On Land Never Left

When I heard of his suicide, the image of the silver cross earring he always wore in his left ear immediately came to mind. He kept his hair longer in the back and mostly wore black. He was Light all those years ago.

Do you know what it smells like to stand under a grape arbor in late July? Old Man Lou had an arbor next door growing up which he left untended for decades. It was a wild sanctuary of sorts, a wonderland to which I retreated to know another world. Its woody vines would curl as if wrapped around a pencil. The fruit hung down into the shade created by the leaves doming the ceiling and walls of the temple. And the smell – sweet like fruit but more fragrant even, like a flower. Shade, fruit, shelter . . . a sweet ambrosia of life.

If I had a grape arbor, on land never left, maybe I would bury my dogs beneath it so that their essence would grow up through the vines. Maybe I would make wine from those grapes and call it Kora. Or Maverick. Or Zuri.

So I lingered at the bend, so what? Falling led to crawling which led to rolling into the river. Floating is the new resurrection and I am all in for that.

Before sunlight, my heart-shaped bird plays his one note song as he grouses about in the grass. He calls my attention to the idea that I may have lost the battle with violets in the grass but then again, was there ever even a war? Smile, beloved, because, of course not.

Cool

Beck knocks to ask if he can join me in the three seasons room at 6 a.m. A new shared sweetness of dawn.

Bluejays creating and acting out a raucous so much so that I need my headphones deaden the screeching pitch.

An Amtrak train creeping east to west alongside Chicago Drive, blowing its A-minor chord to honor every cross(ing).

Later, lakeside, before the wilds take over, I remembered long summer days with no one to play with. Floating in the shape of a cross, ears underwater, the sun would warm my body a few inches below the water's surface. I know Jesus suffered when he was crucified but when I was outstretched fully in the water, free of the events of the world, I wondered: at the very end, in the moment just before he left his body, did it feel like floating on the lake, midsummer, no sound but his own labored breathing, eyes closed, fully opened unto the last first kiss?

At the table, I tell the group about this psychologist who gave clients beta-blockers after exposing them to their debilitating fears. This would reset the memory pathways of that event and erase the fear. A first hand account was given by a man who was so scared of spiders that he spent literally 95% of his waking hours checking every right angle he encountered for spiders. After qualifying for the psychologist's trial, he was exposed in a closed room to a tarantula. While being filmed and vitals recorded, he almost literally dies of a heart attack. He is given the beta blocker and the next day, he is exposed to the spider chamber once again. No negative reaction, only curiosity. He literally holds the spider.

I finish the account and everyone was like, “cool.”

And I was like, “seriously?”

But finally, tomatoes! Lovely Romas nested in my palm like a cosmic egg.

Somewhere in the world, this is way more than cool.

Mom Says

The skin under my shirt, like First Communion lace.

Whenever I leave the lake, Mom says “watch for cops” because everything to her is a speed trap. Our words betray our fears, do they not?

Even though it is fine to say no, please still say yes okay? This and other ways to put our mouths on summer.

July brings the heat but also, sweatshirt days. Summer squash coming on, snap peas and peppers. Another round of strawberries only feeds the birds.

More cardinals and lightening bugs but less mosquitoes than last year. I don't ask or wonder why because along with gifts can also come curses. So I say to the many earwigs living in the mailbox anyway.

Mom says I bring all the kids to the schoolyard when I visit because she swears KM hasn't been over to the house for a year and P hasn't stopped by on the boat since C died. I point out that these people are there to see her, yet she scoffs and deflects. Perhaps loneliness has taken hold in her busyness.

I swim with the girls and teach T. how to do a can-opener off the raft. Mom says I look good out there, like I did when I was younger. Moms are always watching, I guess.

Lex leaves and I usually say, “watch for deer” which is to say, “I love you. Please be extra careful.” But I don't this time because maybe the words don't always mean what you think.

Woodsmoke for Life

Some days waking and missing Kenya.

How unearthly for an experience to be far away and yet, nearer than the white bed sheet tangled between your legs and nestled beneath your cheek.

Today I remember the guttural, rolling trill of colobus monkeys at dawn and the gritty caw of the sacred ibis. Woodsmoke for cooking, for heating, for life. Laundry on the line, red dirt in my teeth, chapti at every meal. The highlands are covered in tea bushes and no where else does the air smell that pure. Sun up a 6 and down at 6, every day, all year. Life on the equator explodes in all directions. There is a lesson there.

I remember the goat roast and how it brought all the people together – some sitting on grass grateful for the chance to eat, kids enjoying the steep slope of the hill, tumbling and laughing, Kenyan's teasing the mzungu children about eating goat eyeballs and brains, though not really teasing at all....

Tea and 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. per sacred colonial tradition. Shaking out rugs and beating them with paddles. Checking the giant cisterns in the attic for rainwater levels. Avoiding the raucous habits of rats at night. Everything was deliberate work and yet, every thing was in balance and live-giving. Well, not every thing as it turns out. But if you really look deeply into it, it's not hard to see that even in the violence and unrest, there was more balance than here.

But there is only here.

And Kenya is not here.

Nor is the life one dreamed about living when she was 8 years old.

Vapors Hanging

Golden remnants slip behind pine and oak defenders of day. Echoes of children playing in a nearby pool and the metal clink of bat to ball reverberates throughout the neighborhood. A few moments of decompression settle before the build up of fireworks and calamity. The incense of grilled meat mingles with the peppery smoke of firecrackers and citronella. Bluejays alert the forest that I am watering the garden. I'm not sure why they are the first and last bird songs of the day but they remain a teacher to me in that I try not to be irritated with their disruptive calls.

Somehow the day stretched on forever. Studying, reading, walking, gardening, eating, resting . . . nothing satisfied. Conversations with K. only led to irritation and the occasional B. sighting was soft and filled with hugs, but then, nothing. L. is making her way back from Oklahoma but a wheel fell off of M's car and cannot be repaired until the holiday is over. Still, these experiences are only vapors hanging in the air.

Maybe it’s the nationalism or the way this holiday feels like patriarchal sandpaper on my most delicate parts. Maybe it's just suburbia. Maybe it's the dissipating afterglow of being in the throws of contemplative communion and Love.

Folding clothes, scrubbing the bathtub, organizing the dank and rotting shed. For joy I stare at pictures of the cabin and imagine walking to the watering hole, sitting by the fire pit, and existing in the kind of poustinia that only the woods can create.

Mom wants us to come out to Gun Lake but we decline due to overwhelming holiday traffic on the lake and the risk of “lake people” stopping by all day long. She talks about her friendships slipping away and how there are probably no lake people who even want to stop by anymore to which I called “bullshit” in a nicer way than that.

Sky blue hydrangea and daisies gaining courage. The zucchini and squash plants are taking over the whole damn garden and I'm not sure what to do about it. Night falls and I wish – oh how I wish – that the only lights in the sky were silent.

fireflies
and starlight –
I need do nothing
to know
love

For Real This Time

The end of choice arrives.

There is no otherwise.

Faith set the course.

Now a question: where have I been faithless to my brother?

I am shown the better way.

What is this for? This, this.

No more past.

I give it all away.

Beloved, no longer a substitute for another – you simply are.

There is no substitution in love.

Loving anew on holy ground

Heaven has entered without a noise.

And now I am operating in truth.

No more choosing amongst dreams.

I want what is actually here.

Who walks beside us never left, not once.

I have gone past fear and now we walk Home.

For real this time.

Let it be what it is.

Unsure Daisies

Michigan, you are not one thing or the other! Piled under moving mist and three blankets there is a sense of de-cocooning when I throw back night to enter dawn. Cold air rushes in, to which I ask: what month is this?!

Cawing in the distance and closer, bluejay screeches. Morning is not gentle today but it is here and I am gladdened. A sweatshirt, socks and not coffee.

Hansel and Gretel a new way! A nuance I missed before turns the story around and all of a sudden, I'm super interested.

Kyle names his prized plant “Hector” and so now we lovingly joke about this 5th member to our family. Hector receives specific attention and lavish joy and one wonders if that is what celibacy looks like in a sexy world. I watch Bun-Bun move about the yard, nibbling clover, investigating the garden fence, dozing in broad daylight and I wonder too if that is what celibacy looks like for me. But one of us grows older and the other younger and it's not up to me to decide which is which.

He asks if I am worried about bears to which I say, “maybe, but I can't wait to find out.”

One Christmas, I gave Dad two tickets to the Gilmore Car Museum with a note speaking of my gratitude for our shared interest in old cars. When reading the card aloud he says, “Oh! This is great! So-and-so would love this; I'll ask him.” Attempts to be vulnerable can have a price. Christmas morning is sometimes crying in the bathroom.

But next week is Dad's birthday and when I asked him if he had any fun plans, he said, “Yes...a trip to Gilmore's car museum....with a daughter to share the dreams...it's my whole birthday list this year.”

It feels strange to hear it, like a foreign tongue trying to say something you know is important. You lean towards the speaker and look closely into their eyes to try to grasp what it is they want to convey. It has a soft tone and it involves you, but you just...can't...make...it out.

Unsure daisies lean away from the picket fence and sun licks dew from reaching grass. Today is the only day and today is this. Let there be peace, and let it begin with me.

Adding Coffee to the List of Sins

scarlet lilies / pain as poet / beauty unaware

And finally, sun!

Ten days of rain gives way to marrow-piercing sun. The garden becomes elephantine, and jack-and-the-bean-stalk weeds grow overnight. I work outside after days of being sidelined by rain but also, I just sit too. Lying flat under the oak, earthy dampness mixes with the sweat of my back. Straight above I watch orioles add sway to their nesting branch, landing and taking off to feed. Is it weird that I almost wrote “Boston” orioles?

Be a team player. Keep your side of the street clean. Fulfill your duty; it makes you a better partner. Sure. But don't tell that to the dragon glaring from the cave.

Night after night, sleep does not settle long enough to be a gift. I muddle through the day after a pot a coffee all to myself and realize that is not helping matters whatsoever. One is always adding coffee to the list of sins.

Hiking several loops of Aman Park with Tara. She tells me of her travel plans but I don't tell her of mine. The truth is, she isn't going to know the truth but that doesn't feel untruthful to me.

It's not the 4th of July yet but it's close enough that fireworks go off all night already; please tell me there is an end to war and that I can tuck a tender, blushing lily in my hair instead.

Circus Before Prayers

Gradient lavender as sky at 6 a.m. I hesitate to let the dog out when I smell an unhappy nearby skunk. An envelope of mist carries news of the day. A small orphan rabbit named “Bun-Bun” lets me know a good grass cutting is past due. Kora has never killed or even caught an animal but she does give Bun-Bun a good chase on a daily basis. This is the morning circus before prayers.

Maya Angelou got me thinking yesterday about how modesty is a learned affectation....and humility, rather, is where it's at. We as women are taught modesty so that we can become smaller, unseen, unheard. We are Eve, leading Adam astray in the glorious garden when we are not modest enough. We are somehow to blame.

She who disappears most, loves most. We are taught to lock ourselves away in order to love well.

Do we love like our mothers or grandmothers do? Do I only have permission to live as fully as they?

Before 7 a.m., any hints of sky disappears and we are back to dove-feathers. Kora insists on walking even though I'd rather pray first. Who gets served first, beloved?

Well, first coffee, but less. Breaking fast at supper. And the continuous work of spiritual re-amalgamation.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Nine of ten days, rain.

The darkness of it all is not the same as winter's airless tomb. Lack of sunlight is disagreeable, yet one can still step outside and feel air on the skin. Grass is wet and alive under bare feet and the smell of dank earth still makes every pore tingle a little with gratitude and overwhelm. It is easier to know the expanse of God, ankle deep in puddles with floating earwigs and loosened blooms than in the cocooned and bitter freeze of February.

The sheer abomination of writing February at the end of June.

All this exposition on life and yet some of the plants are not going to make it through these rains. I make the rounds, cut off black rot and mold, and move the ones I can move. But ah, you win some, you lose some.

The nausea of sleepless nights also reigns. Coffee doesn't work during the day anymore but a newfound call to discomfort and mortification says, “Don't nap. Don't give in. Deny yourself in order to arrive some where else.”

Also therefore, meeting is not about cake and eating it too. Not anymore.

I get the “death to self” and “serve others” vibe from Jesus when I look at His way and His life.

But then I look at my life: how I have been bred, if you will, to serve others, husband, kids, community, etc. I have contorted myself to live according to a set of standards and expectations of others, which I made and adopted into my own. But the Jesus way fits into that even. It confuses me.

Must I abandon myself out of love?

Someone said there is no such thing as one way liberation. I can buy that. I can. But can Christ?

What Else Are They Going To Do?

All night: the bed, couch, floor, and three seasons room. How often the body wins! Giving up the mandate for sleep at 3 a.m., I walked around the yard in the dark between rains. Everything was so gentle on my tender feet. The ground gives way and pushes up water with every step. Peepers purr and sing their sleigh-bell chorus. Taps and drops of leftover rain try out different sounds on things in the dark. I caught the moon for a moment as flossy clouds thin momentarily, only to coagulate back into the obese yet familiar monolith sky of the last few days. I thought about smoking a joint but decided on a cup of tea instead. The night is beautiful in so many ways and I am not scared of it anymore accordingly.

Pending trip. Closing circle. Everything real is forever.

After every deluge, the ground bees dig themselves out and start anew. I think they are amazing until I realize: what else are they going to do?

Dawn rolls in dark, gray and redolent of loneliness. Plants yellow from too much rain and my muscles grow softer without the work. Can I tell you something? My vow was there for a reason and the reason says: remain. So, without expectation of anything ever, it remains.

Canticles Floating Closer

At 5 a.m., I cook the dog's food in the dark, make coffee, and all the while think about other animals I could be caring for at this pitchy hour . . . but am not. While she is eating I slip outside, leaving the door open for her to come out when she is finished eating. The first birdsong will arrive in moments but for now, only tympanic drops of leftover rain tune themselves on mysterious surfaces.

A break between storms. Flood warnings. Why is always glut or drought? Well, it isn't, is it; it just seems that way when eyes have a certain way of looking.

A spider canvases a stack of notebooks next to The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, all piled neatly on the corduroy ottoman. I sit on the floor hosting dawn a lot these days. Before the songs of prayer is the delight of far off feathered canticles floating closer and closer.

Mortification of the body means one thing but looks like another. People notice and I try not to respond with “fuck off.” Obviously I am super enlightened now.

There is a level of honesty I don't know how to resurrect. Maybe that comes from a lifetime of living the wrong life – being the wrong woman – selling out. My confessor grows weary but prays on my behalf. Is my tribe always 1,000 miles away?

Ylang ylang oil for the diffuser. Thunder rolling in hard. Rain hissing from the west. These dark days, blacker than night; these perfumed pleas on my tongue.

No Longer Given

At dawn facing east, facing daylight, facing now.

Before thought could enter, a blue jay flew straight into the glass slider. He fell hard to the ground and my gut filled with nausea. I couldn't look to see where he landed or if he was mortally wounded. I could only curse the windows, wishing I didn't have the ability to look upon the world from this spot, with these windows, with this light.

Bowing, begging forgiveness, accepting what is given and not.

One wonders if she can live as though poor, denouncing gratifications and appetites for the good of releasing the soul. It is easy to give away comforts and things. It is harder to abolish the desire for love that burns hotter than the sun.

What is enkindled with the lack of desire? The promise is that I am not forsaken. The promise is that I am not alone. And it strikes me that promises are a way to order what is not yet here. Promises are worded hopes that move through fingers and time, a lot like the wind.

I gotta be honest, it seems like a waste to have the temple cherished only by the One who made it. Can I deny my heart when it has been asked of me? That is the abyss I do not know how to fall into. That is the one death I fear.

Under the Beams

One rises from a trance to see the candle freshly smoldering.

Looking west into a setting sun, my eyelashes filter gold into rainbows. A laughing canopy sways in cooling exhalation. I rest on earth for now. The only way to get what you really want is to stop wanting.

Compass to weather vane – there is no where to go.

We collaborated on a real love song, the only thing is, we wrote it in the dark.

a playlist
cannabis
God Herself

Have you ever seen the way lake and sky merge when it rains hard? Water unto water but also, heaven unto hell. It's all the same depending on the weather.

The look queens have in their eyes. Every portrait shows it because how could it not?

To tell the truth, I may still be the bird tethered by a single string. Time will tell.

What will you say when we meet? What remains under the beams? Sun and moon. Barns and haylofts. Churches and pines.

Sweatshirt Weather

One exists who teaches how to hear earthworms at night. How does a human deserve such a blessing? How does this impermanent thing, this floating wisp of a woman merit that kind of love?

Music moves back and forth from minor to major keys and it informs everything I read. The power of what cannot be worded. It rules me, beloved.

A tornado rips just south of here and doesn't appear in my dreams. Yet thunder shook the walls and windows so hard I thought to look for missing glass. No children flew into my room for comfort, but the dog did pace and cry a little in the hopes of consolation.

No pools of rain at dawn; the land gulped it all and even asks for more. It's colder now, sweatshirt weather for walking or writing or sitting. Leaning against the door frame, staring out into gray, listening to what is here. Melaluca in the air. A frost warning on the first day of summer. I sigh with the world.

One meal a day for a month. Hunger shows up in my dreams if I am allowed to sleep that long. I'm asking, who's in charge here? When stumbling onto a bee's nest, the bees are in charge!

Another level of confusion when no one eats from the garden. Let this go too, is the word on the street. One could sit still all day and watch infinity passing by. Can one sit and live? Fast and be still? Forever?

Sometimes it is twenty sentences and sometimes it is more. But always, it is the one who illuminated the one who said: let us try this.

Coffee and Me

Not-yet-light but not-still-dark.

Coffee and me.

Only.

*

a little bit softer now . . .

*

A moment happened in a realm that floats between seeing and vision.

It occurred.

I looked at her, maybe for the first time, but I really looked at her.

I faced her.

And she faced me.

She saw me as dishonoring, despicable, disgraceful.

And I broke character for the first time in this whole thing.

*

Mary Magdalene didn't take or borrow or love anyone's husband.

Mary Magdalene was the only.

*

The truth doesn't land well.

Instead, the sea boils in its single-minded interest to replace oxygen with the salty tears of every being able to able to cry them.

She doesn't get what she wants in the end.

You get what you need.

*

For as far back as I can remember, I have been trying.

I've been trying match what my soul hungers and craves and bleeds for with what is in front of me.

And after that, I have been trying to match the hunger with what is possible. What has potential. What could be. And after that....

is now.

*

What kind of God loves you so much that they ask you to give up everything?

You might say that sounds like a woman.

But to me, that sound like a man.

*

I have a letter waiting.

A book to give.

Dried first flowers from every spring since the day we met.

My whole heart, pressed between pages of hope.

And Love says I must throw every treasure into the sea?

I must choose death?

In order to truly love?

What if I cannot?

What if Love doesn't win?

*

It's dark for 7 a.m.

A light rain glosses the deck enough to see the reflection of pines.

It's coffee and me.

Only.

All the Hours

At 3 a.m. one can almost hear the land sigh beneath holy blankets of rain. The drought has kept mosquitoes down but that blessing comes at a price.

4 a.m., between thunder rolls, the train moans westward against thoughts pushing east. A mountain calling. A love birthing The Love suckling all Love unto the end.

Kora sits with me in the garage at 5 a.m., watching rain and hot coffee add steam into the already humid, predawn air. I remember how I never really had a fondness for garages growing up. Why do garages seem to belong to fathers? His cars. His surgeon-like organization of various tools, WD-40 cans and sanctioned, hand-picked materials for washing his car. Our bikes were allowed to be in the garage but only just so – a terrifying game of tip-toe, with kick stands being what they are and all.

Falling bikes – thrown bikes – broken bikes.

Rainfall dampens the mouth of the garage. Chicago Drive begins to hum in the distance. Neighborhood windows begin to blink with life.

At 6 a.m. I make more coffee to make sure there is enough for the day and for the guest-who-really-isn't-a-guest-anymore. I sit in the room of windows and read the sentences and write the sentences and then I have to go.

Fridays are 8 a.m. hikes with Tara and so it is that I push out into the world, putting miles beneath my feet, damp, piney, oxygen into my lungs, and a longing spirit of ascending further and higher into our heart.

At all the hours
Unfolding insists

With or without intervention
With or without self

Always
in us

Re-wilding

Lately the dog has been having what seems like a lot of bad dreams. Her hips turn robotic on some walks and she does not like to be separated from me for very long. Dogs cycle through life faster than we do, therefore I witness the microcosm of her being as a hint of my own.

Dad sent me in a text in which he said that he cannot talk because his day is “cra-cra.” This and other signs of the end of the world.

Woodpeckers drill and drum back and forth, sometimes overlapping each other's cadence. One thinks about what life would be like without interrupted nature, without machine sounds or appointments. Then again, one could have these answers and yet, looks past them. And in this way, my hypocrisy finds its borders to be negotiable.

The other day, a vision was given of love tied up with snakes. Love still wins but for a brief moment, I was allowed to understand entwined strangulation. Pain and pleasure in the same cord. Chord?

Did you hear about the man swallowed whole by a whale in Cape Cod? Growing up I had a regular nightmare about that very experience which caused me to research the actual ability, possibility, and probability of being swallowed by a whale. At 8 years old I asked, “is that God?” And now at 47 years old, I heard Jesus answer on his Father's behalf, “who do you say that I am?”

The heat finally breaks and breathing feels like the gift that it is. Milkweed up past my waist and the chance to re-wild my suburban back yard. Tell me, beloved, who do you say I am?

Some Sorrow Attached

Purple flowers and ground-nesting bees.

You trace cancer scars with your middle finger and remember that the rechecks are past due. Things you know you should do and yet do not do.

A string of 90+ degree days means that afternoons are spent indoors which also means that mornings are full of things normally done later in the day. Different schedules; different routines; different allowances and releases.

The garden comes on stronger each day. Can you imagine tending that which is going to be given to everyone else, but not you? It's like that. A gift with joy at it's heart but also, some sorrow attached.

It's bandana season! Working the flower beds yesterday, sweat soaked through my favorite bandana – gray with the word “love” printed on it in a rainbow of colors – and funneled into my eyes with a wicked sting. I've started carrying a dry rag with me to wipe my face on the regular during this heat. How far away winter is in these moments! And yet, here he is in these very sentences.

Tiny white tea roses bloom and they actually do remind me of a small table set for tea with a friend. Lately friendships are so hungry and one has to work hard to judiciously decline to meet. This time of fasting, this time of quieter solitude has a level of incomprehensibility for those who have never thought of it. Post pandemic (is it post yet?) has many frantic to reconnect. How to be available and yet, not, is the current calibration.

Leftover coffee, a train moaning westbound, and mourning doves all ushering in another chance to be lovely in the world.

Wink and Dash

Out of the blue Dad sends me a card in the mail with Brett Farve on the front, hearkening back to a time when I was a Packer's fan – and his little girl.

In physcian-scrawl he calls me by childhood names of endearment and says how proud he is of me, “for some obvious reasons but also for the lots of not so obvious reasons.” I'm “real woman” and hero. Well, it's late but maybe not too late.

Let me tell you about the affinity for men and their written words.

Palm-sized rabbits wink and dash through clover after a wicked rain storm popped up out of nothing. Jauw's trash cans were carried down the street as the backed up sewer drain filled the cul-de-sac with a foot of water.

Mushrooms on my mind. Maybe asking what Love wants is the morel of the story. :)

A nut hatch spirals down the wet oak. At almost 9 p.m. a few birds still call and answer across a weeping canopy. St. John of the Cross and his friendship with Teresa of Avila are a certain framework one could ponder on such a night as this. What has been sacrificed indeed!

Lex finally arrives and says I look different. She flops face down on the couch and tries to squeeze a nap in before band camp. We all gather around and pepper her with questions about her travels, her loves and her music. Her quartet arrives on Friday to rehearse unencumbered for a few days. She's too tired to give details and so we all wait a little longer to know what will soon enough be yesterday's news.

At 5 a.m. it is hard to underestimate riotous birdsong rising from every direction in the almost-dark. Maybe all that is left to do is smile and await the magic of fireflies.