Three Heartbeats and a Hill of Bones

In last night's dream, I walked through an unfamiliar village. Coming upon small groups of newborn elephants bound together, I saw their eyes had turned white from abuse. The barely conscious babies were kept alive to ensure freshness. I wept as I climbed a hill rising high above the village. At the top, a freshly painted sign read: Hill of Bones.

A regressing moon shimmers through the east facing window and begs blue respectfully upon my books and nightstand and pillow. It's not hard to love January nights when they give like this. But dawn does come, not brightly, not refreshingly, it just comes. Feed the dog. Cook oatmeal and make coffee. Prep the fireplace for a slow burn. Today will be a just-here kind of day.

Yesterday, driving home, the sun was setting in my eyes around 5:15, which means the days are slightly gaining length in a way that puts a flutter in my stomach. Halfway hope meets halfway here. The greenhouse work should start any day, and so too the reclamation of my body adrift. I'm not sure how else to do it.

In the moment before the snow begins, before I even know it's that moment, I am struck by the stillness of the pine branches and the absence of birds at the feeder and the roofs dressed in uninterrupted white. No cloud rushes by. No squirrel dances along the picketed privacy fence. No wind tips resting snow off oak and maple branches. Then, as if a dream, a light confetti begins to catch my eye. With a slight breeze pushing weightless snow left to right, it takes no more than 3 heartbeats to become everything I can see. It is this, this unexpected hitch in the way I inhale, which causes me to know exactly who I am. And I don't need faith anymore because I know who you are, too.



Assume Wind But Hope Cardinal

What if tea was made for me? What if bread? What if soup? What if that one action was everything? Because it is. At least, I think it would be.

The rhododendron bush shivers. I assume wind but hope cardinal. In the joy of my winter, it is both. The first cardinal this year shows itself to me and in this way I am restored. Relieved? Reborn.

No sunlight manages to break through the stone ceiling. Yet today, birds crowd the feeders: nuthatch, titmouse, chickadee, and a red bellied woodpecker. The dog has taken to whining anytime a squirrel disrupts the bird stations. I don't blame her but she does call attention to my own irritation with fattened thieves. A sharp rap on the window is effective for a moment only.

These days meander with a bite. My bones are consumed by a hostile glacier of ache that creeps ahead without consent. Another sweatshirt, more blankets and second pair of socks. A hot shower. More tea. In bed I trace the white stitching of palm-sized flowers floating on a navy sea. I came upon love like shell awash at low tide, a surprise existing with or without me. The shell exists for every one and in my exploring hands, for a tiny moment, it also exists for me. But do not search for it. Do not walk the beach looking for the prize conch because a found treasure after expectation is another thing entirely.

At 4 a.m., a full and glaring moon urges the wakefulness I am accustom to in this kind of season. Lately I use this time to pour over cookbooks in the hopes of reconnecting with something I lost a while back. A way of giving. Green tea. Hot soup. A slow dance in the kitchen.

How far away I can fly in the dark.

An Essay or a Letter

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” – Hemingway

I have nothing to offer. The sun rises and sets behind oatmeal clouds. I think my friends believe that a few hours of sunlight is a laser treatment for the mangled tissue that piles up along the ventricles. It's nice to know they care though. “Be the light” and all that jazz . . . I still wake. I still make my bed by tucking hope into the sides. I still do my best to stay aware of what is.

There are things that I miss though. This collection of joys and depths and aromas of life that make up Jessica has a fingerprint. And though the seasons roll through without regard to whom is observing it all, Jessica's DNA is inescapably mapped out to be affected. The absence of sunlight breaking through is more than just a backdrop for the details of life. Energy in measurable effort is expended trying to make up the difference of missing light. Building fires, keeping lights on all day, forcing movement so that the very nonhuman act of hibernation does not take over entirely . . . all of these things rake through a typical day in order to avoid death. With so much effort and consumption devoted to existence for 6 months out of the year, what does it mean for the sunny months? What does Jessica mean?

In April, do I commune more entirely with existence in a way that erases winter's sentence? Living moment to moment is just as much a dip into true reality as it is a survival tactic; so, the first full glorious day of sunshine in spring should be a location of ascension. By almost every account, it is. Yet, how does one abandon all the pathways that supported life in the darkness? Conversely, how does one handle being a repository for complete expansion day after sun-filled-bird-chirping-flower-erupting day without the old wineskin bursting? Don't give me the adages about how maybe it's okay for the old to pass away or about how it is symbolically good for the skin to break open to allow for growth and new life. It doesn't go down that way. Sure, with eyes closed, chin tipped towards the all encompassing savior burning in the sky, all is well. But after, when inside the house tending to the needs of a communal existence, there is an ache to diffuse in the sunlight again or more or always. Every spring and summer day begins with the work of balancing the desire to be swallowed by the sun and the work of assimilating one's place in the world.

During this yawing, the length of days is noticeable, at first only subconsciously, but like aging memories, dawn and dusk blur away from their longest recollections. Winter is always imminent. There are those sweltering, melty days of summer that should keep frostbite at bay. Yet they do not. Like the shimmering heat mirage in the distance, winter's millstone is visible just ahead of summer months that flee.

Winter hurts. It isn't my first choice to write about the tar that keeps me anchored at the edge of the abyss. But this bleeding and constant wincing exists on the other side of bookstores and cabins in the woods and hey-I'm-alive-aren't-I moments.

But darling, listen: in all of this murkiness, I still know love when I see it and feel it and read it and become it. I am not lost due to that lucidity. Writing what hurts is just a place to start. Let's see what happens next.




Yin Yang of Place

There comes a point whereby gray must do and be and elicit something else. A black squirrel dances along the fingertips of the privacy fence, pausing here and there in an apparent stare. The rain has ended and sub-freezing temperatures have returned. There is no comfort in the sky or on the ground or around the bare trees that only click and clack together in the gnawing wind. Before everyone wakes I can still trick muddy ears into hearing the sea. No birds today. No sounds but the ticking wall clock, the rise and fall of the furnace and the occasional whimper of a dreaming dog. No sea. No sun. Am I made to come apart?

Let me start again . . .

Books and shelter and food. Family, dog, music. Health. A fire smoldering in the hearth of hearts. It's okay. I'm okay. I know love and love knows me. In this version I cull my blessings and wring them for every last drop. It's sunny somewhere. Meditate. Contemplate less. Fold the monastery linens and put them neatly away. Exercise. Drink green smoothies. Disconnect. Walk. Read; I am dead in the water without reading.

For literally seconds, the famished gray hood thins enough for sunlight to pierce and pulse through empty branches. It bobsleds down white, pristine roofs to finally tinge the valleys of my laugh lines. Tears brim before the light is gone. Here's the thing I'm trying to say: Michigan is stunning in all of its wild iterations and yet, its dark cloak is just too heavy for me to bear. My home it too heavy.

White chicken chili bubbles on the stove given by my sister when I moved back to the United States.
The “happy lamp” is stationed on the round oak table that used to be my childhood epicenter while growing up on Gun Lake.
My brother called – my niece is done with the Jenny Lind bed that I slept on for 18 years and he'd like me to come pick it up.
That is only half of the equation that binds my feet to this pine scented, freshwater, yin yang of place. The “how” of enduring is some kind of oasis shimmering in the untouchable distance.

For now, another dawn. I make my bed and cook for those who need me and try to stop fleeing from the writing that writes me.


12-31-98

Treading on the brink of a calendar turn. It doesn't matter and it does. I got married on this day 20 years ago so when one talks about lines in the sand and sands in the hour glass and shifting sands and burying heads in the sand, it means something tangible. Day to day, ashes to ashes, the seasons proceed regardless of what we rob from them. I remember walking the length of the church after the wedding, letting each pew of guests out, one by one. The floor was carpeted in a dizzying floral design and the church was glowing with candles and Christmas lights and poinsettias. Hundreds of hearts were with us. But hundreds of hearts were knowing hard things. “You're so beautiful...congratulations...good luck.” I left something on the altar. I didn't mean to. I meant to remember everything. I meant to be fully collected. There was a terrible snowstorm during the ceremony. The church was positioned on a steep hill in downtown Grand Rapids. In the icy snow, the limo started slipping backwards before we could step in. They shut the highway down and told people to stay off the roads. And yet, over 400 people came to the party. We danced all night and ate pizza and watched the Times Square ball drop. People still say that it was the most fun wedding they had ever witnessed. This day is marked on the inside of my skin. It's enough, right? We are different now, together and apart. I was born on the water but I didn't marry the water. I am safe and dry. Loved. Allowed. Consulted. I sleep in bed but I dream in breast strokes and back floats. I walk to the water. I run to the water. I am made in two ways and I honor them both today.




. . .

A rivery paragraph . . .

What is there to own? Even the smallest, water-smoothed stone, when considered intimately, leads to unending depths of the cosmos. And aside from the integrity of where ever I am going, there is nothing that suggests I possess anything. Yet, limitless meaning flows under, around and through. When the light is just right, a five petaled flower floating and turning on the stream's surface casts a shadow three times its size below. I am smitten by wonder, to be sure. I am not the first to suggest that wonder is love directed. Cut boulders, rushing water, and the trees lending darkness and depth to a flowing existence of awareness and mystery and breath. He said, even more than fidelity, it is wonder that keeps marriages alive. Summer's long shadows from golden arrows are not here, but the river remains. The sky is more gray than blue. The ground more brown than green. My boots meet the banks and then . . . nothing.



More Tea Please

The early morning sky smiled for a moment as if it were an invitation to gather east like readied lavender. It makes me think about visiting an unfenced place and let's be honest, it’s about more than just visiting. After a week of travel, Christmas at Gun Lake. The ice forming on the lake is only thick enough for an occasional bird landing. Fisherman are itchy as the shanties wait along the snowless shore for moving day. The visit goes well with the exception a few clashes of unthoughtful posturing and declaration. Times of gratefulness and love are interrupted by the exacting John-Wick-draw of a very sharp knife. At least, that's how it goes down in my mind.

Home afterwards, spaghetti sauce simmers on the stove for hours. Which heaven is more holy than warm bread melting around the tongue? Okay, maybe chocolate pudding. Maybe soft Nutella crepes. The fire is stoked all day and it somehow keeps the compounding gray at bay. I still feel the sea, and my knees still have the impressions of sand. There are words about the sea and then there is the sea. Presence renders any reaching unnecessary.

Am I done reaching? The distance plays games and the body responds. Distance from the sun. Distance from that river. Distance from the small book shop, coffee in hand, with hours to kill.

Rain. More rain than the land can handle right now. From the bay window I watch the fat creek gush over mossy rocks. More tea please. Blueberry, peach or ginger. You decide. Place the teacup next to my preacherless church and I will give you my soul.



Of Course

After several glasses of wine at dinner and the waiter's “special surprise” flaming green licorice drink, we followed the moon's pull to the beach. It was shocking how cold the sand was as we stepped bare-footed onto the reflection of the moon. Sea waves were gilded and glowing as they barely seemed to roll ashore. All of it together was a rhythmic slice of the cosmos that couldn't do anything in that moment but throb peace. Stars and stars and stars. Just to the right of the moon's silvery blare, Orion. He was the clearest I've ever seen and I couldn't stop staring. A shape patterned through a human lens, playing the role of guide or muse or myth-maker. Truth teller? The unending blackened depth of the cosmos is too much to bear. It's beautiful and terrifying and honest. Though we are alone on the beach, we whisper. My heart beaconed out over the sea – a lighthouse calling.

When he lovingly asked if I would do it all again, I smiled and sighed and knew I should say, “of course.” It would have been the truth in a million ways. Marriage is like that . . . gray areas where the hard work plays out – hazy and shimmering areas that prevent phrases such as “of course” and “absolutely.” At the end of the day, we are telling momentary truths. And I just don't see any way around it.

Dawn in this place is a new chorus of unfamiliar bird songs. So vibrant. So full. They escort me to the beach before it is warm and golden and teeming. Morning crashes in to fill the senses with every step towards now.

I am lifted. Unto One. Married. Unto All.



Sea and Me

Tropical birds chime question marks through a gushing rainstorm. A stream of rainwater is bumped out in tiny steps down the trunk of a young palm tree. After a clearing breeze causes the fronds to sway into each other, click-clacking. I think of Palm Sunday and bringing home the long green spikes from church. Dad would always tie the fronds in a knot and leave them on the high buffet table which I always thought was a weird metaphorical juxtaposition – tying the blessing in a knot and putting them in a place of display to yellow untouched all year. I remember wondering: where did all these palm fronds come from? Who gathers and wraps and ships? Sitting in this place, I watch groundskeepers rake the leafy debris. So of course, it is the priest that makes the magic happen and it is the congregant that consumes the magic and calls it holy. We've assigned all the glory and the blame ourselves.

Besides everywhere, where are you? I throw myself out into the roar of an unbounded sea, asking. The sea and me. Winter solstice on the equator. Full moon. Meteors showering over the black pulse of my Caribbean. Sea and me.

My feet feel each granular touch of innumerable sands. Step – sink – step. To kneel at this kind of blue is to leave the body. I'm always leaving the body, especially under the force of the sea and me.

How many times have I finished this name? Where are you? Sea and me.



My Left and My Right

Leaving here through miles of sky, seeking what the sun brings. Home travels along – its words, its love, its vascular pores exchanging old breath with new air. The sea is calling, as they say. Or as I say, the sea and me. Cuban cigars Caribbean sand calypso constellations. How the sea wakes the day and sways the soul to sleep. How I am poured out into a tide pool, mixed forever with the salted heart of Aquarius. How I swim away.

It's our anniversary soon.

For twenty years we've cut the stones to build this difficult and beautiful place. Our backs ache now and our fingers bleed easily with the labor. With each passing year, we add to this dwelling. We watch Netflix and rake leaves and celebrate the passion and love extending from our children. We guide when sightlessness narrows the path. We make soup and friendships and mistakes. Twenty years of Christmas and depression and work bonuses. Days rushing forward and suddenly still. Years overflowing with nothing and everything. This New Year's Eve is twenty years. How can I just now be learning what love is? How could I know of the teachers required?


you who slips through my fingers
to pool at my feet

you who makes the way
stable and safe and clear

my left
and my right

sweeping the trail

of body parts
of hope
of despair

down to the bedrock

to the magma
to the core

to the love
untouched


Sip Smile Sip

Making my bed only to crawl back in an hour later. Winter is too cold; the gray is too deep. Through blankets, through walls, through floors my brain sends signals: coffee – fire – chocolate. In the end I read something about landscape and desire. Am I contained or so free that I cannot move at all? I won't say.

I've thought about the cabin a million times – how it's situated a short distance from the creek and little hike from the inland drive. My old shoes, a warm jacket. Collected firewood and a tea kettle. There's an old quilt on the Jenny Lind bed whose asthmatic springs give a groan when you lie upon it. Dust motes on the only sunbeam to break through the canopy. A wool blanket drapes over the rocking chair in the corner. It's not summer or winter...maybe spring...maybe October.

For our 20th wedding anniversary, I asked for impossible yellow and Caribbean blue. He asked for me. The thing I remember most clearly about Mexican nights were the foreign constellations plunging daggers into my chest. The oceanic breezes whispered rhythms across my sunned shoulders, and wafts of cuban cigars mingled with the sea to bring me closer. To this.

Rain now instead of snow. The temperature difference is a relief. Every time I sprinkle cinnamon into my coffee I remember you saying, “way to fuck up a good cup of coffee.” Smile, sip, smile.

“It's not down in any map; true places never are.” Herman Melville. This heart-shaped island. This collection of fallen leaves. I miss the fragrance of wet pine and sugared sap. I miss cardinals and thin jackets and walking without the arctic burn of frost in my lungs. Who owns the deed to here? Only me through you.



Rising

One by one, muted lights dab through a predawn fog. During the night a thunderstorm's ovation dropped in and out of my sleep. How misplaced the rain is in December. How unmanageable the gray. With morning, the hush knows what I know.

Sunday eventually lifts from the stove with soup and roasted asparagus. Affection. Attention. Maybe apprehension. I see it all through because existence demands it.

Love as a messenger swings the gate inward to invite the loss of time and tears and unknowing. Caught off guard by the billowing comfort of a chesty fullness, I sit for long stretches as if basking in some unseeable light. An awareness of beauty has begun to sharpen and seems to have no resting place; it simply rises from everything that must die. What is pursued, what is expected, what is defined, what is captured must perish. In this death, one forfeits purpose and motive and usefulness to finally see. Beauty. And where there is beauty, there is love.


white pine waving
woodsmoke on the rise
winter loves me, loves me not


Love Unsettled

Sleeping below a winter's moon the night groans with a colder version of day. In one dream, we know each other's hands by now. In another, I sit in my room alone wondering how to make things different.

The wooded creek collects fall's last foliage. One day the air is 22 degrees, the next day it's 47. Yet one thing remains the same: gray after gray after gray. On the way to Pentwater, the solemn remains of milkweed – a parade of bare sticks standing thigh-high with nothing but cottony tufts atop to be directed by wind and snow and rain. They stand in groups in front of long, sleeping fields all the way to the highway. My thoughts wander to growing Cannabis and what that would mean for my community and family.

For breakfast, a feta-potato-chorizo omelet topped with a hint of jalapeno cream sauce. Aggravation simmers over the meal as I watch adolescent squirrels drain the squirrel-proof bird feeder. “Squirrels gotta eat too” no longer overrides or placates the intention of the feeder. One realizes one must get smarter or relent.

He reported that he intended to have me sign a copy of my book (which alone is an entirely ridiculous to consider) but when he arrived, he realized he had left it on the plane. “Well perhaps it was meant for someone else,” I quipped. This is an example of how I can mean something whole-heartedly and at the same time, feel the corruption of something entirely opposite.

accept / override / reset / repeat

Lately, considering love. Thoughts mound and heap and yet, build nothing. Whatever love is, it cannot be thought. Labels and ideas and restrictions should be rejected because they enslave. I see myself diving, using my arms to push aside water in order to go deeper and further beneath all that I have considered love to mean. Running out of oxygen, I begin to see that I am guilty of defining love, restricting love, of marrying love and sorrow together. Something more radical is at stake here. Deeper than desire, more alive than duty, beyond turmoil and chaos and conflict – love is perhaps a place that rejects all maps and calculations and efforts. Maybe love is just right now. And now. And now.



Missing Red

Curled up conversations reverberate like an old player piano in need of tuning, fully committed to it's own sound. Your ghost walks with wayward courage right through the song. This mesh gauze around my neck – this red cape shouldering winter's gaze.

holly berries / scarlet / making a scene

It's been weeks without sun. Lake effect cloud cover stretches taunt across a blue sea of waiting. Wanting? Coffee / happy lamp / sleep / tea / yoga / sleep

Where are you and why?

What do you think: was I kindled from the lake or woods or mountains or the field? I pace the floor feeling grains of dirt and slivered planks and thirsty oak. Bare maples and scrubby pines gather the gray sky. The thing about birds is that they do not visit on command. Lately, nuthatch, titmouse and chickadees. But the cardinal is not here. Missing red, missing fire.

Nineteen Bibles on the top shelf, black or brown bound, some gilded in gold. To be fair, three of the holy books are in another language. The next shelf down is Biblical historical commentaries by desert fathers and philosophers and saints, mostly bound in varying shades of wine. Can one donate who one used to be? The books are dusted without reverence but dusted nevertheless.

Whatever light there was today slinks away long before dinner. Spicy Korean beef noodles, red wine and a blushing fireplace. Or maybe just red wine. It's okay to melt; good even.




Hewn

Heat from the fireplace crawls past my feet, up my shins, over my bent knees, then directly to my paper cheeks. The air cools a bit when the dog walks between me and the fire. I feel drowsy enough to dream about hell after falling asleep here. As my eyelids pray, they come to rest on the old hatchet leaning against the brick. Its white paint has peeled almost entirely off the wooden handle, leaving the impression of spongy age. What can be hewn when held properly? The day never brightens above highway-gray.

Michigan's cycles secure me in a loop. November curls into the downward arc that will tuck me into the bottom of months. Coffee, sleep, coffee. Voiceless light. Shoreless seas of night. It is my only mission to forget about winter's duration in order to tread water today. And maybe tomorrow.

Blowing leaves come to rest amongst fallen brethren – a cartography of brown hands at peace after a few moments of freedom. I can't hear the birds singing. Therefore division. And loneliness. Through the dark, one follows the notes of light up ahead. What song of light do I live by? I curl up into the blanket, thankful to teachers who have taught more than they know. Gratitude / survival / repeat.

At last, October lets go. Love must win; there is no otherwise. I open the gate and watch it all pass through.

A Bare Song

This day under infinite gray. Yellow and orange trembles a bit against the low light. Staring out into a slow fall, nothing in November anchors my eye. Where are you?

Rain begins to patter a bare song. A burning persists with unseeable light. Missing are the syllables of our secret name. Missing is the contentment of place.

In a dream, Amherst called. Her bees and butterflies mentioned you, but it was the violets that sang of the sting. After the dream, a small glowing spur nestled on top of my heart. Presence struggles with mind. Whatever love is to you, show me. My eyes are dim with ache. Well, that's what I said to the sorrel sea of leaves.

Even now across the muck fields, the eye eats an expanse of black soil topped with illegitimate green – stolen hints of April – savored long after the deep, open-mouthed kiss. Acres race past before an eye can blink. So, too, the construction of time. Remembering is different than never forgetting, beloved.


Roil Sink Rise

A chalice declined.

October gray engulfs me in a disorientating sea. At least tell me how wrong I am or how inconsequential my homage has become. This unfeeling day. This rain that sounds like applause but is only just water on the move.

She said, “ the terrain of paper . . .” That is how a heart hears love. Yet the muse wraps itself in gauze and batting. One insulates and protects. Another struggles to breathe. Thank God for yellow maples imitating the sun!

Which do I want – to drown in the sea or to be left orphaned by its departure?

Roil – sink – rise. You know I am not my words, yet you do not know who I am. Beyond the utterance of pixel and ink is the extremity of love. Married by what we have not done, not said, not believed.

The long, drawn out stories of aspens on the hill. Wind writes the narrative for a few more weeks. Each papery emissary hints at the falling sky to come. I know it's wrong await the running rivulets of April; I'm trying to stay here. From my dining room seat, I side-eye the nuthatch at the window feeder. He warbles a few notes every time he picks through the seed. The chickadee waits his turn on the pine branch and hurriedly flutters in after the nuthatch has gone. These visitors are enough but I do wonder if the cardinal will find his way here.

My beauty lies, but you are not looking for that. Instead you thirst. Drink where you can. This cup of wholeness, of offering cannot be poured out.



Vibrato and Heart-notes

October ends with maple trees trickling yellow in a rainstorm. Before the house wakes: a fire, breakfast, tea and coffee. Sunday takes a few extra hours to brighten.

More news of deepening hate. How quickly we forget our roots. Rot blistering, bursting its infection amongst the compromised. Who is not implicated? I struggle to accept these moments. More bodies put at rest. More sermons on love.

She plays a concert for us in front of the fireplace. The dog bows and wags her tail between the second and third movement of the eight minute piece. Along with vibrato and heart-notes, our daughter's essence lifts from the earth – away from home. I don't try to collect it any longer but I do tilt and bob in her waves. As she drives away in the old red Subaru, I remind her to vote. Be heard, child.

Chickadees wait their turn at the feeder, shaking raindrops off pine boughs when they arrive and leave. There'll be no yard work today. No fishing for leaves in the creek. No piling or raking or tarping. Grass begins to dream and bulbs curl into a lingering torpor. The ossature of January drinks strength from October. Hollowed out acorns reveal that survival pulls no punches.

Ginger snaps dipped in peach tea. Soup on the stove all day. The sonance of migrating geese rising over Chopin and other sounds of sabbath . . . such precious occurrences in an economy of violence.





Still Always

In a muted room next to a dying fire maybe it is easy enough to imagine letting it all fade. House noises thin to an almost-silence broken here and there by the refrigerator hum or climbing heat from the furnace. October's best moon burns through its foggy veil. I burn too. Still. Always.

At the new feeder, birds tell the only news I want to hear. Hours liquesce watching tiny antics. Light upon light. But it's still not enough to end it all, my wordy friend . . . is it? In the distance of that memory, purple hills rise out of the gentle clearing. Soon winter's bride will be all we can see. Yet for now, the heart and mind backpedal towards summer's heat of almost. Pines stand around us like a grove of chaperones. Eagles lead the way home.

Now, stacking winter's wood and clearing piles of absent minded leaves. July is estranged but October has its charms – ripped blue jeans, puffy jackets with loopy scarves, and warm kisses beneath cold noses. Our walk in the woods is louder. Our chesty sleep is heavy with blankets. Only, you know . . . our dreams cry out for heat that has left.

Yoga before dawn. Ceylon tea. A walk with the dog as far as she will go. The world wears me until skin shows through the husk. Move. Make the bed. Carry the weight of everything unsaid. Let's not do it this way, okay?


More Honest Than Vows

Learning language in order to read One book . . .

We travel through a copse of meadow shrubs and leggy grasses unto a shared opening.

A heron rises on golden air from the shallows leaving only rippled hints of what was.

The watcher and the watched, intersecting and calling it love.

It's too cold for crickets and the frogs are finding a place, deeper.

I've collected the wood for burning but it's a little too damp to burn easily.

How terrible to hold the coming winter in the same hands as acorns and pinecones!

And yet . . . acorns and pinecones!

Where we arrive, out of the distance, the woods are familiar and filled with the songs of birds we know by heart.

Only, it is time that allows for shadows and seasons and the reclaiming of fallen things.

It is time that shackles the body to days and longing and the parameters of light.

Accordingly, that learned language becomes a knowing gaze.

And such a look pulls silk across my shoulders, shuddering to the floor.

More intimate than life – more honest than vows.

Black bean soup and a struggling fire in the fireplace.

Woodsmoke, an “I love you” . . . and I do.