Breathing Branches

I loved a certain way – without effort – without otherwise – and I cannot go back. Simple truths glimmer like the kiss of light on unspoiled snow.

After a sluggish dawn, a few orange beams manage to find a way through barely breathing branches. In Kenya, I had a favorite tree. In fact, I had two favorite trees, but one elicited an experience – a transcendence of beauty and simplicity and just . . . I don't know . . . wild love.

We lived in the tea fields high above Nairobi. Every day driving the kids to school we would descend from around 7,800 ft to about 5,500 ft above sea level. The views in the highlands were always impressive; always moving. Coming around one particular curve, a huge expanse would open on the left side to reveal a lone acacia, perfectly formed, standing rigid against miles and miles of uncultivated African land. It was the quintessential Kenyan backdrop, like a scene from a Disney movie or a postcard from safari.

The tree on its own was perfection. However maybe it was the fact that this tree was something I could count on during a chaotic and sometimes terrifying time spent in Kenya that left an indelible cross on heart. The tree was there every day, a gatekeeper to an indescribable view. It was a reminder of all the things that were there before I arrived and all the things that will be there after I've left. The tree didn't wave like other trees and although it provided some shade, its sparse leaves and thorny branches did not typically call out to me as a nourishing place in that way. I would come to learn during my years of living there that the tree in Kenyan culture was used as a symbol of peace in many traditions. For me, this acacia tree became that: my peace – a daily reminder to look outside of myself and simply be.

Trees matter – for fuel and shelter and literally, life. And in this case, a single tree set the world back in order . . . in the middle of carjackings, post-election violence, a tsunami of inter-displaced peoples . . . hungry, cold and afraid. A single tree grounded my language missteps and my inability to keep my family safe at all times. In the midst of revolution and poverty and the inability to know if I was safe, there was stunning beauty. And wild forgiveness. And incomprehensible generosity.

And this acacia tree stood there as a witness. It breathed tear gas on one day and bore the sharp dazzle of the equator's rising sun the next. It held the incense of decades of wood smoke and it filtered the dust of donkeys, white SUV's and matatus racing towards Banana Hill. I passed this tree twice a day, every day for four years and the sight of it always shook something loose.

When I remember Kenya, my heart still bleeds over everywhere, unto everything. It's hard to write about that time. But as I sit here so far from that place, staring out into Michigan's wintered pines, I find it easier to recall the acacia I loved.

There are one hundred ways to fall asleep and one hundred ways to wake. There is depression and disease and there is sunlight cleaving old barn rafters. There is Trump and MLK and winter and spring. And yet, if allowed, there is a love, always a conduit throughout time, grounding us by setting us free.

acacia – pine – maple
there is a meeting
in the ground

East of the Lake

The end of November shudders hard. Winds unhinge what is left as snow-thunder claps a resounding approval. At 9 a.m. it is still too dark to read in the house. Leaves continue to fall with each gust; it reminds me of birthing pangs – waves of contractions moving across the landscape because they have no otherwise. We are left with only winter.

I look out the window and try not to get caught up in the falling snow. But then again, it is not the snow that sews me under blankets and into couches. The infinite gray is a slab of impenetrable weight that suffocates every forward moving intention. I lie down unmovable.

Lake Michigan has a certain generosity that cannot be turned off. In warm months, the great lake invites and heals. In frigid months, it gives moisture to the winds of Chicago and downdrafts of Canada. A leaden belt forms to cinch the mitten. According to the news, only 18% of available sunlight was observable last month for those of us rooted here. In this place. East of the lake.

Life pushes on, with and without desires. Children grow and dogs age. Christmas looms and so does the greenhouse work. Despite the weight, I do have gratitude. And I do collect blessings, like sea glass, to hold up to the light. It is just that I do not have another life to give, so feeling paralyzed for any of it carries with it a sense of purposelessness that I cannot override. I am gripped by days, enduring hours, weathering minutes.

It's not forever, for I shall make potato leek soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and a small salad. My favorite songs will play. I will follow my dog with her nose to the ground, captured by some invisible trail leading her onward, eyes yet looking up. Ears pricked. Waiting for the longer, warmer days further down the path.

Cathedral of Leaves

What fills the place of desire? Back to flesh and blood, tethered. Perhaps, grounded? Cold rain brings down the last cathedral of leaves – whispered sighs of ochre falling. How November tilts and tangos with winter is similar to a certain melancholy found after letting go. A season must pass. Who am I to say otherwise?

A week after the hard snow it melts to uncover more fallen leaves than expected. It will snow again soon but for now, mud kicks up onto the back of my legs when pushing through worn trails. There is no more flower dust or muttering frogs or rattling cicada. Instead, gunshots in the distance, the muted traffic of Chicago Drive and a softly moaning train heading west.

This time of year a certain type of pain is delivered to my doorstep day after day. It arrives uninvited to stay as long as it wishes. It cuts me off from the capacity to nurture and care. This same sender tucks me in at night with the heaviest blanket so that in the morning, I cannot rise. My body curls towards the window but the curtains are drawn. Sometimes I turn toward the nightstand to watch my clock mark every missed conversation or event or task. Don't worry; it will pass. Everything always passes.

In my dream last night, we sat on a backless bench. You faced one way and I faced the other, our proximities overlapped. A subconscious speaks with or without me.

A line has been drawn through the heart of autumn. This time around, it separates wounds from love. When the swirl of leaves settles and snowfall becomes a weighted blanket, what remains? Who manages to stack the wood and feed the fire? That woman is a sterile spectre floating from room to room, making coffee, folding clothes, cleaning toilets. Yet she remains, to write letters, starving for sunlight. Still kneeling to the Preceptor. Still unsure what a heartbeat is for.

Let Me

For a time I had a glimpse; let me grieve.

Let me see sunlight set the forest ablaze with weeping red-gold light. Let me dig fingernails into my own arm as I offer prayers in the doorless chapel. Let my place be altered, my gaze lifted from poverty.

Your reflection is now a black panther pacing in the night. My archness unredeemed. Please take these letters away and burn all trace of vitality because now I can only echo from here.

I'm going to bleed for a while. Let me. Let me mark every fallen leaf as a farewell I never could ordain. Let October strip and surrender to what is next.

Acres of fields now yellow and bend, and the haze of woodsmoke climbs as a testimony of need. Fewer wrens twitter and tilt on the ever green arms of the backyard pines. I've visited the pine forest since we last spoke only to determine that there is no interpretation for the whispers. How soft the cinnamon floor! How hushed everything is that I have left. . .

So now let me empty the cistern. Let me move the cool water meant for our becoming. Let it drain upon the land in a place I love the most.

Giving it Away

Maple seeds flutter in diminishing coils into my hair and pockets. Autumn gives everything away. The colder dawn breaks with the agony of words which seem to bind and birth that which refuses to be left behind. Like loose gravel tumbling in my mind, thoughts of lips and shoulders holds hostage my clear vision and comfort. I run to push my body further than my mind can reach. For a little while, the pebbles settle into the nooks of presence.

Sunflowers finish and wave along Chicago Drive. October always prods whatever is wild in me. The land begins to burn while its slow smoke rises beyond reach. And surely you must know, I am reaching. Winter sleeps for only a few more weeks and I gain an appetite for getting closer.

With a steady cold rain for days, everything floods. Water pools in the basement so I spend the day working with old towels. One frayed rag has the name of the hospital Dad worked in for all those years; another dons Woody-the-Woodpecker with a large rip across his beak. My childhood is still here.

My legs are wrapped up in jeans now like a nighttime swaddle. An extra blanket sits folded at the end of the bed and my nose is chilly before tucking myself in at night. Sleep crystallizes like a creeping frost giving way to an unwelcome thaw around 3 or 4 a.m. This happens in the fall. I have to work hard to prevent my days and nights from switching places. Winter always finds a way to fuck with me. This year I am stronger and will do more than barely survive.

Bales of hay are wrapped up snug and the smell of pine diffuses – marks – heals. At dawn I lace up my shoes before bluejays arrow and dart to whatever meeting they are always late for. On my way out, I see the candid light of ungraspable love spreading over turning maples and stalwart pines . I see that my frailties are a porcelain curve and yet, a granite spine shores each step.

These paragraphs might be emptying . . . leaking drivel that makes sense only to ether. But they have always been the only love letter I can write.

Rerouting

Maybe what is missing is the ability to turn one's back on everything. Or anything. I am a reed bending this way and that, yet still growing in a certain eastern light; my front and back keep turning.

At the flea market, Tom Petty cover tunes reach into and out of earshot. I touch everything. I love how the market teaches. I buy a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich and shoo bees from my Pepsi. A couple on the other side of the picnic table ate an elephant ear with ketchup drizzled on it! I mean, what kind of world is this? More than a few people had Trump hats on; that's what kind of world this is.

At home, we stare at each other from opposite sides of the wall and on occasion, peek over to see how things are going. Perhaps pursuits have diverged. Perhaps sleeping apart reroutes communion. How long can we survive on the absence of what we need? Can't we simply change what we need? Love cannot be cultivated or manipulated or possessed. Otherwise, how could we move from the mind of one into the fullness of all?

Maybe that is the bigger thing unfolding. What exists has no other home because it is home itself. Undefinable. Unreadable. Unthinkable.

Daylight is losing its shimmer. A large rabbit makes its way from behind the shed, towards the pine tree and on into blushing sedum. I've walked a lot the last few days and I've run, too. This and other ways my body makes room for answers.

Attention – awareness – Achilles' heel. Maybe the only way out is through.

And just like that

the reed bows

under mostly

yes

Down

Shrinking days.

Autumn tilts my pail and remnants spill – hot starry nights, campfire breath, and firefly ash.

Fallen oak leaves curl in the corner where the back deck meets the house. From my bedroom window I watch a turkey jump-fly in one swoop up to the monkey bars of the neighbor's play set.

Shoulders and mountains determined. Does the way in which we climb matter? I want to go beyond imaginings. I want to go beyond what is put into words.

As I drove into sunrise this morning, ribbons of purple and magenta and orange bled across the horizon. Trees floated on bottomless blues. Fields blushed and scrambled with no where to hide. And I was of that light, feverishly awake.

Heaven in half light. A mountain cabin on the horizon and all of life gathering around a stream trickling down, down, down. This and other movements flowing beyond time. That is what I am interested in: being cleansed from that which I know.

I will be standing there naked, not knowing. I think that's how all of this goes.

Long Gone

Between sets, she asked us to come back to the hotel suite. Older people were taking pictures with her and offering snacks and drinks. We sat on the bed doing Fireball shots while the band mates talked about which songs to do for the last set. We were cool for a few minutes. Returning to the tented venue, people pushed in hard towards the stage as the band started up again. Even though it was a crisp evening, heat from all those bodies made it sweaty the entire time. Everyone stuck to each other. The band played cover songs across all genres. An eighty year old man in a plaid shirt and high-waisted khakis danced along side millennials with blue hair and screamy voices. My feet stuck to the floor because of the spilled drinks, but everything else was slippery: bodies, lyrics, boundaries. Yet a holiness was there – next to the lake, under a creamy moon, with my friends. This is the sort of night that opens me. From time to time I would snap back to a remembrance of my life but mostly I was long gone.

Today, dull woodpecker taps alternate with the high pitched chirps of nearby cardinals. My ears still ring from the night before and so goes my gratitude for all things unplugged. I take the dog into fields and meadows for a long hike. Goldenrod, chicory, Queen Anne's lace. Monarchs dazzle the stillness and lead us into diversion. The dog bounds ahead, crashing through willowy growth, making a trail. Every so often she would turn back. She seemed happy in this kind of freedom. Am I?

On the drive home last night, the moon hovered in front of us most of the way. It was more full than a sickle but definitely less than half. It hung low like some kind of nibbled cantaloupe ready to roll off the counter. It glowed brighter on its edges so that it looked like it might be on fire. September nights build that blaze in me.

With all of this holiness, I still fail to become lost entirely. There is still a simple picnic of apple slices and salami in the woods or maybe near the river or into the meadow. She lies back onto the blanket, asking a million questions and listening to answers. She gets too close and cannot really pull away. For now, concerts and moons and woodsmoke at dawn.

overtaken by chicory –
this is the trail
I am taking

Murmur in the Round

Summer becomes an origami see-you-later. Lately I have goosebumps when falling asleep. I don't mind the chill but what comes after can be a real problem. The signs of autumn are all around and as usual, I'm not really ready. Conventional wisdom suggests a posture of acceptance – accept cold bones as profit – accept gray overhang as benevolence. Do you suppose surrender is the same as acceptance?

Who migrates eventually returns and I am grateful. Geese – red winged blackbirds – butterflies. This weekend we will stain the deck and plant daffodil and tulip bulbs for spring. It doesn't hurt to prepare the path for future ecstasy, does it? So it is with allowing desire to simmer. To pass. To return again.

Our prophecy consists of colored stones and rivers, not to mention how we die where we lay. Lie? Speaking of stones, I skipped a few at the pond's edge the other night but that seemed a little like violence. Still waters have the shape I need right before winter comes.

And January, if I could, I would write you a letter; it would be a reminder of how you have a ceiling like a chapel – your beams collecting whispers and turning them into something more than hope. In these quieting days I try to remember the last bird song I heard but nothing comes to mind. Instead, crickets murmur in the round. Good night to August. Good night to homeless prosody. Good night to the hot pavement between here and there.

The Old Pew, Acorns and Thirsty Things

The old pew was moved onto the back deck while work was being done inside. I wondered if it had ever faced this many pines or crickets or bird songs — maybe as a tree it knew this chorus of prayer better than any of us. Humidity caused my fingers to stick a little when tracing the flower carved into the hand rest. The rest of the world is on fire. Yet I am here.

Now when wind stirs the trees, an acorn or two drops. I expected more time; I always feel that way in August. My spirit or countenance or whatever it is that decides to float or be anchored, begins to gather from wells. Moonlight pools in fading boats and campfires now dance and flare brighter than fireflies.

Daylight is different now too. Dawn used to perform a surgery of sorts – blazing with exactness. Penetrating. Lately though, it seems to limp a little before gathering the billowing fullness of day. After dinner I would frog about the yard tending to weeds or checking on the thirsty things. I would sweat and maybe sit in a camp chair to catch the last little sliver of sunlight stretching away from hungry shadows. Not now. It's chilly enough now for a sweatshirt and light seems skittish. I was born and raised in these cycles. They should be home. They should be me. I should love this. Her. Us.

Near the lake the other day I watched the slow swing of willows over the water.

green blue green

summer waves

goodbye

All Night Gigs

At the winery across from the fairgrounds we drank red wine and ate sloppy nachos. When the tractor pull events were underway, the noise of the engines was so loud that my ears would begin to feel watery. Our conversation halted each time a tractor or truck had its turn. As the sky turned from cotton candy to deep lake blue to summer blackberry, neon from the fair rides glowed like an activated time machine – back to youth and summer indulgences. I remember the time my parents took me and the neighbor boy to the fair when I was 10 years old. We held hands on the teacup ride until he vomited on my shoes. We didn't talk much after that. He toilet papered my house one night when he was a senior. I called him out in math class and he was shocked that I knew he had pulled the prank. “Your shoes gave it away,” I said.

Summer boats are fading now and trees are beginning to drop seeds and tired leaves. We must stain the deck this year, especially before autumn falls and falls. U-pick sunflowers wave along 40th Ave, and chicory pokes and prods the last days of August.

Not long ago, a man looked at me with your eyes. It was unnerving to know him before being introduced and even more so, after being introduced. Throughout the night of conversation, hairs on my arms pricked forward. My spirit kept tumbling into and through him. I knew him because he was you. We parted that night in the way new acquaintances do – nice to meet you, travel well and take care. Yet the interaction shimmered and swayed through the days and dreams of several weeks. How strange those thin places can be; how familiar in their unexpectedness.

Sleeping with the window open now is almost like inviting October to come and stay a bit. Crickets never seem to fatigue in their all-night gigs. I realize that there is nothing more to say really, but having the conversation is still nice; fireflies agree.

Float

My body stretched out like a crucifix over Lake Michigan. The core of me was both warmed by northern sun and chilled by the glacial up-welling of deep waters. A sea plane dropped low, tilted its wings, and everyone bobbing and bathing reached their arms up high to wave. My toes could tickle the sandy bottom if I wanted. I am undisturbed. There is nothing to become or calculate or understand. To lose one's bearings is to begin again. Become nameless with me; grasp less; float.

Of what use are urges? I wake early in a slumping summer fog. After too long without rain, the night unfastened and poured itself hard unto even harder land. Cardinals syncopate between Blue Jay screeches. What makes these redbirds holier than others? A dissolution makes way, changing the relationship. With each rising, a gap lengthens between the naming and the nothing. It seems immature to sublimate it all now. Maybe the center is no longer thought or feeling; maybe it is no longer me.

Mums are being sold at the local grocery store. Summer bends the knee. Before August even ignites, September bears down. Daughters go back to college and sons stay up past 3 a.m. tangled in a net of anxiety. College visits, senior pictures, careening expectations. Dawn comes more slowly now; charcoal at 6 a.m.

Krishnamurti says, “Only when the breezes stop does the lake become quiet. You cannot make the lake quiet. Our job is not to pursue the unknowable but to understand the confusion , the turmoil, the misery, in ourselves; and then that thing darkly comes into being, in which there is joy.”

One doesn't have to search for the light or flee the darkness or study any particular thing. Remove the barriers and perhaps, float awhile. Are we not together?

Old Wood

Fireflies rise and fall – soft kindnesses abound in the way August arrives. Summer's light narrows and my eyes are full of chicory. Blue into blue; your image is my true face. And yet, perhaps it is time to see another way. On the jade path, ferns tickle my knees. This year more than last, I am freckled and tanned; my skin smells like sunburned pine.

Night raises a sickle moon. Midnight unties its silken sash and tiny pinpoints of forgetful light pulse in every direction. Still, a hot wind pushes leaves to chatter. Even in the dark I can see the trees slow dancing. I am so very fond of how effusive these nights can be. Earth's musk no longer has to compete with laundry machine exhaust or burgers on the grill. A mist in the black meadow erases all into balance.

The mushroom colored dawn intimates rain, but no rain falls. Plants are wilting and the ground has turned to stone. I make my way to Lake Michigan to submerge it all. I come up gasping; she takes my breath away every time. These lakes – how could I ever leave? But these winters – how could I ever stay? Michigan and my heart.

I was foolish enough once, you know? I was half-way gone.

nothing comes next
day / night / day

old wood stacks
the same

Water and Water Again

All day heat builds and the sky piles into lumbering elephants. I pace, just wanting it to storm already. If it won't rain, I must water. And water again. Squash blossoms match the yellow-orange slants of day slicing into me. Yesterday I cut my finger while chopping vegetables. The ER doctor said I was lucky. Do you know how many T's and R's are required when typing the story? The lesson is slow down or type less or order pizza next time.

There is no distance as the moonlight and I keep falling. We descend into each other, catching our reflections on the way down. This reflection is life, beloved. I need to see who I am so that I may believe.

The fan whirls full blast yet it is not enough to keep beads of sweat from beginning at my hairline and trickling down my jaw and neck. My breasts collect their own reservoir of summer. How delicious it would be to slip into the lake, mixing waters. Most assuredly, that very thought is my downfall – swimming, free, touched and buoyed by water, floating into one who is also invited. Thirsty. Feet stirring in the cooler depths. Arms smoothing the racing ripples of heartbeats. Nearing one another until only water is between. It's a thought that behaves like a memory, filled with heightened senses and acute knowing. And yet . . . and yet.

Because there is relationship, there is existence. Do we please one another or has that passed? Am I now a body looking at itself in the shiny morgue ceiling? God, how does anyone put up with my dramatic bent? Surely there is divinity in the jest.

Cicadas begin to rattle which, maybe to most, only indicates summer's full sail. For me, it is a reminder that this light is only passing through. Bull frogs banjo their way to sunset as woodpeckers roll their cadence on oak. I know there is no where to go. But that doesn't mean I haven't already been here before.

Far From Night

July lets blue sky loose.

Morning begins with an extravagance of sun and shadow trembling across bending grass. Flowers and spiders and topaz toads are baptized in light bright enough to hurt the heart. It is in this time that I bear witness to the eminence of individual trees and leaves and grasses. A rabbit sips at the creek and a moth scrawls secret letters over hosta blooms. I see all of this and scoop it into my breast. Yet, it is never enough to fully protect from the cavern I will undoubtedly disappear into at some point during the day.

Tea on the back deck.

A firefly far from night lands on the freckled terrain of the back of my hand. Joy for one full second is the currency of eternity. I'm wondering about color; what color is your silence? What color is your harm?

At night, Ursa claws up my back toward some other apex. Hours pass with no beginning. Then again, morning. Sometimes I just get so tired of the words. Instead: digging vines, moving shrubs, laying stones just so, working until my fingertips go numb. Finally the heat of summer translates all the waiting unto being. My shoulders turn brown and warm. On days like these I see my image in the east-eating windows and it tumbles me – so this is the woman you see. You, you, you.

Water into Water

Rain rolls through dawn without sparing a single sanctuary. Raindrops splash up from the deck like a hundred frogs startled into the pond. My eye follows the wooden path from deck to gazebo. Vines and weeds have found their way in between the planks, and a large oak branch has fallen – too heavy with rot and water to hold up the sky any longer. Those lofty seams find a way to speak, even when they come apart.

Yesterday a large woodchuck popped up from under the deck and rested his face on the edge. We stared at each for a bit before the dog got wind of the intruder. The woodchuck lives here now but it will not be easy keeping it safe.

Everything is water-shaped lately. My mind slides without resistance from here and not here – an open door to the rain. During the day this means a certain type of floating from frame to frame. At night, it's an unmoored drift from old letters to walks in the woods and back to light touches under white sheets in the dark.

Cardinal visits are abundant now. Hardly anything directs my attention more.

Red birds / red wine / red handed.

I'm surprised by what comes when looking the other way, like when the lake turns silver, deep with night. Throw a stone out into the black waters and see how memory cannot hold beauty and love. But I do remember when I felt love and beauty. I remember how it was alive and real and fresh – unobtainable and unconventional. I remember abandoning the old in an instant in order to open fully to the new. Moment to moment presence.

Yet there is no way to hold love there. Love unexpectedly curls its fingers on our shoulders from behind and pulls us back, turns us around and draws us into itself. In one moment, the narrow path loses all borders and we become water into water. That is the love of now. I do not wait for or conjure it. I do not call it home. I just speak of water and rivers and lakes and never ending rain to say that I am grateful for this watery love I cannot stop or start.

Silver on Stone on Dreams

Without the sun one must speak of moonlight bending down to brush my cheek. Two nights ago I accepted this proxy into my bed.

From the three seasons room, I hear the neighbor whistling a bird song over and over to call a sickly squirrel. No birds or squirrels respond. Over the mournful plea I listen to a Maslanka concerto and I am healed.

Your questions are a compass to the truth. My hands are slow in the dark but they do not fumble. Lord, hear our prayer.

Before sleep I empty my pockets of the day's lessons. In a small stone dish, my silver elephant necklace, two rings and tiny silver hoops all fall upon each other for the night. My image in a dusty mirror – a cleft in the void – my body understands more than my mind.

Silver on stone on dreams. It is hard to tell what is dead or merely just dormant. Speak to my blood and see if it rises. Otherwise I am only a vessel of image, floating from dawn to dark and thinking of nothing.

Rapt in the here and not-here. Tell me again that story using all the words that you knew would melt me. Trick me into kissing it all away.

Under remnant scraps of October leaves, acorns take hold by sending one thick shoot down into groaning earth. I rake and uproot; I clear and am cleared. Sometimes turning the dirt is useful to induce forgetfulness.

Gray upon gray but no rain. This spring waits and waits but I am not fooled. Despite the standstill I know winter arrives on time, no matter how long summer delays to know me. Tell me this Mother Earth: why am I not already one of your tall grasses bending in the wind?

Hide and Seek

On the dirt road to Hermitage Pointe, trees arch over the lane to touch each other. Soon the deerflies will make walking murderous. As a child I ran away from home down this road and hid in the arms of a massive oak. I heard them calling my name but felt nothing for their search. Summer still had its sheen and the ruffled bark cut into my long, chalky legs. I'm not sure I can outrun the years of not being known. Driving down that road today I can see the path to that tree and remember everything. Such hallowed ground keeps asking: do you forgive?

On certain June mornings when the night has been sharply cooler and sunlight hits the tree bark just so, moisture lifts off the trunk as steam. Science as magic.

Small daisies growing at the trailhead brushed the palms of my hands, dancing a little. The sense of having certain plants and birds and animals sewn together in a pattern of attention never quite leaves me. Our wooded hike hides gray skies; so many hours this spring are gray hours. My blooms are staying tightly bound — my skin significantly less illustrated.

sun – freckles – blooms
summer hide
and seek

There is this river that flows in and through and around me. I can drink from it and cool my ankles in it and sit beside it in a trance. But loving this river makes me a liar because I cannot tell anyone how it makes me feel. I can share the river with everyone and anyone and yet, it is my river. Water as teacher. Swallowing as dream. Tell no one the nothing that I mean.

Little Dashing Hiccups

With the slightest turn of the prism, the teacher still has something to give. Because the black bear processes life as a bear, it is a teacher – and so the squirrel and the red-winged blackbird and the mosquito. Neighbors have cut down a tree and now dawn is different. Sunlight's arrow pierces a hermetical darkness, so I am cracked. So I am grateful. So winter finally fades.

Folded and breathing; can I finally be still? What is left when the archives are silenced and intuitions are stretched as far as east is from west? Pines sway as a puppet master might, creating flickers of light and shadow along a damp path. Walking with seriousness into the east, the sunrise seemed inexhaustible as it untangled and unraveled every intention. Cardinal chirps lifted my chin with their musical fingers.

a few steps
bring me here –
after one thought
I’m gone

I love the ease of rain shushing on an early Sunday morning.

Candles – writing – tea.

When one forms words in way that feels like art, one can realize herself free and full of spacious impulses. Tilted just right, these little dashing hiccups, these letters sewn with intention, resonate to catch the universe. Also in this way, the teacher makes no promises. They just write us together on the unyielding path; there is no otherwise.

A rabbit kit the size of my palm takes measured hops beneath the rain-stained pine. Its ears barely pop higher than the wild violets. My attention joins the current in Sunday's somnolent stream. Let's take a nap together near the open window and dream along side the falling rain.

Slipping Through the Net

A ladybug in my red wine causes an involuntary “oh!” Chit-chat continues as if nothing amazing occurred. Small little blips in the background noise of conversations become a reminder of hearts attached to beliefs which descend from my own. Yet I wonder how much longer I can let it sip from my sense of space in the world.

Spring's delay has thrown everything into the spin cycle – spitting out random blooms here and flooded fields there. In that way, June feels like a stranger. I don't yet know what spring wants to say in its reach to arrive.

While making the bed I bruise my shin on the corner of the bed frame. Birds begin their song before 5 a.m. and it makes waking so lovely. I wonder if he can hear the floor creak as I move from side to side, straightening and tucking blankets. I wonder if he says, “Oh, she is awake, doing her thing,” or does he filter out the sounds in the attempt to sleep further into the morning? The things we no longer know slip through the net that holds it all together.

Lately a few cardinals pose in the corner of my vision. They arrive as a bleeding flash but leave as a soothing salve. Birds as messages. Red as life. My gratitude is quiet but intact. On these cool nights, especially around the fire, my countenance wanders . . .

east towards sunrise / north into the origin of pine / into God's gaze / blue