On Your Way

overwhelmed
by darkness and dream
4 a.m. and p.m. –
no life between

A hummingbird whispers a secret in your ear, but in getting too close, pierces your eardrum.

Bereft.

On the hike, my injury and how hobbling home made sense.

How to express this – this lack – this unbridgeable path – this prisoner in my chest.

I am clotted.

Dylan told me you would go on your way but a soul thought she knew better.

Bones over bones in winter's ground.

Once, my innocence was given but now, not so much.

Who is unable say farewell shows up in all the wrong places.

Blessed be the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Now, mornings dawn unto emptiness.

And snowless days allow the redbird song, but deprive the Watcher of a sighting. The sight. Our sight.

evergreen bush
stoic in my scarcity
cardinal parting ways

Dead Fake Creeks and Flashing Christmas Lights

hours
in the three season's room –
the fourth season
hurts all day

It stays with you, the way ice cuts, the way bones refuse to go numb. I beg to be forgiven so the forgiver may also be forgiven. Sometimes this walk is so cold. Sometimes my fingers are frozen.

Coffee, a hot fireplace, the urge to fall asleep for the rest of December. I watch the mallards break thin ice along the shoreline. He said he wanted to see my face when I look at a lake. Who holds me. Who needs to. Who cannot find a way. How cold the long walk from the water.

I would make soup but I am too lost. The kids complain about “no traditions” and thusly listen to Christmas songs and decorate cookies. “Make my wish come true, all I want for Christmas is you.”

When you mentioned the elk or the deer, I thought of the centering prayers sessions with the Quaker. He used the imagery of a deer tip-toeing to the edge of an open meadow. Tears would stream down my face and everyone thought I was spiritual. But I wasn't; I was alive with the forest once but now, I am the destroyer.

In most ways, full in you. In others, hanging on by a thread. The dreck of me is killing us.

How he handles the details. How I disappear from the details. How God says, “Let me have it.”

No diamond sparkles through the branches. No blue rescues from not-so-distant madness. Now there is only dead fake creeks and incessantly flashing Christmas lights breaking up the ways in which night needs to be dark.

Without flow, Beloved, the world becomes so very, very quiet.

Kingfisher As My Heart

November ending.

As it turns out, grey can also glisten.

Trout, pavement, frosted rooftops.

A prayer – a wish – allow me to be worthy.

Is there further to fall when you are on the floor?

Question asked; now the answer will follow.

Sometimes dawn is enough.

He said, “it's not the waking; it's the rise.”

Milkweed astray, faded goldenrod, meadows bleary with seed.

Spiritual lover in human drag.

Let me touch you.

Kingfisher as my heart.

In the winter meadow I sat on damp earth – not quite frozen – not quite life sustaining. The sun angled just so, dilating my pupils to the size of a pinhead. I took a photograph with the intention of beaming a message. Then deleted it. December breezes bite but with sunlight finding skin, all but the papery rustle of a chafing summer fades to nothing. An hour is a minute. Emptied to see. Who was there; who was here? You know the answer. I know it too. Yet again: but how?

Setting Fire

And finally, sun.

Steam rises off the wet wooden fence and I am held captive in its trance for as long as it lasts.

In sunlight, I am erased.

In sunlight, the destruction of everything makes sense.

But I can't make it stay.

***

Apple and Brussel sprout hash.

Coffee as an old friend who wishes to destroy me.

Daily sweeping leaves off the back deck.

A lone mosquito lands on the handle of my coffee mug to show how autumn slows the many moments of doing.

Stillness now carries the weight of a twenty year.

***

Inside I am not hedging fifty years old.

I am timeless.

As beautiful and destructive as the sun.

Merwin writes about being younger in October and I totally get it.

Laughing wrens totally get it.

***

Kissing the light.

Tell me again why we cannot do this together.

Show me in the broad light of day why we cannot overlap these bodies and minds.

Why are we not the portals to vanquished darkness?

One hundred years to go one thousand miles; this is the fodder for fire.

Blessed Bridges to Burn

Downpours in the dark.

Blackness after what would be dawn.

A voluntary poverty means we get to be unworldly in the world. Or so this particular story goes. Love has a death because After is. No more books. No more enlightened thinkers. I'm too tired to draw any more lines in shifting sands.

October has a certain vernacular, a spell cast in place of summer nights under gleaming stars. Today, a wave overtook me as I skittered with fallen leaves through the parking lot of the market. It was the hot breath of Spirit, or so a girl like me thought. It said what I knew but didn't know how to say or rather, was too afraid to remember. Let's see come November if I can know the same thing. If so, I have places to go and bridges to burn.

Another whole day of rain. Water pools in the streets, and downed leaves grow heavier by the hour. I watch the creek spill over with more flow than it can handle.

Our blessed estrangement is a reminder that I may always be of many streams – no one movement able to contain wherever it is I'm headed.

But I'm not alone.

Blessed is the one who who showed me that.

And blessed is the flow that now takes command.

Still it Rains

Sounds of rain fill every space in the dark and with it, the knowing that it will never again be just rain filling in all the spaces in the dark.

A warm front pushes north to bring the last breath of a dying summer. She said my description of autumn was “positively Emily Dickinson” which made me think of one who would shutter at the ascription but more importantly, it made me realize that I had dropped down into prose-land in writing a simple letter. Which author is at play? Which love is yearning; which is faithful?

Failing eyes, failing teeth, failing skin. My hair won't go gray but will eventually turn white like my grandmother's. Our matriarch is 97 years old and prays the rosary every day. Devout and unwavering. Most hold her up as ideal but her unswerving sight has left me unable to draw near. To hold only one way of seeing carries consequences. Some you know. Some you forget over time.

Dawn arrives in muted gray. Still it rains, bringing down more needles and leaves. Pine, oak, maple. Repeat.

In a rain-doused dream, I was presented a treasure beyond reckoning. A flood took away all my strength, revealing Soul Herself. In radiance, She took all but a tiny wisp of life to leave behind in a patient dream. She greets the Godhead and they slip away into a secret room. She puts on a robe of magnificence and royalty, and They, the Godhead, give Her everything She wants and asks.

Oats for breakfast with apple slices on the side. I shower and dress for errands in the rain. I feel pretty today and I think it has to do with the dream.

Echoes

Eddie Vedder on ukulele. Leaves coming down in slow motion. It's all coming down in slow motion now. Damp pine needles cushion each step and late alyssum blares a bracing whiteness against all this rust. My heart beating backwards. You, letting go of lakes and trestles and holding hands on the bridge. The sun briefly breaks through, barely leaving enough space for clouds to scud. But the world is paper now. Folding, tearing, reshaping into something smaller. He peers out of an empty house and he is no one but I am still she and she is wondering about She and she asks him, “if I tell you the name, you will let me barrel down the highway straight east into the sun that rises for you?”

For we echo, beloved. Our cries leave us to become something other because there is nothing here that requires us. No eyeless rock or earless tree. No hungry fox or exhausted bear. She knows that. She knows we've got it all wrong. Again. And there aren't any images left in which to confide because their bloodless portal only takes you back to where you began: moaning on your knees. The love of one woman is enough, even though you know not to whom you bow. You do not know.

Unfolded in the Wind

Residual heat in the ashes.

Geese overhead just before dawn bellow a departure.

The nature of autumn; the soul of October.

When the wind blows, leaves scrape and rustle in the dark – a lonely sound, mainly due to an inability to forget what comes next.

“Waiting for your 2 cents leaves me broke.” Yes, woman. Yes.

And yet.

Walking synchronicity.

Standing in the holy place.

No more substitutions.

Safe in the love that was never not given.

Called together; we do not go alone.

I see now.

I am accountable – a sleepy child holding us in this dream too long!

Time to extend.

Asters, chrysanthemums, thistle.

Unfolded in the wind.

A thank you note: for being stronger than I.

And more beautiful.

Planting Butterflies

Distillation.

When traumatic injury occurs, there are no what-ifs or wishes. Only action. Only now.

How things fall – apart – unravel.

yet it is well
still
it is well

The cardinal visits daily outside the kitchen window. How lovely to watch him move about his life. We see each other and move on because what alternative is there?

Libra days, Aquarian nights. Jupiter, Venus, and Mars. How red falls in sunlight; how red flickers with stars.

A misread title: Planting Butterflies. It is dangerous or helpful to look ahead? Books on gardening, butterflies and vegetables pile in the living room.

The last warmth slips away, although strangely, a few mild days. At night I can only think about campfires and stars. No one sits with me and I can't decide if I like it or not.

Birthday brownies for breakfast. Fresh fall flowers. A day of being present for those who wanted to celebrate. Before noon, I unloaded Dad's trailer of wood...half seasoned cottonwood, half freshly downed oak. It's stacked against the garage wall and now when I enter the garage, it smells like living wood – a mix of gratitude and sorrow, joy and pain.

Tell me, is this how you wanted it to be? Perhaps like October, peace falls on you at last. Have we reached equilibrium yet?

"Allow Her" and Other Blessings

October skies allow for no misconceptions. Cotton piled clouds hang in front of granite seas. Rain bursts forth followed by sun followed by quiet darkness followed by more rain. Leaves gathering by day and moonlight taking refuge behind night after night of rain.

Sage and lavender rising. I'm moving in different ways after hearing who I am. Aeromancy and blessing upon the wind. Sun breaks through and I care very much. This time of year, wet pine needles give. The air somehow does the work and I am so grateful. I can bless the wind; that is something I can do when it all falls and rots.

Residual water falls from leaves when the wind decides to give a little push. Sun breaks from the iron lid and seems to set these stray drops on fire as they fall. It is gorgeous and has become one of my favorite stories of falling.

Between rains, I moved at least 50 field stones. A garden awaits and each effort is an initiation to join Her, be Her, allow Her. Perennials were moved to make space but the question now is: what shall become of the Lily of the Valley? The roots are entangled with vines, and the vines must go. Lessons in losing that which is special. Lessons involving the body abound.

Boiling chicken off the bone and hot tea – tending the sick as a natural expression of love. Geese overhead announce the freedom to migrate. Wrinkled V-shapes indicate they are greater than. Well, greater depending on one's location!

She wrote, “the politics of orgasm” and right then and there I decided that God's compass spins with the menstrual cycle of the Goddess. Tell me, beloved, what does it mean to trust in Her ways?

Autumn digs in and so each day now becomes about siphoning as much sunlight as possible. Bowls of moonlight at night, sure....but also, bundles of dried herbs soaking up light during the day. Other than these things, I cannot say aloud what is happening. But I can fan incense and wood smoke and sage in a way that blesses this moment and the next.

Wishes

All night the last of September plays a gentle cadence across the roof, in gutters, and against my dusty bedroom window. Rain brings leaves down now, no matter how tender the lilt. I would have been half way to Vermont by now; this and other wishes.

The sound of rain is a welcome weighted blanket at night which is to say it is a lullaby for falling asleep. However, staying asleep is another tune altogether. One can listen to the rain all night long and wish and wish until finally she surrenders to what is by getting up.

In the dark I pour and heat day old coffee. I measure the creamer because maybe sweetness is not what the world needs right now. The dog never seems to be confused when I shuffle around in the dark; if I am up, she is up and wants to begin her routine of: let me out, let me in, feed me, let me out. We make a compromise whereby I don't feed her until breakfast time but I will go outside in the rain with her. She usually shuns water which has always been weird for me to accept in a dog. But today we launch out into the waters together. I lose sight of her in the dark as I hang back under the slight overhang of the house, listening.

Eyes adjusting; coffee steam rising; the percussion of water against trees and ground and the glass deck table. A leftover plant dish overflows with hours of rain and the smell of October finds every pore and every capillary of my lungs. To take it in is to know joy and death at the same time. Longing and fulfillment. Love and love. October is complicated, though not on the surface. At first it is just a river that pushes onward despite fallen logs or steeped leaves. It flows and does what October does. It hosts birthdays and Halloweens and the last of any color that could distract from what is next.

Then, as part of living, it dies. Trees become witchy rakes and chrysanthemums turn brown and rotten and fall into their own roots. Everything goes numb and begins to sleep if they are lucky. Bird sightings become a gift given in scarcity. Who doesn't retreat is either made of stone or risks a kind of death. Libra always carries both loves...love of divine ecstasy and knowledge of earthly death. Balance, calibration, the movements of God. Teacher, student, teacher. Plant, harvest, repeat.

Dawn arrives smokey, dark and gray. I watch houses come into view, each winking with window light, one by one. School bus engines grumble and the neighbor's sprinkler turns on despite hours of rain. All that is left to do is tend whatever is here. Thank you for being here.

Egret Playing Angel

In last night's dream, a small boy kept saying: the three cliffs in Dover, the three cliffs in Dover! In his bright green shirt he laughs, turns away and disappears in a mist. This and other messages given, but intended for whom?

Another day of dark rain as California burns.

It's cold enough to see my breath in the mornings. The world is different. Don't pretend it's better, because it's not. Sure, the highs and lows have given way to a flatline. But I have already lived decades underneath that arrow of stone. When I lived in Kenya, every day was fully on fire. It was either terrifying or utterly and deliriously beautiful. Living that way did take it's toll but only because I never knew if I was going to live or die that day. It's not like that here.

No, it's nothing like that here.

egret
playing angel
and two herons
on the rise –
at least feathers remain

The pond shimmers a little after dawn's fade. Yellow “nodding beggarticks” bob along the shoreline, hiding the egret's quest for breakfast. There is a peacefulness; is that what you've received? If that's what I can give then I relent. And is this what it is about? Relenting? I still burn. Perhaps I always will. Living with fire is thing. It's my thing.

Maple leaves ignite. Woodsmoke at night smudges a wall of safety around my dreams. These are hints I imagined under sleeping bags and stars and fading night noises. Oh well; that's not how any of this works. Now the wind is our conversation; the coming winter is our bed.

Crows line the library roof. I check out books on cheetahs and egrets and matatus. Poetry books for children and short stories in Spanish. Old men in farmer's overalls limp out their son's Oldsmobiles. A handkerchief in the pocket. An old cap worn threadbare in some places. Fish out of water. Just trying to breathe.

And me too.

12:12

It wasn't until later that I understood what she meant when she said, “the tenant painted over the growth wall,” and then I was incredibly sad I hadn't understood in the moment. Though her flow was forward I could have clarified my confusion.

Wood smoke at night. Striated moonlight. Open rib cage.

Today cardinals as much as blue jays. Red takes the stage and I give it all my attention. The weather reporter said, “it's a very mammatus morning in Grand Rapids” and that seemed just about right.

Trump signs and flags larger than normal ,every third house, every street, everywhere. White knuckles on the steering wheel as my stomach churns an internal sack of nails.

It's cold enough for sweatshirts and I simply can't believe it. Me and my denial.

Yesterday, I was overtaken with some kind of crazy huge love. I noted the time because I had to pull the car over until it passed: 12:12. I was asked to pass it on and I did; I passed it on so hard. I don't always understand these things but I am always grateful.

Heart-shaped stones. Breakfast casseroles. Baritone saxophone. Days have a new shape and I'm not sure what to make of it. Open palms; the best way.

Lately, the investigation of masculine and feminine. That marriage. Union of Self. The energy of Oneness. Spiritual work. Submitting to Love.

Bodies in separation. Connection not relationship. Learning. Evolving.

We build the place for landing, beyond here. The distance is the only way we could do it. We chose it because we wanted something for everyone. We chose it because we are strong.

Now there is yellow and red in the green. September comes without reserve. Sure, the moon goes to harvest, all big and yellow. But I would sacrifice the closeness of its face for a few more months of leisurely sunlight gliding through the trees.

What I cannot harness moves forward to give unto the cosmos in a new way. What we've set in motion will save the day. No backsies indeed!

Cleopatra Would Not be Satisfied

Tree trunks stained with storms. Sibilance ceasing with the attempt at dawn.

Summer thins and I haven't been to the shore this year. I miss her low-wave Morse Code tapping out the message. At the Great Lake, the one like the sea but not the sea, sky matters but water reigns. Oceans become something mythical, something lovely but too far to reach when one's arms are full of fresh water. The soil of Egypt is the soil of Lake Michigan, but Cleopatra would not be satisfied here; the lake is not the sea.

You and your liquid script. How do I remove what is indelible?

Leaves and branches downed. It is decided we will take down a few trees. For a better deal, three neighbors will also be taking down trees deemed dangerous. When it happens, the noise will be unbearable. I visit the trees to tell them what is going to happen and to pour the moonwater at their base. This is the most loving liquid I have to offer; blood and tears are too human. Too violent. Do we need forgiveness from the dead, Beloved? I'm going to ask.

Certain sentences. Not just language, your language – your sight – a ladder unto the ecstatic unity. One says that language is futility and yet another says language is orgasm – the result being touched or known a certain way. I am your congregation. Your plate- sized hibiscus. I am every butterfly on it's way because it was it was made to do that.

walking
caught in a downpour
laughing at no vision
yet walking faster
further
we know the way home
in the dark
and rain
so close your eyes
open this way
come with me

In Her Radius

Working through it.

Men who have taught me. Men who have told me what to do and not do. Men who have set the rules and have the votes.

A few years back, we went to a nightclub for “80's Night”. I remember watching K. rise from the table and burst into dancing. I was so captivated by her beautiful brown skin, her midnight hair, and her honeyed dance moves; she seemed to draw everyone's attention.

Throughout the night, I saw how her Brazilian body moved. Her sensuality was unabashed and magnetic. She had a crowd of men and women around her, all seemingly wanting to be in her radius – to touch or glean something. Her husband would join her from time to time on the dance floor but didn't really need to be there. At the table, he leaned back and just watched her move and attract and glow. At one point in the evening he leaned over to me and said, “Am I not the luckiest man alive? Look at her.” He just kept smiling. I was sort of thinking back then about how jealous he should be or how strange it is that she can ooze such erotic inclusion over all of those people while her husband beams from the side.

Now I see that K. had freedom. She moved from a knowing within, despite what those around her might have been thinking. I remember thinking that there would be hurt feelings and possibly a discussion if I allowed my body to move around the dance floor with other men and women like that. This is what I'm trying to say.

5 a.m. – make a week's worth of quinoa, a day's worth of steel cut oats and a moment's worth of coffee.

6 a.m. – geese overhead flying east. The dog and I walk. On the way, an empty vodka bottle, turkeys meandering and chalk messages on driveways: wonder in God, He will save you.

7 a.m. – watering thirsty things, waterfalls of reading and writing, and a few dance moves around the kitchen while everyone else sleeps.

We all believe in something that will rip us to shreds. I think that's a song lyric I heard once. Or a truth Hansel told me. But even destruction is creative in a way.

And beloved, we burn this light together, end to end.

Parched to Perfect

Cooler mornings leaning into hot days.

Summer tinged with what is to come. Autumn breathes on the back of my neck. This late day and these fleeting hours. My feet are in the dirt. My face in the sun. This hunger. This desperate joy.

To get to the water – my great purifier – symbolic and elemental – my altar. The old is washed away and the new is blessed. How it touches everything! Liquid innocence, a place of surrender.

I remember her: bare-breasted, hard-nippled, underwater. Sun touched the shadowy parts because she allowed it. She drank from parched to perfect. How desire is prayer, Lake Girl. When the patriarchal gods spoke, I let her drown. Now this penance. Now this way of being reborn. “All witches have secrets”, lovely man.

Reading Lorde and falling in love again. I see man's treachery in her words. I see the way women were raised to fear the deepest, sensual part of themselves. She calls my “yes” forward. I have much to share.

Instead I ache.

Tongue and Touch

All day cutting branches and trimming trees causes my arms to tremble. It has not rained but the watering ban is finished. Watering now is a rescue mission to revive what is left of summer. The work feels good. I am good.

But I heard the lake call today. When I'm there, its currents of knowing sway me as they carry me through cycles of wounding and healing. Swimming in her reminds me that I am free – free to seek pleasure, to claim my intimacy with the world and free to embody a generative and loving soul. I think liberation can take many forms. But my sensuality is connected to my sense of individual freedom. Knowing this now may matter.

To engage one's world through the body is to know things through the tongue and touch and skin. It is to understand that the world's limits constrict my empowerment, my emotional integrity, and my erotic innocence.

I taste poetry. My hips move through the music of Beloved's attention. Touching the sea is to feel God everywhere.

This is what I mean by magic.

What would it be like to know the touch of an openhearted lover? To move with grace and power like the way of a river? To savor summer long on the tongue, fresh basil, feta and vine-ripe tomatoes? It is to revel in the tactile, beloved. It is to know things I couldn't know before.

Maybe my body aches because it was cut off from the freedom to be worshiped and to worship accordingly – on my knees, face skyward, grounding in your gaze.

Shadows reach around tree trunks, cooling the air of late afternoon. The sun sinks sooner and breaks free of night a little later. October is in the air and thusly, desire tethered. That's okay. I will move as I must to the music. I will taste the poor imitation of complete surrender. I will mange the world's restrictions on my autonomy. For to be a woman means the understanding that I can be reborn at the water's edge – each new cycle birthing another flow of freedom.

Wake Up Calls

Please send rain.

One question not asked: is pain connected to the dried up land?

I am forced to walk up midnight's street in exchange for the lovelier, more well-lit steps after dawn. Maybe this is all part of the news that winter cannot ever be tamped this far north.

In the side yard, two empty camping chairs face each other as if having a deep and therapeutic conversation. Too soon I won't be able to sit in sunbeams; that is the saddest sentence August writes today.

I want to go along but I don't know how; maybe that's a little more sad after all.

What can I read that will end the distance I am willing go? The stars? Tea leaves in the bottom of Grandma's cup? Surely not Dickinson . . . her ability to hold Orion on the tip of her eyelash only pushes me further into you.

Lately, one-off acorns smack the roof and the glass deck table in the middle of the night. Wake up calls and the like.

Avocado toast. Breaking a fast. Who decrees, makes assumptions. Who ignores this, drinks day old coffee and calls oneself “happy.” Well, who am I to say? Just a witch or a faery or some other mythical creature you cannot hold.

The apocryphal apple begets hunger – or is it the other way around?

The smell of sun and sweat on tanned skin. Freckles finding their way. The words “window sill.”

Afterwards, I put my shirt back on, inside out. As I sat outside blue jays let me know that something was amiss.

Yellow jackets everywhere.

On Witches

You who make my bones turn soft; I may never be hard-jawed again.

How did you know I was a witch and not lovely little Gretel?

Air, most akin to love by the dual actions of giving and receiving. With this breath, I claim my right to love wholeheartedly and to be loved that way in return.

The ever-turning wheel of waxing and waning. Moon-water, summer nights, Perseid's cosmic tears.

Witches know all must die so that all might begin again. Do you see me sinking into the depths of total loss . . . that dark and fertile knowing which gives rise to all that is pure and new?

To be the humble gift giver and yet, also a queen. How my sensual feminine dwells in the spaces in between!

The Magdalene, another witch. The red-hooded lover-healer, guide to my heart. Alchemist, mentor, student, seeker, Priestess of Magdala. She mourned the loss of the divine masculine and for her trust, Christ healed her wound.

Mary knows the masculine has also been wounded. To meld is to heal. To heal is to love. To love is to be made whole.

The Witch of Sacred Love longs for the crucified palms and feet of this wild brother so that they can be resurrected together. New. Whole. One.

Maiden, Mother, Crone.
Hunter, Father, Sage.

together
casting beams
upon gifts and wounds
raised from the abyss
into wild sainthood

What We Entered

I don't need Christianity or its heroes. Such harm was rejected long ago. Yet some stories say something when others are mute. Jesus did not love Mary Magdalene more than Judas, Peter or John. He loved each one universally, unconditionally, eternally. So it is that different marriages work together for the fullness of what remains above all Names. How did we miss this simplicity before now? So often Christianity is reduced to a path of ethical actions. Ethical according to whom – Love?

A water ban is put in place. Everything is thirsty. A certain spitefulness may or may not delight in watching the neighborhood burn and turn brown. Did you know that even those in charge of protecting us cannot tell our people what to do? Their small-minded flags will flap in the breeze over their green grass while there is not enough water to go around.

The ancient axiom, “that which is not lived is not redeemed”. Before moving on, another lesson shining through what we entered so long ago: don't deny matter or body, just do not become enslaved.

Like water into wine, we must transform our infatuation with passion into the loving friendship that is sweeter. Have we had enough patriarchy for today? Mom and Dad came to the house for the first time in 6 months. After two hours, they both stood up at the same time to announce their departure. They had to get back to monitor the tree removal process. Apparently, not being able to see the lake very well from the deck or the bedroom is an issue. I reminded them that the lake was still there even in you cannot see it well. Now that I think of it, maybe that's why they left with abruption.

Lately, night noises rattle a deep pain. Once they were the sounds we surely shared; now they are a melancholy song mercilessly singing all night long of a certain sadness.

As a reminder of the promises we made, I took the same trail as the day we talked. To be honest, this is hard. But the Queen Anne's lace and chicory and bending sumac stood as signposts. Baby rabbits, little brown hummingbirds, wild phlox. The energy to run was missing, so the long walk became longer. How easily our words flowed that day. How deeply love spoke.

Steel cut oats and blueberries. Ginger turmeric tea. The sun brings forth another day. And I am all in.