic vinegar and lemon water.

I procrastinate a shower because even the thought of being cold and naked evokes shockwaves up my spine and down my limbs.

He takes one first so I jump in after.

Warmer.

October arriving.

The circumference of sunlight throughout the forest broadens.

And my freckles are still visible, especially against white shower walls.

Maybe I've always been an object, best used by hungry men. That's not true, of course. But maybe. 

Wildflowers and Free Falling and Las Vegas and Puerto Rico and you don't know how it feels – now you are October.

Light as a refugee; the painted forest falls.

Another glass of wine or whiskey, if you please. Kiss me, I'm Irish, so keep the “e.”

Camel and caramel and carmine colored proof of letting go. The leaves will only take it so far.

But you wreck me baby. So I breath it all in deep and save exhalation for later. Gator.

October arriving.

Out of Line

The torment and art of letters unwritten arrives at dawn in a certain angle of light that reminds one of what she knows, which, of course, is absolutely nothing. Rainbow cables connecting pine branches. Evergreen bushes topped with crispy golden oak leaves like a peach cobbler or Mom's sour cream coffee cake. No matter how tightly the scroll is rolled and sealed and bound in cement to be thrown in the deepest part of the darkest sea, the words migrate or lift or arrive like a searing flame every – single – day. There is no other way to say this: I've been branded.

This heart is out of line – a destroyer constructed to open the veins, to add red to the cool tones of a perfect painting. One step closer, two steps back. That is how the ravenous protects the ones they love; it is how they pray.

Roiling under the exterior. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. The mantra collides with lava; hence, brimstone. Hence the writing that only arrived when two flames licked the air they shared, almost touching. Almost combusting.

Yesterday I found the black moleskine in which he took dictation for me while I drove. After every poetic thought or observation written, he added his own “ * kisses. * ” Because he loves me in some sort of fireproof way.

The temperature drops enough for the heat to kick on. Forced air smells collected and artificial and it reminds me at the sensory level that I can't have it both ways.

Beckett mentioned MIT which is only 4 more hours of driving time from here than Michigan Tech, and did you know that Michigan is always under Massachusetts in the scroll-down menus when you have to pick your state online?

Lake Michigan is not the sea but it looks like the sea and behaves like the sea. And it's warmer in the summer and freezes around the edges sometimes in the winter. The variance wobbles with the weight of differences that converge. The question now is, what is the temperature at the edges at the merge?

I'd like to know more about that.

Unhinging

Reading MRI orders and notes on Chiari malformations and the face of her neurologist through finger-smudged glasses. What mattered yesterday takes a backseat to this moment. And the next. Dad sits in on the appointment; he's worried or he doesn't want to miss something or he hates that he is no longer practicing medicine. And he loves us. The medical system is a leviathan writhing up from the depths to assist or destroy, depending on how one plays the game of survival.

A storm lingers after a 4 a.m. The darker dawn opens its throaty yawn just enough to reveal leaves unhinging with the rain. I stretch out a choppy sleep under the overhang on the deck forgetting about the silver dollar spider and her masterwork up in the left corner. Shit shit shit! I bring down the work, and her ghost crawls all over my neck and shoulders for the rest of the morning.

Lately, dark matter and everything else that exists that cannot be perceived. Maybe there is something to that place where math and the un-mappable intersect. A constant overturning of truth, the great abstract, the undiluted unseen – we are here because of the invisible. So, not dark matter, transparent matter.

How the light bends changes things – an untrustworthy account of a surpassing Other.

through / beyond / right here

The foliage is more yellow than red, which does not make one color better than another but it does satisfy a heart's vacuum for variance. That's the best way I can explain what is going on here.

Leaf management strategy. Clear a little as you go or wait for the final drop? The others who toil along the way will not appreciate the wind's helping hand in carrying the uncollected masses into their clarity. But the leaf pick-up crew charges per visit. The leaves will heap taller than the old Subaru, the entire length of the driveway, and backs will ache from now until the first snowfall. A suburban forest and its drawbacks.

A few blooms yet. Though, October's vampire falls in love with his hunger while we sleep, slowly sipping a little off the top each night. I still want things in the distance. I still need to see.

Nothing in the Perfect Amount

Savoring each inch, crawling over September, straddling one's way up into Libra's seat. I know what must die to get there, yet a delight engages in the slow burn.

Waiting on clouds from the West. The parched earth adds resonance to leaves scraping out a landing. This drought seems to quiet the jays who usually have something to say. Yet the heron says nothing in the perfect amount. A dropped feather floats and to watch it drift away is the fitting end to that which can never.

In the patchwork clearing of night's humidity, a few peek-a-boo constellations take requests. I ask for a song wrapped in a blood-orange maple leaf, folded in tomorrow's envelope. October is around the bend and it will place the lyrics gently swaddled in the manger of what remains. Outside of thought. Outside of wisdom. Outside of winter's calipers measuring a girl's worth.

Don't untie the knots just yet; the flow is not as impotent as one might think.

The sedum blushes a little deeper and the canopy begins to yawn. October is for strolling, for woodsmoke, for thicker blankets and socks. When the wind blows, a murmuration of leaves shoves the breath and mind off into a brief and brilliant holiday elsewhere. He says I pronounce “else” with an “n” between the “l” and the “s.” And . . . he turns 16 today and I can't imagine my life without him.

While the acorns stole the show with percussive downbeats, pines steadily dropped their needles unnoticed. As if overnight, a copper flag unfurled over hostas and archangel and stone-stepped pathways. This is a certain paradise I cannot refuse.

there are others
in the arms of autumn
along the way

On The Table

Glinting strands wave and disappear in the barely breeze. Early morning is the only time bearable to be out in late September's bizarre heatwave. I walk with the heathens Sunday morning. Each street lends a theme along the way – frying sausage, cinnamon rolls, laundry in the dryer. At the park, September's potpourri fills each of the senses. Sunlight heats the last of the blooms to an earthy musk mingled with leaves already surrendered. Downy goose feathers rest in cradles of yellowing grass and resplendent beads are held over in the soaring humidity. How unexpected and happy Michigan can be!

Lately, stacks of cookbooks. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. Woolf and other meaningful coalescing.

A red-sickle moon negating all queries. The tip-toeing girl, the night skulker, the one who gets so far away . . . she will drift if she has the chance. She will wield that scythe in harvest and in justification and when leveling the overgrowth of perception. What is incomplete lingers and then laughs at being thought of as “incomplete.” Can you imagine that kiss?

The room of windows acts like a greenhouse on these sweltering days. Dime-sized lakes pool on the houseplant leaves; I dip my my middle finger in, turn my wrist up, and taste. It's not mine to consume, but tasting is okay, yes? There is enough.

No more firefly messengers. No more phantasm chances to skinny dip in black waters. Kora nuzzles one of the last fuschia blooms and a pollen-drunk bee lumbars from the magenta cup. She snaps at it, startling at my objection. There are whole trees without leaves now, just in the last day or so. Still autumn waters show everything.

The neurologist ordered another MRI and assembled a neurosurgical team to discuss the issue. How quickly a daughter's life flickers in her mother's heart when brain surgery is on the table! “On the table” becomes a leaky, watercolor phrase, bleeding here and there until there is no stain left on the invoice. She told the doctor that her band schedule is paramount and he pointed his pen at her and said: no it isn't.

Winter showers soon enough, but today I sweat a great heat through my pores and wonder about what else I need to taste before it is no longer on the table.