The Urge to Home

Lately, every thing is a lesser version of itself. Books pile on the ottoman, desk, bed and the floor. After a few sentences, words become washed up sea shells – beautiful remnants of something once alive. Food does its job without fanfare. Spring stutter-steps, allowing winter to to have its way a little longer. Tasks about the house begin to lose that feeling of serving. Perception is everything, no?

Tell me what you know as opposed to what you perceive.

Shared purpose. Now it is so much less about getting something that is missing.

A series of naps around the clock fills in the sleeplessness. Today the sun rises in a way that I can feel it and whispers the promise of outdoor work if I want it. In the eastern light the neighbor's bird feeder swings hard after a squirrel dismounts with great fanfare. The feeder reflects flashes of light back and forth to a cadence similar to lovemaking at first, gently slowing to a diminished finish. I don't think about sex much anymore. I think about healing, the disappearance of heaven and hell, the shortening of fear's shadow, and unchanging holiness. I think of each new, untarnished moment and revel in the gift of timelessness. I used to feel lonely thinking about such things, but I want to be done with such ego support.

Bundled up in wintergear on the back deck, I talked to Mom on the phone about how quarantine is going for her and Dad. In my long pauses given to allow her rangy descants, two black-capped chickadees alighted on the back of the empty chair next to me. I've not been this close before, my love. How they twittered to each and towards me! Eventually I had to speak but the thought did cross my mind to hang up the phone and let Mom think that the forest got in the way of reception, again. The chickadees flew away but their gift remained. You, the one witness who I have wholly released. He, who cannot be denied.

Frost covers the roof in a fresh coat of razzle-dazzle. The trees cast long, morning shadows stretching westward and birds are busy collecting nest materials. One determined robin is working hard to pull a gangly, dead vine over the privacy fence. The weight of the vine won't allow for proper flight and it is caught in the notches of the fence. From here it looks like a strange winged fish caught on the line, flapping and fighting for freedom. How strong the urge to home.

Today it will be warm enough to work in the yard. Excitement almost holds me back from writing and reading and my usual morning balance tricks. Maybe the azalea and tulips and hyacinth will bloom today; maybe the rest of the daffodils! Though my body aches even before the work, the joy of dirt and growing things will lead me on – to what, is the real question.

Above and Below

Two recurring dreams from childhood have surfaced this week – the tornado dream and the swimming dream. In one I'm trying to save others and in the other, myself. The good news is that I slept long enough to dream. Still, I wake before the birds and wait. Nothing needs to be done on time anymore, so you linger. Abide? The heat kicks on around 6 a.m. which makes me think the daffodils will be stiff with frost or worse. At first light, an almost shy snow begins to fall, as if to say, “wait, is this right?”

It is. What can never end, draws attention in and upward. Beneath it all, shared sameness rings like the truest, purest bell. Spiritual vision is coming into focus, beloved. It can be satisfying and fun to climb the mountain but why climb when we can move it?

The onlooker of the river sees their reflection in light of what is above and below. Glittering sun illumines water to reveal the perfection of forgiveness. Can you see what I see? Trees and stars and sky and Us.

Snow flutters off and on while sunlight flirts with staying awhile. It's so much colder than it looks. The azalea bush begins to bud, readying her pink lips for the party. I am shaped for what is above and below. I am made to meet half way – to complete the bridge – to fall apart at the seams in order to invite the world. How spring would not have it any other way.

Tour of Sanity

Moonlight pierces two pines to plunge into the cyanic fabric this new day. Night slowly removes its gown to a chorus of birdsong and soft entering light. The rains still glow on the deck like some sort of quiet goodbye. At first, I tip toe barefooted in the coolness, eventually giving way to the full sole contact. Warmth from the coffee cup nested in my hands is enough on a morning like this. Are you measuring the moon this morning too? Always the thought occurs to me.

Days are now filled with fastidious care-taking. In the mornings I step off the back deck onto circle pavers winding throughout the large, crescent-shaped yard. The first six or seven stones curve around the large pine before splitting the path into a “Y”. In the morning assessment, I take the left path towards the rather large flowerbed. The bed runs the length of the white scalloped fence dividing our yard from the neighbor's. Today I check to see if the daffodils survived the storm. Hasta shoots are growing inches every day and the bright green lily shoots are as long as my hand already. Hyacinth along the picket fence are beginning to show their bulbous buds, the color yet a surprise. Tight, succulent buds of Witch's Moneybags are popping up strong and healthy. In autumn, they will grow tall with mauve-purple, flowering crowns. The garden is maybe four feet deep by fifty feet long and eventually will be filled with at least 30 different plant varieties, blooming in waves. The joy of tending this part of the yard is a certain sanity I cannot forgo.

As you follow the bed along the entire eastern boarder towards the back, you hit the creek. I check the water level and notice the pachysandra beginning to flower on the west side of the creek. The creek is built upwards toward the back of the yard by various sizes of stones and rocks. Along the eastern side of the creek, hastas, ferns, lilies and taller, bright yellow bottle rocket plants will fill in the horizon. The stone pavers along the back side of the creek are smaller and square, as it is an offshoot of the main path. They join up with a mulched walking path, bordered throughout the yard by six to eight inch stones, end to end, on both sides.

The path twists and winds, showing off different aspects of deep shade plants and thoughtfully placed annuals in planters. In a few weeks, filling in any gaps, will be hundreds of Lily of the Valley plants, probably my favorite. Ten to fifteen mature oaks along with scattered pines will eventually darken the yard entirely with their canopy. The path then bends around a white, wooden gazebo, badly in need of a fresh paint job. The gazebo connects back to the deck by a wooden, planked path, bordered by evergreen bushes. But the gazebo is only the halfway point in the arching back yard. The walking path continues winding further towards the west, past the three season's room of the house and the shed and another small grouping of pine trees.

Along the way, small side paths branch off to connect the wanderer into other features – a stone outcropping, an old-fashioned hand pump well, a collection of smaller old stumps used to display more flowers. Where there are no intentional plantings, lies the bane of my landscaping and care-taking existence: yellow archangel. This large-leaved, viney, perennial shoots underground runners in every direction. It chokes out anything planted within its reach and requires constant cutting back and removal. If I could remove it all from my yard, I would. But it is EVERYWHERE. From April until autumn, hours a day are spent digging up these vines. For the sake of my body and my mental well being, I limit myself to two hours per day of vine removal.

A wooden privacy fence anchors the entirety of the back border. Because of the curve and the multiple neighbors to our back, the fence line belongs to three separate neighbors. Each section has a a few planks that need repair. As the planks fall, we nail them back together for now. Otherwise, very little fence-tending is needed.

Every morning, I float like a phantom on the paths and wait upon blooms. I make a plan for the days work and my heart fills with gratitude and purpose. Like the flowers and the plants, I am a child of the sun's affection. My tears are dried by a touch of light and my sighs are fragrant like the hyacinth or roses. Can I get any closer than these tended blossoms? Can you?

After Beggary

All day, your knees are in the dirt and power shifts from shoulder to back to arm to ground. Under a few inches of vines and soil there is almost a bedrock stones ranging in size from fist to sliver dollar. A shovel cannot penetrate so the hours are spent jabbing at vine roots with a soil knife. It takes a few hours to do an eight foot area. But daffodils and hastas and a few tulips are rescued in the process. There will be more color because of the work. My heart overflows. Really, this makes me so happy.

During the pandemic there is little control. Working outside as the weather allows gives a purpose; I receive it with open, aching arms.

Daffodils – freckles – catnaps in the patio chair!

A friend drops off s'more supplies and after sterilizing for virus remnants, I grill brats and veggies for dinner. It's only 50 degrees outside but if feels like heaven – after winter – after meager light – after beggary. After one beer, you drink another and you remember other warm things.

At night, a bonfire. For the first time in weeks, trees are dotted with exploding pinpoints of light and a half moon practices its magic act with filmy passing clouds. The quarantined streets are quiet and neighbors are tucked away for the night. After all this time together, we don't have a lot to say. Lexi burns papers she saved from years of school work. Beck keeps the dog from getting too close to the smoke and heat. Kyle holds the weight of uncertain employment and making it all work. I poke the fire and my heart, finding both scorching suffering and the salve of happiness.

This pandemic has altered the status quo and yet, so many have become even more entrenched in ideology and corruption and derision. There is good and love, too. These overlapping forces of paradox energetically fuck with me. A collective sorrow mingles with anger and frustration, while at the same time, an emotional outpouring of sacrifice and compassion abides. A question of direction and hope also remains: will we walk through this portal of change and make things different? Better? Lovelier?

The stars don't answer. Neither does the moon. But you do. Wordy you.

Love is Destruction

Despite everything, rain thrumming the roof and spilling over eaves all night long is very soothing. Hours pass and when you count each one, a certain surrender takes place. Just before dawn, sleep finally came and the world started all over again.

In the dark hours I wondered how often we limit ourselves. When it rains on my window and I hear the universe splashing against itself on the ground, I realize that the disease and the cure is encoded in everything. We have ignored our spiritual sense in favor of the logical and practical. Have we forgotten our interconnectedness?

When my body is alone, it is not alone. I feel Other exhaling on the back of my neck. I ponder stars and moonlight and an army of emerging daffodils; and I am not alone. On my knees, inhaling the first spicy aroma of spring soil, I plunge my fingers into the afterbirth of earthworms and grubs and black life, and I feel Someone with me. I can't see, but I know. I can't work it out, but was it not You who held me against the pine in order to devour everything I had to give?

After walking the dog, potato leek soup and day old coffee. Nothing wasted these days. Nothing lost. I carry my mug with the outline of Kenya on it around the backyard, mapping spring shoots as I go. Siberian squill begins to nod and droop their bright blue, star-shaped bells. One cluster of crocus blooms in the unkept corner of the yard. There were more last year. Snowdrops by the creek still carry their delicate white burdens, but not for long. The flower report is life. How grateful one can be for the softest hint of blue.

In these days whereby a nation lets its people die and selfishness drives an economy of injustice, the nights get longer and longer. The days threaten to amass fear and frustration. Profanity and love has become so neatly divided. In our effort to cling to that which is love and lovely, we have grown weary and God has grown profitable. But that is not really Love. The Love I sense is here when time is not. It has no promise or despair. It does not belong to god or to any of the ways my thoughts try to capture and explain it. As Krishnamurti says, “ It (love) lives and dies each minute. It is destruction without tomorrow. Love is destruction.”

When I am alone and not alone, I am destroyed. Because Love is. Beloved, this.

Not Enough and All I Have

Schools are closed so kids are in the grass looking for shamrocks; this and other venerations for St. Patrick.

Week 2 of sickness. There are not enough tests for the virus, instead they give a flu and strep test; both negative. The greenhouse work continues but I am at home. After the grower's meeting, he came back and said everything is pushed back. Thousands and thousands of plants we have already potted must stop growing in order to be saved. He opens the vents and turns off the heat. From February to June, they make the money to ive from all year long. Not shipping these plants will mean financial devastation. This and other repercussions of pandemic.

Stay home. Breathe if you can. Prepare the gardens for a long time of need.

My little family, plus the boyfriend, all under one roof for the foreseeable future, quietly settle into different parts of the house to do their online school work. Kyle chirps away all day on the phone, hosting one conference call after another. All these little orbits give you time to see “the real work” as Wendell Berry sees it. I'm not sure how to do it yet, but I see it.

Affordable gasoline and nowhere to go. But we have things to burn, beloved. Don't we?

Having nothing to say and a million ways to go on saying it. One branch at a time, a climbing cardinal. Venus hangs out with the moon. Woodsmoke drifts beyond rooftops and steals a dance from the stars. Pretty soon poetry will both not be enough and all we have.

All these letters pile on the desk – unopened – unsent – you stay blameless that way. The writing follows trails cut by woodland creeks. We pass accidental orchards and crumbling steeples. Growth overtakes the way in hungry places. Writing is the offering. It may be all I have.

Don't Send Helicopters

In the 2007 post election violence in Kenya, we didn't have time to stock up on basics. We woke to rioting, no gasoline or cell phone time and a media blackout. As word of mouth began to trickle through the confusion, we realized there was nothing we could do but shelter in place. The roads to the airport were blocked. Fuel pumps were dry without a way to get more. Water became more valuable than gold. Wealthy family members pleaded with us to allow a helicopter to extract us. Of course we refused; we were indignant at the suggestion. A nation was at war with itself and we were caught in the crossfire. In the meantime, there was no extra food. Electricity and internet would come and go, along with water. In times like these, one's chaff is quickly pulverized to reveal someone almost unknown to the self and others. Yes, Kenyan family members murdered each other, neighbors, and friends if they weren't of the “correct” tribe. Police fell in line with which ever presidential candidate was of their tribe. People became desperate to stay alive. Those were the stories of other people. As an expatriate, I could only be horrified and shocked and terrified at what I saw others doing. For myself, I had to deal with what it meant to help my family survive while also assisting those around me.

This pandemic brings me directly back to those times. I am watching others behave in ways that are ugly and selfish, yet I know they just want to survive. They are scared. But the rich and privileged have all the power to buy up what they might need to hunker down and wait out this virus. They have the helicopters. It is my prayer – no – there must be a different word. I cannot find it. The suffocation of cells in my very bones cries out for the wealthy to understand: in order to truly live during and after this, they must learn of their connection to the whole. It will never, ever be enough to protect your own family and interests alone; the suffering on humanity and on the soul will be incalculable. I promise.

Between that sentence and this, magenta fully fills in all the space between pine branches. More bird song is being added to the morning chorus daily now. Dawn marks the time when I no longer have to wish I was asleep. But robins and red wings!

Also poet, there is a soundtrack to all the places we wanted to visit – to try – to linger. Gifts given and received. And those songs play when I least expect. Beck asked me about R.E.M. and I talked to him about Stipe and his music and that book written by a lover. The National, Dylan, Sia, Cohen, U2 . . . The past slips away but the songs remain. I remain. Don't send helicopters. I'm not leaving.

The Right Thing

Sick at 3 a.m. with fever and a sore throat; the virus comes to mind. Vague symptoms leave room to roam. No one is awake with me so I tend to myself – my burning muscles and my new normal. Will Lex still study abroad in Spain? Will Beck be able go to the Robotics World Championships? Along with economic disease and death, this potential pandemic has uncovered more ugly truths. These thoughts fall through my sky like rain, passing through branches, rolling off the skin with a little seepage here and there. The idea of Love is becoming more and more abstract.

I'm less obsessed, beloved, more free. Yet even in the letting go, something strange and beautiful keeps pushing to the surface like broken pieces of glass climbing through the soil to find light. I fall through it so completely. I'm just being honest. There are decisions we make for those we love and for whom love us. Of course, they make those decisions for us as well. But then there is the swift motion of east and west bound lanes. There is Ashtabula and that park near the big lake. There are the borderless kinetics of heartbeats and the secret place one goes when they are caught up in birdsong at dawn. My body is so tired of running in the other direction. Maybe that's why I must always move in pain now.

I can't say the right thing and I can't do the right thing. I just know the right thing; I let it come and go. It floats by on a river and I long desperately to wade out to it; to pick it up in my freezing hands; to take it home next to the fireplace and hold it. Let me, Lord. Let me.

Moonlight patches glow through the branches of wintering trees like a quilt draped over the back of the neighborhood couch. I might be really sick but I'm not sure. Maybe I'll call the doctor in the morning. For now there is just me again, wrapped up in midnight's cloak, wondering when I will ever . . . just . . . sleep.

Long Dead Dogs

There is enough sun at dawn to see the dog's breath when she barks. It's still cold but the shift away from winter has begun. Maybe I can wash windows soon; maybe I can feel warmth below the skin. Sun on occasion says that maybe I should move the painting so that it doesn't become faded. “Art is an investment” we said. Yet this mosaic in particular was home when we didn't know where to find it.

Off in the distance a familiar trill slices through a misty March. Though I cannot see him, I understand what he is saying; the red-winged blackbird settles the matter.

When my daughter comes home from college, I put fresh tulips in her room to say I missed you; I'm so proud of you; You make my world brighter. The boy and the girl and the mom and the dad will vote together as a family for the first time on Tuesday. We don't have the options we want but, “The people have spoken, those bastards.”

The greenhouse work persists, develops and grows more rigorous. Every day my body hesitates and lilts with pain, though it would do that now without the work. There is a pill case to keep disease and aging going in a palatable direction.

Dogs age too. She sits on the stoop shivering, close to the door, facing a world she cannot catch. Yet she doesn't come in when asked. At dinner the other night, I sat between two friends conversing about a dog sitter. One friend's son comes to stay with Kora when we have to be away so I added my emphatic endorsement to his capabilities. Only, without thought, the name of our long dead dog came out of my mouth instead. How strange it must be for deep, abiding love to live in a forgotten darkness. And, how utterly startling to have it rise and reveal itself all at once.

I love who is here and not here. The cardinal stays all winter and brings joy. The red-winged blackbird arrives when it's time and brings joy. The sparrow finds treasure in the winter wasteland and brings joy. As humans we have told ourselves to dictate where everything belongs. Yet we have forgotten that everything belongs – right here, as it is. I have no name for this or you or the deep and abiding love that insists on diving deep and resurfacing for air when it must.

Rime on roofs. Sunlight on silken strands. My own reflection in disappearing ice. Are there not infinite ways that light shows the way?

Birds Tell the Truth

Dawn charms its way past curtains and pillows. The truth is I've been awake long before now. Expanse blooms in this time alone. Gratefulness builds.

At the edge of the woods, fallen timber molders. A bare birch tree bends a little towards the east as blackness falls apart.

I remember asking priest hands to pray for me. Magic comes from what you believe. That summer a boy did not have my permission, so I guess magic can only protect you so long.

Pools of mulberry and mauve gather at the base of pines. The far off hum of morning traffic begins to rise. The train and I sigh as the world wakes hungry.

Back through the neighborhood, the skeleton of a hydrangea bloom skips across softening snowbanks. This and other scattered remains of summer surface for a brief time – perhaps as a sign of hope?

Chickadees and cardinals make the walk home enchanting. Sure, there are times when I can feel your fingers count the vertebrae down my back. But in this moment, the only moment that is real, birds tell the truth.

Over tea maybe we would discuss walking along the sea. Or how the purple moon blushes across snowbanks at night. Poverty presents in different ways. Tell me about the last time you let yourself go.

In the greenhouse, I carry a thousand baskets into the lean-to. This and other ways the body takes on the shape of work. Sweat-soaked shirt and dirt collecting around the ankles. This place has no magic – only the sweet agony of everything growing towards home.

Little Cups of Distance

Between waking at 2:00, 3:15 and finally 4:00 a.m., I dreamt about an owl. The image lingered long enough for me to search: what do owls mean in dreams? Sometimes a secret; sometimes death. There is a sense that I am wiser for having received the message.

Michigan weather continues to live up to its reputation for being unsettled and chaotic. Freeze – thaw – freeze; bones and roads lead you back to repair. For repair? When neighbors bring down the old oak, its landing shakes all the windows and floorboards. This tree is gone but you wait on the greening of others because such a faith has been earned. Warm passage of breath and blood is coming. The fall of our mouths into the earth's deepening tilt. The drift of our gaze into detonated stars. Sunlight browsing for freckles. It's okay to ache for summer. Let your heat swaddle the bare trees and bring February's frozen lakes to a boil. How else would we intercept this lack of light?!

Lately, veggie roll sushi. Sticky rice sits full in the mouth replacing an acute hunger. Turmeric for the inflammation. Meds for the pain and fatigue.

East-West highways painted blue on the wrist. Heaven waits on a kind of touch – the trace of a finger – eyelashes against the cheek – lips skimming. In the little cups of distance, snow fills to the brim. We women are the dangerous ones. When self aware, we will devour you whole. Is it enough to die happy?

Fated Flame

In this order: wake, feed the dog, make coffee, build a fire, sit.

The last first kiss curls and billows as I jostle the fated flame into climbing. Today's build required a little extra attention of which I was happy to give. Tending fire has become an extension of love. Ministering to its needs is to attend its chaos; yet I serve in great peace and joy. Beloved, I am here. Where else would I be?

When the sun arrives, it never goes unnoticed. Light dazzles off snowy shoulders, casting diamonds everywhere. A hint of mist lifts off the pine tree trunk as the sun warms its back. On the way to Mt. Pleasant yesterday a cardinal was just sitting on the side of the two-lane highway like a red sock in a snow bank, inadvertently left behind. My heart said, “ be careful, beautiful one!” Beckett turned up our favorite song to sing together on road trips. How full a moment can be. How heavenly. How death could come and it would all be a beautiful deliquesce.

We continue to fill the greenhouse – day by day – plant by plant. Friday was planting Night Sky petunias in pots on the conveyor belt, then carrying trays of six pots each from the belt to their growing place on the greenhouse floor. My body aches after 8 hours but also, I am set free in the pain and goodness of it all. Plant, carry, repeat. It's warm in there and I sweat. The dirt from the filler is super fine and very light; it sticks to my skin and coats the inside of my ears, nose and lungs. I cough at night because of the dirt and I'm awake because of the sore body. I see your 2:15 a.m. and raise you 4:10.

On the way to work, I saw the moon for the first time in months. Like spotting the cardinal on the side of the road, I was like, “oh, hey!” and it caused me to remember all things you said about the moon and its strange locations. Anyway, maybe the metaphysics don't really matter as much as they once did. However, there are things you cannot say, things you know that you know that you know. The last first kiss hangs in the morning sky, thin at times, full and bright at others. But it is there, making molehills out of mountains, writing this love letter and the next.

Lavendar is Involved

The horizon at dawn is singed with color I cannot name, but lavender is definitely involved. In these silent hours you look forward to the words that are being nourished deep under ground. And you also wait on the absence of words which gives a transcendence from the sunken.

In the psychological mode of love, that which is beyond form is made conscious, and I recognize it in the other. Yes, a certain resonance at all levels is present, but there is more. A deeper level grows in awareness. And, in the retreat . . . in the distance . . . in the gap we've pried open together – the end enacted does not destroy what is now awake.

Desire without need. When romantic feelings arrive, they are beautiful and welcome. Tell me everything about the apple freshly fallen from the tree sitting on your windowsill and how it might gleam in western light. Tell me about how if left there over time, it begins to soften and wrinkle and release its blushing perfume. The image ages; what is unlocked in its beauty does not.

One day I woke up knowing that I am complete. The ashes of burned maps are finally cool to the touch. God . . . it's all true, Beloved: yes, no, not yet, maybe.

Picking at Scabs

Untouchable politicians.

In 2007, my family was living in a country where a sitting president manipulated election results to remain in power. Without the ability to be heard by the government, the opposition party and supporters began to protest. Peaceful protests fell on deaf ears as the sitting president swore himself back into office on national television. In addition to nonviolent protests, the opposition party went on a violent killing spree, mowing down supporters of the president. In retaliation, police shot and killed hundreds of protesters on live TV. Because the president and his party were of one tribe and the opposition and his party were of another, killing escalated into targeted ethnic cleansing along both tribal lines.

As an expatriate living there, this wasn't our war. But on our compound, we housed friends from both tribes. When the government blacked out all media, we woke the next morning to shouting and gunfire at the gate of our compound. A posse of armed people were going gate to gate demanding that residents turn over any members of the “wrong” tribe. All of the sudden we were housing dozens of people who would be killed if they left our property.

We were trapped in our house. There was no gasoline for vehicles or airtime for cell phones. We had to stay away from the windows in our home to avoid stray bullets. Tear gas and pepper spray hung in the air. We couldn't leave even if we wanted to and despite our families' desperate pleas to return to the States, we didn't want to leave; there were people to take care of and feed and house and keep safe.

Within days, stories of husbands killing wives from the opposite tribe began to spread. Friends killed friends. Thousands of people began migrating toward their tribal homelands in order to be surrounded by those who would not kill them. In our area, literally under the dark cover of night, 5,000 people arrived at the police station ½ km from our house. The police station was no bigger than a 7-11 convenience store. In the highlands where we lived, nights were damp and cold. It rained a lot and getting around was not easy. At the police station, women were giving birth in freezing temperatures with no shelter, no food or water, no medical assistance. The sick got sicker and the children cried until heartbreak and fear became the new normal.

Our family mobilized to help. It was impossible to remain in lock down when there was a bottomless canyon of basic needs outside our door. We gathered all the rice we could find on the compound and spent a day cooking in huge pots. Another neighbor had access to a water truck and filled it from rainwater cisterns at various houses. We arrived at the IDP camp/police station and nothing could prepare us for what we saw – thousands of hungry, cold, injured and terrified people. There was no bathroom or water or shelter. Some sat on belongings that were wrapped up in sheets as luggage. Some cradled babies on their chests and backs, patting and hushing and whispering calming songs. Some were wailing for all they had lost and for all they might lose at any moment.

It is not easy to imagine what humanity smells like at this level or how the heart breaks under this pressure or what it sounds like to lose everything overnight. I cannot even begin to scratch at it here and I believe I will spend a lifetime continuing to dig at the scab I've been trying to ignore since those days. To write is to remember the machetes and the bodies of children bleeding in the streets; it is to conjure the smell of smoke in the air after thirty souls were locked in the church and burned alive; it is to hear the faint sounds of screaming off in the distance as the four of us cried together in one bed all night, every night for weeks.

There are a hundred stories to write about this time, but I struggle even to write one. Yet as I watch what is happening to the United States right now, I cannot feel anything other than deep despair and fear. I've seen what can happen when power is left unchecked. I have watched families turn on each other and witnessed a nation hack itself to death. To think and say that it cannot happen here is a symptom of a nation fast asleep at the wheel.

We have untouchable politicians at the wheel. Whether they are of your “tribe” or not, I promise: you will rue the day you fell asleep.

Repeat

The sun dangles slightly right of the backyard pine. In some sort of winter aberration, the temperature is not warm but it's not freezing, either. I step onto the back deck barefooted and short sleeved. Immediately steam rises from my coffee mug and the ends of my red-gold hair glow in my peripheral vision. My shoulders and chest curl inward at the sudden chill; it's much colder than it looks. The dog catches the scent of a large opossum crawling along the back fence line. The opossum has the chance to escape through a missing plank in the fence into the neighbor's yard, so I let the dog run after it. All she can do is bark; she fires off six yelps in a row and then looks back at me. Repeat. Repeat.

On my day off: roasted root vegetables, pot roast and swearing off coffee, again. Yesterday's shift at the greenhouse tested mind, soul and body. MAGA-mongers and halftime haters made conversations difficult. The last two hours of the day were excruciating on my body. The work isn't the problem; the disease is. Let's see how it goes. Let's build stamina. Let's decide later if it's possible. The body makes its own plea: Advil, icing, arnica, stretching, Epsom bath, roller massage, turmeric tea, CBD cream. Repeat. Repeat.

Clouds gather and pile like day-old ash. West Michigan falls back into her normal, tucking sunlight away for another day. With cold coffee and aching hips I think about it. This. And how all ideas can be affirmed and all ideas can be negated. We live in a world of relativities and cannot assert any thing or idea beyond a conclusion of subjectivity. Yet one keeps on trying to imagine this way or that. We ask questions that have projected answers and we fold and refold maps that only show estimations of where one could possibly be. Why do we allow our minds to hunt for that which life does not offer? One travels in these coils. Repeat. Repeat.

Moonlight and starlight remain at a distance. I miss how stars would fill the lake on a summer night; how I could swim to the moon in warm, black water; how crickets' perfect lullabies would even float out to the sedated raft. Longing for the beautiful things does not mean I don't remember how frightening those same times could be – imagining huge dead trees and stacked boulders under the water, giant muskies lurking in the seaweed forests, and the inability to see any thing or any one. But in the deepest, darkest February nights, the memory of water is a comfort. Checking for stars, swimming in sleeplessness, remembering you. Repeat. Repeat.

daylight opossum –
a lumbering gray
hesitates

Feathered Magicians

A warm spell allows a patchwork of green islands to appear here and there in the front yard. Juncos by the dozen dart around a cardinal couple picking through latent grass. I haven't seen the male cardinal all winter, despite having heard his chirp through the kitchen window. I'm not sure if it's the same couple that nests in the rhododendron just off the front porch, but it is always ever only cardinals. It's been weeks without sun but a least these feathered magicians invite February with an abundance of good will.

The greenhouse work starts Monday. Thusly this week is spent preparing good meals and reading and writing just a bit. Soon there will only be aching muscles and errands on off days and rest when possible. I look forward to growing things and not being so damn cold. Spring mimes her intentions beneath frozen earth but at least winter will no longer free fall through the months.

Sleep walking through snow drifts. Lately, 4 a.m. bellows and chimes. Springtime is typically when that hour cuts away the sleep. Why now? Why not now? I read cookbooks in the middle of the night or listen to podcasts or pace on tip toes. At this hour the dog no longer leaps up to guide me through the house. My measured steps are old news. Did you know I planted forget-me-nots along the creek last year? Blue may be the closest we get. Thus sayeth the Lord.

Before the house wakes I feed the dog; make a fire; coffee; breakfast. I settle into snow falling around distant train sighs and writing. What if some day some one made breakfast or coffee or a fire for me? A certain distance compounds while another abates. The men in my life are complicated which doesn't say anything about them. While typing I see soot on my knuckles and feel the grace of my work. So I guess I am the fire builder and the breakfast cook and the coffee maker. Maybe that's what getting older is for – knowing what you can do for others.

Beholden

This is the day I write for the mirror – teacher – beloved accomplice.

Barely seeable flakes fall from morning onto each other. No sunrise appears; no color warms the ashen dust. Yet the silence has a striking beauty. It is facilitating the work – the work that must be done alone.

This is the day I lionize the red-winged blackbird – off in his wintering place – a prophet rebuilding.

If it were me to knit this day, I would make a soup and a fire and a lemon cake after a bundled walk into the woods. The woods know how to say it all in the right way. Wood smoke cologne and the clicking of bare branches telegraphing the breeze. A small strange insect crawled out of the onion bag and onto the countertop this morning. I thought, “ yes, this will also do in the blank of winter.” Small things and their power to humble giants.

This is the day I can give like a river – bending for life – water to a desert mouth.

I remember the words about cabins and building a trestle desk. January has a heat more deeply than northern winters suggest. Below the pine, several branch endings have broken off and lie upon fresh snowfall around the trunk. Green tells me what the tree can spare, but winter tells me I will always have everything to give.

This is the day I bow – melodious gratitude – sinking with the sun – nakedness covered in distance.

A zipper caught in my coat; a piano out of tune; a dog with no way to walk. Missionary meets tortured monk meets an unexpected arrival. We wrote the fiction of peace and yet, in the way that only we could, we uncovered and unhinged the narrow gate. This is true. And I am beholden.

This is the day I am glad for birth. Window panes – facing east – sunrise behind the curtains.

Two tin cups of whiskey clink in the northern forest. Cheers to January to winter to you to this to moving on.

The Drink of Me

The dog's light snoring, a dueling tick-tock of clocks, my neighbor shoveling the driveway after a night of heavy snowfall – Sunday morning threatens to fall back asleep on the entire town. I tend to indoor plants and shovel ash from the fireplace to prepare for a day of being housebound. Which soup would you enjoy today, beloved . . . potato leek, red lentil chili, maybe a simple cabbage broth? My heart is always in the soup.

After cocktails with friends, I realize I have a signature drink. There is a way people see me and there is a way I see myself and I wonder about an amalgam of all the perceptions. The drink of me has liqueur made from violets grown on the Swiss Alps, and gin, and freshly squeezed lemon. The paradox of common growing things found in a hard to reach place is not lost, nor is the idea that my clothes are second hand but my drink (or the fact that I even have a “signature drink”) might be seen as pretentious. I ordered the drink on a whim in a moment of splurge. Yet after the first sip of tentative whimsy and the childlike discovery of something unexpected, I knew things I didn't know before. I recognized flavors and essences and generations of care for ingredients and methods and heart. I tasted love – mine and theirs and yours and God's. Fine; yes; I'm being effusive about a drink. But there is more here that I'm trying to say.

Raking the roof, shoveling snow, stacking wood. Today is a day for managing Michigan. I have decided on a soup: white bean, chicken, and kale with thin table crackers on the side. As the soup simmers I break a piece of cracker off and let it melt on my tongue. The image of the priest putting the consecrated host in my hands always comes to mind. I never let him put it in my mouth like the others do – too personal – too intimate. Maybe that's why he left the priesthood. Maybe that's why I left too.

The secret path is not a secret. She is curved and understands her slavery and therefore, understands yours. Someone invisible is always with you . . . in the fields, at the river, in the pines, on the mountain. She swims in the lake naked at night and she knits warm scarves as an eternal gift.

I know these things in a single sip; hear them in a note; taste them in a saltine cracker. Who needs to know this; who cares?

You Bare Trees . . . You Sleeping Daffodils

Winter windows and I face east to watch the sky rain metal before turning to ice. Tree branches sag under the weight of it all. The sight of aching pines disarms the story of me. Meaning, the mere image of this beauty enters my retinas and is translated into the recognition that my role may not need be. Season by season I am falling into the mystery of openness which says: there is no distance. You bare trees; you sleeping daffodils . . . . I am eliminated and destroyed by the wordless way in which you take down my walls. That's what trees say to whomever is left. And also, they are laughing at how one misses what isn't even hidden.

The medication is working. Day by day, pain is disappearing: first from my neck, then my rib cage all the way around, my lower back and finally my hips. Fatigue subsides and little by little I can add normal tasks back into my life. Six months of chronic pain was enough to bend to my knees, not in prayer but in surrender. There is nothing to protect. It is here that the body's deepest function starts to unfold. For so long I've fought with my body. I held the mind and intellect at level far exceeding the mysteries and magic of body. Only in certain contexts would my body express the openness and wisdom of the body-mind communion. How unfortunate to live so long with the fear of one's own wholeness. Pain has been my teacher of intimacy.

For lunch, vegetable curry over black rice and chickpea-potato samosas. My first samosa was in Kenya. What a delicious little triangle of flavor! When Mama Joanne taught me how to make them, I kept picturing my grandfather's burial whereby the service members folded the U.S. Flag and handed it to my grandmother. I doubt he ever ate a samosa. I miss Mama Joanne; she was with me everyday in Kenya – except that time when we loaded her belongings and family up into a lorry to escape the post-election violence against her tribe. She stayed away long enough for the tensions to ease. I missed her then, too.

The dog curls up at my feet when I write but lately, she doesn't ever leave my side. As endearing as that is most of the time, I feel her need for something that I cannot give. She stares at me and makes soft whining noises, especially when I sink deeply into writing mode. I ask her all kinds of things in my Kora-voice: do you want to go outside, do you want some pets or a belly rub, do you need more water? I think she wants to go for a walk, which is still a hard thing to manage. I try to tell her that by looking deep into her eyes. I see her nostrils flaring quickly in and out when I do that, as if she can smell what I'm thinking. But she still cries a little.

The mind and the body have to open further in order not to suffer, I think. Perhaps this is the only way for the whole the perceive itself. At least, that is the thing I'm thinking today – easterly – gray – today.

Ice Storm Sacristy

In feeble light before dawn, as others linger in morning dreams, my heart – my thinking, writing, happy heart – extends beyond body and the languages I know. An expanse is there like the Serengeti: golden dry grasses giving in to unencumbered breezes, stretching further than the mind can process. I remember me. I remember you as me. I leave my body behind until the others become a wildebeest or a lioness or a heard of cape buffalo grazing on my amber landscape.

The ice storm bears down. Rain throughout the night now begins to sound like tiny pebbles thrown against the windows. We lose electricity during times like this due to an old electrical grid in a heavily forested area. I prepare food ahead and gather wood and find flashlights and blankets for our guests. L's saxophone quartet is staying this weekend for several gigs they had in the area; most were cancelled due to the pending storm. Instead, they break my heart and make me cry by filling my home with music from another realm.

Greenhouse season begins soon. A new diagnosis threatens to disrupt this winter oasis. Time will tell but I will try. What if I cannot be there? Ice forming on the pine branches gives no answer. My mind turns to the tree damage likely if the wind picks up. I miss the golden blaze from the east bursting through pines and maple and oak leaves. I miss the slant, the warmth on my skin, the smile making a case for deep joy. But in this quiet morning sacristy there is gratefulness. My land is not on fire. I have shelter and family and food. My children are here at the moment, safe and allowing me to cook them breakfast. My husband loves, cares for and respects me. And there is this sliced apple on small white plate, nourishing my thoughts in an ice storm . . . I mean, yes.