Not Falling, Not Taking Flight

Nestled into verdant lanes, a small rabbit taller than the June corn nibbles away as if I wasn't even there to witness her breakfast.

This morning's long walk into the sun felt a little like swimming in hot water. The air's thickness mandated gulps of air and a certain vigilance in wiping sweat from my stinging eyes. Lately a meditation forms in the walking – a rendezvous with mystical depths that I will do almost anything to keep.

Cottonwood seeds float like stray swan feathers, not quite falling but not quite taking flight either. Coffee grounds like grit in my teeth. In these moments, alone and walking east into a pulsing sun, the gestalt of what I cannot know or see clearly burns away entirely. Cage doors dissolve to reveal that loving you means loving me and loving God and without a hint of doubt understanding the all encompassing reciprocity of love.

Summer means bare shoulders revealing the maps necessary for kissing the scarred lashes left by pious priests. I smile at the thought of this as my sweat catches the heat of the sun and glistens in a slick sheen.

Later, writing in the three season room, a sudden crack of thunder causes me to jump and clutch my hand to my heart. An unusual darkness takes over the afternoon and eventually gives way to a driving rain. Earth smells rise and the dank fish tang of the big lake wafts through the screen doors. Maybe it is when we are in water over heads or are being consumed by the rising tide that things become so utterly clear. It's possible, you know.

That which is essential never enforces itself and in this way, I am listening to the longing. Perhaps it is not about who they or I understand myself to be. Rather, it is better to wonder who is it that God understands me to be.

Whose unmediated presence stirs the murky depths also calls my name in such a way that I might want to reach the surface. We ascend, beloved; there is no choice in that.

In Love With This Precipice

4 a.m. as a stance of quiet.

Breezes move through oak and maple leaves making a sound a little like a light rain.

Flowers releasing their scent at night are a benevolence I cannot expand large enough to enfold. This might be my favorite hint of summer aside from the arrival of sunlight after winter's leaden confinement. These moments – the pause before first bird notes – the last full inhale before dawn – bless my willingness to die in those moments.

First glimmers of delicate light begin to form a lacy stencil through the trees. I believe I am in love with this precipice – this cliff jutting out over the oceanic divine which can only say, “fall.”

Coffee, writing in the dark, and the dewy coolness of summer's morning kiss soon to disappear with the dawn.

Who joins me at this hour points towards One.

A day at the lake brings delight forward from the tendrils of a long ago youth. Water. Life. Play. I forget my body for an era and a weightlessness attends. Two worlds superimpose and yet one wonders if they will ever share this world with the one who will help me destroy it. Mallard ducks, swans and a bald eagle on high.

New songs. Same conductor. I am only an instrument singing a happier tune. Who are you?

Give to the Growing

As dawn enters, birds look like puppets dancing in the pine branches. How holy this time of day! Gratitude and thankfulness meet no barriers in the cool beginnings of whatever lies ahead.

The garden grows with or without me, yet I tend it constantly, inspecting and fussing over each reaching life. This joy settles the creature that has been pacing wildly outside my door for decades. And I can see now why the absence of gardening separates us from a specific relationship with the land. If this is all there is, would it be enough?

Another trip to Gun Lake. My father is becoming more effusive with me which does not unsettle me a bit. What I'm giving is being returned at this late juncture. Mom asked me if I thought she and Dad demonstrated racist beliefs while we were growing up. I didn't shy away from the answer but my words danced a little in my head before I allowed them to enter the air.

Hiking with Tara but leaving the dog at home. My miles increase as Kora's shrink and it breaks my heart little. Okay, it breaks my heart a lot. She's happy when I return but when she smells the trails on me, she turns away as if she prefers to be alone.

Transplanting ferns, hostas and maybe a few rose bushes. In one way, I love that the work is never done. What else would I do? Daisies are knee high and climbing. The wildflower seeds I planted are not yet growing. But on the hike through the pines, wild daisies lined the path just as the pines gave way to open air. I didn't pick one this time but I made Tara stop to contemplate them. She said I scared her at my exclamation because she thought I was pointing out an animal. She's not a fan. She also doesn't like the tiny the green worms that hang seemingly suspended by air itself over the path. I may delight in her squeamishness a little too much.

Watering twice, morning and night, I think about the scene you described whereby you stand quietly together with her or you talk about the day and your life. The sweetness to that doesn't leave me, despite the longing for something similar. On this end, maybe it is better that I water alone; I can quietly give to the growing as the growing quietly gives to me. I don't know. I really don't.

St. Teresa of Avila, castles, and Mary Magdalene. Who meets me, destroys me and all is well in the world.

Ordination Laid Low

A soaking rain.

Spate brings down lingering oak pollen-pods to fully carpet the deck. Daily, enough pods are swept to fill the empty gallon planter kept at the back door. How thirsty the land has been. Leaves, grass, flower and fruit fatten in the rainfall. This is the God I know – not in the prayer and not in the receiving – but God in witness of that which lives.

A certain acknowledgement of the futility of questions echoed without clarity lands on my breastplate. Instead he asks me to consider the monastery without walls. Fellow pilgrim, is it priest and priestesses, or is it monks and nuns, all the way down? Either way, ordination laid low.

Birds still sing in the cold, morning rains and it reminds me of the Weezer lines:

I can take on anybody, I can do my thing
I don't wanna hurt nobody but a bee has got to sting

Travel plans, psilocybin, letting the queen speak. C and I talk about the sensuality of everything, least importantly, of sex. Is that just something we say when sex is off the table?

Psychedelic therapy, breaking laws, moving like a ghost behind the scenes.

Dark skies and storms foster a focus on things of the house. How dirt accumulates in garden season. How I tend to growing things in favor of that which refuses to vary or shift. How quiet the work makes the world.

Do I hear what you hear?

Cartography of Water

Sky like a hangover.

Storms roll through around 3 a.m. and I am aware of them. From a dream I wake to thunder and turn to towards you to let you know I'm here and it's okay. The great and the wise tell me that is a fantasy and to let it go. Can putting love like that into the cosmos be a bad thing? These and other wrestling matches just before birdsong.

Lex crawls into bed at 5 a.m. saying that her back hurts. Apparently the free bed I found her comes at a price she can't pay. She said she didn't say goodbye to me last night, knowing I’d be gone before she wakes. They grow older and mature and yet. Our heart swelling.

A small braid over my right ear. Delicate hoop earrings. A few curls for the “wavy beach” effect. I pack in the dark unable to tell exactly which shirt or what color underwear goes into the bag. Coffee to go.

One thinks on the cartography of water: rain rushing across the windshield; the pond covered in a sheen of pollen; the big lake unfazed by the direction of my car towards or away from it. Water in me is how my garden grows and it is how I know what to give. How far you have brought me out of the desert.

To Hurt This Way

Slowing down for the beauty of reading the way one sentence can rip open the cosmos – like Clark Kent revealing his superpowers. It is like that nowadays.

Several trips are made to haul the neighbor's old split rail fence on my shoulders to the garage to measure and cut for the garden. This can lead one to think about generous humans leading to a generous heaven. Or is it the other way around? I dig up Lily of the Valley and give them to friends and they each tell me a story about how the flowers remind them of their grandmother's love or their favorite place in the woods or their mother's wish to have flower at her grave.

High humidity yesterday caused sweat to pour from everywhere, stinging my eyes as I stood – knelt – stood. Pulling at roots stronger than I, there is that unexpected moment when they give up, throwing a tantrum of dirt as I fall backwards. I am ridiculous with how many times I fall in the garden. But I'm so happy to hurt this way.

Lately, it's birdsong breaking it all down. In springtime I wonder what it is like to live in a place where one cannot hear how they sing every thought. It must be like winter, only worse, for even in winter the chickadees and cardinals remain this far north. But oh the glorious choristers at play in May!

Pollen coating everything in a lemon-lime shroud. On a walk, one studies the pattern on birch trees and realizes there absolutely is a code. Proximity matters. I don't know how to hold whatever this life is, beloved. And to sit open handed means only that there is sitting and hands. There is letting go and then there is letting go.; which one is this?

Always Wrapped Around

Sandhill cranes
pick and glide
through plowed fields –

who races
along country highways
knows and misses

the roots

Summer birthing pangs begin.
Oriels warble and mate.
Chipmunks run helter-skelter claiming every space as theirs.
And frogs splosh and ripple the ponds no matter how gingerly I walk along.

As first light seeps into all the quiet places, the bird chorus changes everything and nothing. I get a rush and flutter of wavy vibrations – outward – inward – and outward again. It feels like falling in love and I think of falling in love and I remember falling in love. Does it even matter?

Strength in pain, clarity in hunger.

No star in sight, yet still my guiding light.

Nameless in the dark.

I keep slipping into clouds around your heart.

We tumble yet.

Homeward bound.

Always wrapped around.

The Lord has a plan, beloved.

Do you hear what I hear?

It's me, in dawning light, breathless.

Porous in a Prayer

A clergy of pines interceding on my behalf. How porous I become within a prayer.

It's starting to hurt now, if I am honest. A dull ache creeps back in to remind the golden child that maybe all is not already perfect. Tell me you know what I mean.

Starting over. Fasting. Fighting fire with fire. The devil takes a swipe without landing a punch, though he doesn't need to; he can watch me air box with a satisfied smirk.

At the flea market, she introduced me to Jim because “we might have a few things in common.” We discussed plant medicine, growing, cooking with cannabis and growing mushrooms in sterile incubator box. Kyle walked away from the conversation and waited on a nearby bench.

There is a sorrow in working the garden alone. Asking for help that I am not going to get is one way of avoiding the truth.

Spruce tip ice cream. Lavender in the wild. Sun at certain angles melting the pain.

I just don't know what to do anymore – for now, for this life, for this love.

My hands are in the water, sun on my shoulders and I'm going under.

Dissolution is not possible; now what?

Graves and the Accent of You

Morning breaks fidgety nights into bite-size remnants.

In the haze before dawn I assess the coffee situation and am not in the least surprised to find exactly one cup of day-old coffee left in the pot. The early bird does not catch the coffee-worm ever.

“Abundant sunshine” on the way.

In all the stillness, in all the quiet, it is easier to not-do. Who does that serve? This and other erected crosses.

He said, “life isn't all blow jobs and daffodils” and I couldn't help but hear it in the accent of you.

I don't think twice about licking dill relish off the plate.

A story: I took the dog for a walk and saw my friend on the street. In front of a man and his dark green house, she and I caught up on family stuff. In the man's garage, a Confederate flag breathed a little in the stir of a May breeze and cigar smoke. The man from the dark green house sat in his driveway in a seat removed from his truck and after five minutes or so, turned on his sprinklers and laughed as we scattered further down the street to avoid getting wet. I asked my friend about the full sized grave stone in the man's front yard and she said it is in memorial of his deceased wife.

Graves and who attends.

I saw this article about people who plant living things at graves instead of bringing dead flowers, which was kind of cool but then, in order to keep the plants alive, one would have to visit a lot and maybe that is not always feasible or even desirable. And then there would be even more death to consider which gets a little heavy in a hurry.

In the quietest whisper, like mist rising from a summer pond at dawn, I would have gone with you.

A heron tip-toes without rippling the shallows, watching, feeding, contented with itself . . . it's like that. Stillness and all.

Whisper of a Touch

Simple love.

Allow no relationship to pin you into the past.

Each day we are born again.

With the wind in the pines I will rise off my knees to greet you.

I've chosen resurrection, beloved.

One last frost they say. A second wave of tulips yields black, purple and a smattering of delicate pinks and yellows. A hedge of Lily of the Valley begins to bloom, despite all of the violent rips and tears. Before you wince, make no mistake, they have already won. The garden waits on what I do not have but every day I return to it with a song; at least there is that.

A return to Gun Lake and this time, I will not be naked. But there is the fact that I can no longer conceal love. So, ask and I will answer.

Shall we be done with those nasty serpents and vipers? What is gentle and serene invites us home. Come closer. No more wind and rain. No more dynamite or lightening bolts. Only the arms that can never let go.

A butterfly lands briefly on my inner wrist and I feel its whisper of a touch. This is how I know love is death and death is love, for to die in that moment would have been the widest, most untouchable love.

Close to the Bone

Love always leads to love, my love.

More violets than before; more ways in which death’s doorstep is the bridal chamber.

Lately, which is the same as always, the sonorous whole is in the heart.

Symeon the New Theologian and his hymns, exiled for eros, unified with God as light, speaking to me through the east gate. Enter child.

Are you with me?

I am with you and have always been.

Living close to the bone. Beans and rice for the third day in a row. Turning the soil. Breaking the back. Planting for butterflies and bees. Now, the joy of less.

Misty drizzle announces the forbearance of rain. No separation between the two. The gray of horse-headed gargoyles and cemetery art.

Oatmeal, dark brown sugar, chopped walnuts and matcha tea. The warmth of it slides all the way in.

Beyond prayer, beyond stillness, beyond dispassion –is love.

Sun summoner indeed!

Who Am I Compared to You

Allium, Solomon's Seal, and white violets?

Blue as God and so many ways to follow Her heart. Affectionate awareness whereby one must ask, is there congruence?

Sleep every two hours or so until 6 a.m., yet waking to sunlight makes it feel doable. I'll finish prepping the garden that may never come to be, but it feels that I am being asked to be present to the work, so here I am, Lord.

Each year on the corner of the house a lacy dogwood blooms despite its sickly countenance. Each year I say, “you're not dead,” as if some sort of benediction and it says back to me, “neither are you.”

With the sunrise in my throat this morning, a feeling of contemplation and monasticism called with an invitation. It may be time to enter a certain thinness. I know I don't need to be holier or more devout. I wonder if this is an ego trap for me. Why do I always feel that I am running away from the abbey?

Mary Magdalene visited before midnight so I stayed with her as long as I could. I asked her, “who am I compared to you?” To which she answered, “who am I compared to you?”

In the distance heavy machinery is in reverse. Beeping cuts through birdsong, far off barking dogs and my own questioning spiral which has the sound of a rushing creek.

Maybe this is not a distraction from suffering but a way through. Must we, though?

The prophet says: bring the light.

It Seams

Wind advisory.

What we know is not written in stone or sand; it is not written at all. We pray anyway and wonder if the light of Love is still dancing in the lake of the other.

Starlight in the backyard for only a little while longer and tulips lose their elegance, though not without grace.

The other night I sat out back to watch everything slip away, except bats and stars of course. After a few hours he brought out a bottle of wine and two glasses, though I opted for a beer or three. Chickens, gardens, and asking for help. We don't agree and I want to write that it matters.

It just doesn't.

Silky smoke lifts and curls after blowing out the candle and I swear that is the answer – here and not here – incense dissipating unto the nothing that is this. I hear him say “this, this.” Come say that to my face!

After rain the smell of damp pine and earth mixes for the kind of intoxication I want to share. It seems that every time I write it is because of love. It seams.

I drink too much caffeine now and I've fallen off the yoga wagon. Speaking of fallen ­– pine trees, petals, crests.

“Natural Woman” came on and I knew instantly that if I could sing I would sing that song.

What I am doing and not doing – kissing and not kissing – making happy and not. If it's me all the way down, then there is something else we can do, beloved. Please tell me you know.

Hellebores, Rabbits and Death

Something proffered in a spring bird chorus before light – memory in a sound – fulfilled hope – a chance to start again.

Flecks of paint rising from wooden windows. On which side of the glass is the hungry wolf?

A turkey rubbernecks through the back yard. Eventually, the dog sees him and I hold her back for his safe passage. Maybe the difficulty is something like that.

Lately, a fascination with hellebores. Black blooms, if you please. So what then, just don't admit death and all is well?

Misty rain slicks the deck at dawn and as light opens, pine trees reflect in the pools. Do we still move in one another or is that another illusion? I remember falling instantly in love when you mentioned the sound of winds in a pine forest.

Painful imprints behind my ears where my glasses are too tight. Someone could fix that.

I watch a rabbit eat my plants and a part of me wants it to move along but the braver part allows it to feed unto its heart's content. “My” plants?

After many hours steadying friends, I rest in the calling. It was if I made the decision upon another's insight until a wound healed. Then suddenly, checking under the band aid, there is no wound, only new skin, which is really formed of the old skin, which is really just a reminder that there is no wrong choice. The most beautiful teacher I know taught me that.

you
the love letter
I always read
because you
the love letter
I always am

Speck by Speck

Overcast sky, a cemetery angel in the rain.

Tulip petals stay bound to one another like the way I imagine a lover's embrace – softly held yet the need to be closer.

A study of love knots leads to the inquiry of whether one is bound or free. How beautiful to be bound in strength; how transcendent to be unraveled and free!

Masters say there is no choice. What rises, is. What falls, is. One is captured by none.

In the same way that I wake and care for those I love, sentences are recounted; envelopes are searched; words are greeted; and if finding none, the ink of our entirety is melted into a dark pool and smeared into my pores in full gratitude of even knowing one true and heartfelt epistle.

No more apples, so oatmeal.
No more sex, so this.

What flows is unaffected. What is affected begins to settle at the bottom like silty sediment landing speck by speck down atop of itself after a long, side to side waft.

Curly driftwood, broken snail shells, the skeleton of a decaying row boat.

The big lake roars like the sea and it can trick you until you taste it. Taste and See, indeed!

In a dream I arrived late for work and realized I did not have shoes. In the car, there a few pairs of shoes that didn't fit so, shoe-less, I was forced to present my dilemma before the boss. We argued over society's rules about what cannot be done shoe-less and I awoke in love with my feet.

Now it is time to look down, one step at a time.

Wedded to Yet

Frosted tulips undismayed. Wholehearted dawn proceeds untouched by the chill of a late and getting later freeze.

Tea in hand, nested in a grotto of loose blankets, I spend a lifetime in his sentences. Devoted and undone, who is it that is wedded to yet?

I've realized to my cost and much too late that maybe to be worshiped is not what a goddess wants. Or better said, perhaps it is a witch at the helm and not a goddess at all.

I face the sea and willingly see my death in it. Maybe it is like that.

More and more the awareness of geese and ducks flying in pairs. What monasticism actually exists in nature?

She was born on this date, the same day as her grandfather and also, the same date her great grandmother died. Birth and death used to flank both ends of life like a curated book shelf. Now neither reaches the cool, still waters even twenty turtles deep. We celebrate and mourn and yet, another ecosystem thrives untouched. Still, I put violets from the yard on her cake in hopes that she might be taste and know.

The voices of trees. A forgetfulness of where you are headed. Red-winged blackbirds the whole way.

Let's just cross our paths and see what happens, beloved. The last mystery is God's face in the mirror.

Aflame

“Fruit crop loss expected.”

At 3:16 a.m. I think of the one who thinks of the One.

Acute air and shivery starlight burns my lungs. Coffee warms as the dog investigates leftover vapors from night creatures.

Nothing stirs.

For her 21st birthday, a cake, secondhand clothes, and the promise that she'll move home in a few weeks.

Older but not too old, the woman I am fills the whole house and with her, the others will be altered accordingly.

Speaking of altars – violets, bees and 4 a.m. robins.

To write is to reach and in doing so, I see my mother's hands. She reminds me that she went back to school in her 40's with 4 kids at home. Okay, you win.

What is wholly true fills composed space in a way which leaves hardcore silence ringing in the ears. Uncompromising peace is the new master bending low to whisper, “yes, this is what you want, child.”

She and her doubts. Her fire. Her glory.

Dawn turns up like a dusty lantern.

Oatmeal with apple slices and peanut butter.

And now, near the end, a cardinal aflame in the azalea bush, below the pine, give unto thee the last sentence.

To Right Again

Spices from last night's supper hang in the air, reliving as a memory of wanting.

To begin again is what we do because while we are unchanging at the river's source, we flow downhill and gather along the way.

Every night lately the same dream arrives just before dawn – the one where I set the hill on fire but this time, there is no judgement. No fallout.

In the morning, blue berries, blue jays, blue sky. Am I Blue? You could say that.

As a kid I used to wake up in the middle of the night and tip-toe around the dark kitchen in order to forage for food. It wasn't always about stealing food that I wasn't supposed to have. Sometimes one just wants to eat without it all being annotated. Even now I drift through the dark looking for food to take back to bed. These and other tales I haven't yet told.

Geese in pairs. A train moaning. The hush of a church-town's sabbath.

We outgrow our skin and maybe even, our kin? Transcending separation has everything and nothing to do with the red bird. They warn of snow this week and I take it all very seriously. Don't forget to tend the altar, beloved. I'll bring the flowers; you bring the bread.

The Last 20 – A Ballad

As a power ballad, climbing the ladder, joined to lift.

One puts on airs of slowness as if it is the score that we follow.

In the beginning, a single note pedaling.

The piano opens the flow and in perfect measure, strings enter.

Building intensity, constant escalation.

A pause, a drop.

And the drums kick in.

Heaven's racing heart turns to face this lifting feathered soul.

Piercing the blue near the top.

Beloved, we compose the key.

Sorrows blotted.

Naked suffering laid low in its minor key.

Verse, chorus, bridge, refrain, hook.

It wasn't possible alone.

And we were never alone.

Turtles deep.

Mountains high.

Not what we were made for but for whom.

Dismantle the cross – the outro croons.

The Kiss waits to end it all; repeat; repeat.

Beaming

A sprig of pine rests atop hardened snow.

Rain – ice – snow – repeat.

The dog criss-crosses the yard to diligently follow up on tracks of rabbit, opossum and raccoon. Her body weight is barely enough to sink into the iced snow, yet her steps make a certain crunching noise that suggests otherwise.

Curled up against the arm of the couch I can see where the garden will go in the spring. With the loss of the sister trees, one does not know where April sunlight will be. Perhaps like not knowing where the moon will be in the sky, the mystery of sunlight patterns is unsettling. It is the case in which waiting to know things is an exercise in willingness verses wishing.

Upon catching the sight of the moon from the dining room table, I stood with uncontrollable delight, slipped into boots and scurried outside to beam. In those moments, when one world is inside, warm, going on with normal life and I am outside, alone in the dark, listening to silence, smelling pine and lifting lips up to heaven, the need to find a bridge is most apparent.

Mary Magdalene's gaze still means a lot. It is not explainable how she knew the way, but she did. And it was not bravery or something special she was given at birth. She simply knew the way. When that it is true, what otherwise is there?

New day. New Year. New way of opening unto the last first kiss. The blessings are everywhere for those who have eyes to see. So they say. And I am in love with they.