Almost Nearly Barely

Mom and Dad sat at the kids' table which was sweet in a way but also, oddly satisfying in that the lowered station almost, nearly, barely, soothes some sort of power dynamic in the family. It's as if they have suffered too long trying to redeem or connect something frayed in their own children and now they turn towards the grand kids. This and other family minutia involving grand feasts and 1001 ways to pretend everything is okay.

When hanging prisms, I remembered selling sun catchers as a kid for a class fundraiser. I never wanted to sell them and besides, we had no neighbors or relatives close by. My only options would be to call people on the phone and try to describe what each sun catcher looked liked in hopes of a convincing sale. I, an image, selling an image to an image. I remember a CCD teacher at church buying one and before delivery, I got see what they looked like. They fit in the palm of my hand and I wanted to keep them. A cardinal, a hot air balloon, a rainbow arching into two clouds.

A day after Thanksgiving, multi-colored Christmas lights float like constellations in a green universe. At 4 a.m. it's the preferable light. Out at this time, in this cold, the smell of pending snowfall. Leaves frosted and frozen, a sounding board for even the slightest of moves. In these quietest times I think of the informality between lovers – the direct presence – the fact that everything is forbidden but love.

I was dead and brought back to life. Hence this utter need for a taste – the flavor of God still fresh on your lips – the home we made of the barren tomb. Oh my sickness and remedy! This all consuming fire!

What do we care what is done with our ashes?

Wounded Witch

As a child, I would sing behind the boathouse, my voice traveling over the water, hoping no one in the world could possibly hear. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” would be my go-to tune but often I would make up these long, run-on songs about having a wild and true companion — one who would know me, walk with me, burn with me. I didn't know those songs were prayers, but they were.

And I also remember at a small age thinking myself a witch. Perhaps I was named as such, getting into trouble, doing bad things, carrying around my own heart in a jar in order to get close enough to those I loved. I was wounded. But as Cohen would say, and Rumi before him, perhaps that is where the light entered.

Spellbound.

He wraps around me
like pine smoke
rising.

Have you heard that the tomb is just another womb? Just outside the entrance we linked arms for the unveiling. What has been shared is to be given. Only gratefulness now.

A full moon dimmed by snow clouds, low in the branches. Night passes through pain and sleeplessness, as if sailing on changeless winds. Yet, this is no-thing happening to no-one – discarded trash on the path. Let us be at ease now – with God, with our hearts, with all.

You Charmer of Hearts

My hands grow weaker in winter. Missing the garden grows stronger. Will we still do something right?

When summer ends and autumn flies away I begin to creak.

Who speaks with the sky knows pink to gray to black to pink. Incandescent dawns giving way to a clouded face.

But I am the path and the walker.
Sky and flyer.
I can move from flow to overflowing in one glance; one beloved gaze; one extension of love.

Water still runs in rivulets down the oak bark.

Friend, lover, teacher. One thousand treasures are mine every passing moment.

You whisper to me my heart's secrets and in the hearing, the line between Human and Divine disappears as a season. You charmer of hearts. Enter me. Closer than my beating heart.

Sunbeams lower their gaze.

A dozen prisms newly hung to dance with light.

I tuck seeds away in a notebook for another day.

Dear Diary, hold my love as a divine keepsake for now.

We

Who listens to the pine wind song longer than a warbler's hymn?

Who brushes the plush darkness of a black-eyed Susan with a thumb as the other fingers curve to cradle its reaching rays like that of a newborn's head?

Who kneels first at the riverbank, stands next to it to skip found stones and lastly sits to divest of one's self only that which the river can name?

Lawlak . . . were it not for you.

No matter which turn we make, it is always the same version of love shaped into soaring.

Love as the unleashing of God on Earth. As love moves inward, it is a knitted tenderness – a pure peacemaker draped on the shoulders of the heart. When love moves outward, into the commonality, it gleams as justice.

And now, dis-covering.

We dance where sensual meets intellectual. Watch the Sufi's whirl and one will know what it means to balance stillness and motion. What overflows in the perception both sustains us on Earth and delivers us back home.

Yes, back.

The pleasure of scripture as my own heart.
The burning of it.
The unchecked growth of it, like wildflowers in the meadow up to my neck.

Our slow glow of felicity, beloved.
And virtue.
For Love's Sake.

Let us be the lovers we already are.

In This Way

begin again
because my heart
is not a stone

Pine sap candles – brief in expression – manifold in meaning.

Who sees with the eyes of Majnun?

The difference between breaking and breaking open, now coming into play.

Mawlana sings: you and I should live as if you and I never heard of you and I.

Healer as messiah.

Lover as the tears of God.

Snow and leaves falling – crisscrossing in concert – the applause of pines.

Giving away words when one is no longer able to tend them in the heart.

And finally, my yearning known as a gift – a sanctified path bringing my heart to the threshold of understanding God's Own Heart for me.

Our external dance is not entirely disembodied from the soul that also sways.

Meld, shall we?

In this way, we are we.

In this way, we remember.

In this way, we see what is beautiful and we enter.

In this way, we are born again.

Nightfall by 5 p.m. – the gleaming slant of snow-powered roofs, strew about the neighborhood like place cards tented on the table at a wedding feast.

Our Divine invitation has been stamped and sealed with wax melted by our outrageous flame – I feel the heat.

Taste Her

A dream hovers just shy of 4 a.m. as a reminder that we are the very ones we have been waiting for.

Take a closer look at the nature of desire. Who do you really long for – above salvation, above heaven and hell, above the ecstasy of skin and blood and the weight of you?

And yet, I have felt this Divine Longing mingle with humanity.

I have seen that God's own path is the very essence of us.

Wood ash in the garden and the whisper of leaves accepting death.

Love IS fire. I see now the gift of my attraction to it and embodiment of the flame.

Together we purify and up in smoke goes selfishness, greed, anger, and ego. It is the unleashing of God Herself and merging with Her in the cosmic current that we are Home.

I think the yearning and the desire is a gift from God.
I think Love yearns and desires US.
I think Love longs to be known intimately by US.

And being created in this image, we also long for this knowing.

She wants to be tasted in her softest place.

She wants to sheltered and harbored in the marrow of our bones.

She is immediate and primal; why do we deny this?

Radical Love will not be contained, not in discussion or marriage or even in the sweetest, most fervent prayer.

No Law or cross can hold this Fire.

Of course we are the metaphor, beloved; how else could we possibly begin to fathom the way in which God burns for us?

Ultimately there is One Love and if it is radical you want, I say, let's rise and look Love in the eyes, face to face.

I'm Done With This

Last night, thunder rattled windows in their sockets and shook nick-knacks off the dresser. Rain, hail, wind, sleet, snow, and ever so briefly, just after dawn, a mango-hued rainbow arched over the entire city. Hungry black clouds raced back in from the west to devour any color clinging to the sky.

Another friend on life support thanks to Covid. Regardless of how I hold the flimsy sham that is death, I am not unaffected by the sorrow and grieving.

Snow at 1 a.m. lightens the night. I had forgotten how the outside world is muted with snowfall. Despite the cold, the dog doesn't want to come in. She sleeps curled up like cinnamon drop on the deck chair cushions that are now piled up in the corner of the deck. C'mon girl . . .

Eco villages, permaculture deep dives, intentional tending. We discuss the possibilities and by “discuss” I mean, I talk, he listens and says, “I'm listening” to which I say, “that means, you entertain my folly and hope that I will move on to something else in the near future,” to which he laughs and kisses my forehead and says, “goodnight, my love. Let's talk about it later.”

I sleep on the couch and drink tea and wait for the chills and ache to pass. My throat stings with every swallow and my head feels like a cement block set on a stone, teetering left or right without notice. Another Covid test tomorrow. Another wait and see.

In the meantime, did you see the docu-series on how fucking Nestle is taking free Michigan ground water and selling back to us for $1.09 per bottle? I'm done with this. And if you live with me, you are done with this too.

Fostering Flames

The compression of haiku.

Your absence of words.

A tinge of regret.

It is fireplace season and I am the tender. A happiness brews when I haul and stack wood, light fires, and foster flames.

This time of year I think of animals that must keep moving or die. My hours of nothing string end-to-end as a deadening creeps around in broad daylight. Who is restraining and why?

I still wake in the valley of night. I still walk around and ask the dog questions in the dark. I still cannot make peace without that Vermont river. That spirit that found me. That deepening. Herself.

The redbird sings and returns to his nest tucked in the rhododendron. I always thank him for staying all winter long. His song chirps about in my heart especially when I am as quiet as a fallen feather.

A church built out of wood and sunbeams. Okay, a river too. And sure, that mountainside aslant, allowing for all of life to lilt downhill towards those who sleep still.

A Fire By Which to Abide

After frost is erased by morning sun, I am barefoot outside in November. 'Tis the season of leaf management and so, raking, tarp pulling, and mounding. At noon I make a bonfire by which to abide. Pine cones as fodder.

As the wind changes direction, I am blessed by smoke. I make a note to write about how campfire smoke is the sexiest smell I know. I want to get high in the last rays of sun before winter, but I don't. Instead a book, the fire, and coffee.

Days are stitched together now by strands of boredom and quiet exhales. Rain and this weekend, accumulating snowfall.

I remember stopping at Joe's Grocery and gas station after church every Sunday for fresh donuts. Six plain, six sugar, six powdered. Grease would soak through the white bag a bit before getting home. They'd be gone within five minutes of getting home. I would dunk my donuts in cold milk and feel grateful that at least there were donuts in the world.

Dinner is now always after dark. Pad Thai tonight with fried egg. A friend wants to leave her kid and husband without telling them because “they would be better off” without her. I believe she will do it.

In the slanted, muted light, shrouded by smoke, I think about her, the migration of trees and the one who showed me my salvation.

Hush

May it be love!

The divinity of sighs.

Do words not become flesh as we speak? Angels, messengers, emissaries – a thing with power. Who longs to personify what is hidden in the heart? A slowing-down and a quieting blanket of hush.

Messianic saffron falling.

More than autumn rhetoric, more than emotive. Go beyond the primary sense of perception. Let's move past what the eye can see, beloved.

High-pitched school bus brakes squeal into a darkened dawn. The neighbor's dog barks at the kids shuffling their feet along the road towards the bus stop. Kora pricks her ears but perhaps has become slightly more discerning in her advancing age. I remember walking almost a mile in the dark on the dirt road through our woods to my bus stop. Deer would barely disturb fallen leaves and I could hear all manner of quiet rustlings. Tip-toeing the slight isthmus between the frog ponds was a daily ritual on the way. I remember the mind could travel far in this kind of darkness.

A veiled nun tends those hours with me now. I've asked her if she has been here all along. She only draws her finger to her lips, signaling, “hush.”

Songs Only God Can Hear

Popcorn and coffee for breakfast.

Deer tracks in a near slumbering garden. Hours bent over the earth, hands and knees style, digging out thousands of rooted acorns. My fingers bleed a little. I fantasized about someone reading poetry aloud as I worked and then me saying, “hey, a little help would be good, too” and then I would be soft tackled into the mossy ground and given a deep, full kiss, reaching beyond the cosmos.

A good pair of wire cutters seems essential. After staking the compost area, I wrestle and wrap it with chicken wire. The air is crisp and sun-filled – perfect for drying leaves to store for winter. I pack and settle them for the coming months.

While I work, my body sings songs only God can hear.

In my quest to understand who I am, this being cannot forget what she was made for. So she likes sunny days; so she likes handling the earth; so she likes being bound a little when making love. But how much does any of that really matter if the extension Love is not obvious and overflowing?

Marriage supports me but does it support us in the context of extension?

What is holy does not obey the laws of man. This and other truths that refuse to stay buried.

At 4 a.m. the dog tousles with an opossum. The orange fingernail moon hooks my heart and strings me along in stillness for the rest of the day. Every choice has already been made; let us rejoice and be glad!

Dead Daisies on Either Side

An ideal life in my own hands – the kaleidoscope of finished leaves, ready to take flight on the slightest breeze. I am in the glebe of my own making. Yet, talking with the wind reminds me of where I can go and with whom.

A pine tree has got to pine!

Canoes, still waters, and broken cattails. We would glide; wouldn't we? Silent in our adoration; glimmering in our hearts.

Red wine, Spanish guitar trills, and thoughts of the difficult desert burning just around the bend.

The gate unfastens and swings away from the house with a groan. Walk through child. Dead daisies on either side speak of what has been gifted and what has lost all memory of sin.

What if one day driving west turns into a week of sunsets on Lake Michigan? What if our feet left no print in January's drifts as we forged snowy paths like horses along the trail? Ah, she speaks this way with too much wine. Too much alone time. Too much alienation.

Even with shortened light, you are arriving now. And so am I. The flame is eternal and it fades not. I warm my palms by it as the night breeze lifts whatever is left to the impersonal crown of stars above my head.

Last Considerations

turning
like inner wrists
bearing the entry points
of deeper

Daybreak sends silent rays through untroubled pines. Peace spreads in all directions like warm honey. Our catechism of foliage gives way to a tempest of falling color. One pays homage to rivers and last blooms while still able. Last considerations of gardens and other growing things are set upon the cold and growing colder altar of November. Blankets, jackets and the waistline of my jeans pull closer.

Less words arrive yet the desire to communicate remains. Loose leaves momentarily cling to the teacup's slickness, but mostly they drift like tiny motes in sunlight. Eons built on moments. Moments built on warm tea passing over expectant lips.

Flooding now flows outward instead of its usual inward reeling.

Gratitude.
Love.
Softness extended.

I wait until Kyle wakes to wash the clothes or grind the coffee. Semi trucks scrape through gears westbound on Chicago Drive, hauling themselves into 5 a.m. A few stars peek and play through a wooded skyline. Grateful indeed!

The poetic version of me doesn't want to say how this all gets translated. The tired version just looks downstream at our salvation and knows.

The Unseen Place

A cask of moonwater, now what? I no longer confess to priests because they do not deserve even my castoffs.

She who is subterranean – and yet – watches the wind carrying leaves up the street like a parade. I was accessed from the unseen place and guided from there. A river carves a channel or bends around the immovable and seems to be shaping a life. But that illusion is not the dowery of our being! From that day, that one, ever-unfolding-moment, a rushing hiss still in my ears – the water, my heartbeat, the exit of time.

A record skipping – real? Not real? – begins an acoustical fade. To give oneself over to the meaning of Love is more simple than it seems.

Place and time becomes a meaningless belief. We join in this to save the world.

And now, snow! Long spandex leggings, a winter coat, and gloves to walk the dog. The amethyst I used to wear. Purple kale I pinched from the potted plant outside the restaurant. Winter glides closer under the veil of wood smoke.

My body can no longer serve two masters. Dylan and God say it straight. What is desired above all else?

Saffron light suggests no gap. Who am I to hide in the abyss?

Slowed Way Down

A bossy wind bringing November. Obstinate garden hoses fighting to be coiled and the shed emptied and filled with the changing seasons. A longing to make love outside, any season, burns with the last of the bonfires. More fodder to compost. More garden space to mull.

I remember kissing Rawlin, under the raft, undulating in the lake. My teenage legs wrapped around his waist as we both held on to the underside of the raft to keep our heads above water.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered....

The right flame at the wrong time? What is natural has been called crude emotion but I will not allow that voice to have a say, for what is of God will not be betrayed.

Bourbon cream, Ella Fitzgerald, and these lines. Tell me, what's a girl like me to do? Drink another. Sing a few tunes. Write love notes that go no further.

The infinite appears in the spaces – in the tempo slowed way down. What arises from absolute stillness cannot be expressed.

Finding God in bed to lose one's self in bed.

Eyes Water the Whole Way

Dawn smolders under 5 a.m. ashes. A veil of thin approximations sways as if breathing. What words cannot say. What light beams extend into us with the dim eyes. October departs.

Neve soundboards, Joan Jett, the words “rock and roll” affixed to one another in a way that binds or releases souls.

Breath rises as the dog and I walk against sharp air. Temperature differences feel exhilarating against my hot cheeks. Eyes water the whole way but it feels good.

Circe steps forward for a time and I give her the floor.

More light as the canopy falls apart. We have those moments in the flow and I can see nothing else. God help me.

Sunday cracks open spilling leaves, mist moving towards rain, and sunlight in its lesser form. Lexi calls to recount how the saxophone technician treated her at the repair shop. She is fuming from the scorch marks of misogyny. I put her on speaker and Kyle listens to the fury in her voice and the break in her heart. He has to hear it. He has to see it. He has to speak of it.

We are in a deal, so deal breakers must exist.

Another Story Altogether

Frost on roofs and the first signs of snow in the forecast.

Dawn turns tender-hearted. Birdsong falls away mainly unobserved until one morning you realize you hear only cardinals, jays and chickadees. In the direct gaze of morning, steam rises from the damp wooden fence.

She mentioned Nairobi and the world tilted a little. The man at the market was wearing a bracelet with Kenyan beading and so I asked him, “Kusema Kiswahili?” He did speak Swahili but only because he was a refugee in Kenya from Sudan for 10 years. Ghosts appear in many ways. Yet angels...another story altogether.

Finding out at this late state that prisms can be also rainbow disco balls and so my shadow dances on the wall.

Carving faith out of oak.

Lighthouses rounding full circle.

It is not my body but I who wakes at 4 a.m.
Quiet candles, study and letting go.
Coffee until my stomach hurts which lately is almost instantly.

This land speaks to me at night.
She says I could be a better relative and so I dig to find her story.
Who lived here first; who pushed them out; what grew natively and what was then planted?

In all this time, why has no one told me the beginning?

Moats to Sail

Together we are released from death.

Christ beside me.

We can stop the rain. We can leave the tomb. Let us walk together into the sunlight, my love. My loves? Now to pass through the eye of the needle.

Rain like a locomotive barrels through night and day. There are moats to sail and bottled messages to send.

Fall colors stand applauding in two receiving lines as we jaunt northbound towards Muskegon. Aloud I say, “I miss Vermont.” He was joking when he asked if I missed the bears. My wince said, “I wish you wouldn't have said that.”

A nap too long and a stomach ache to pay for it.

After he fell asleep, I pulled apart the heavy, blackout curtains, cracked the window and watched the moon drifting eye to eye above Lake Michigan. Not a sound lifted except the occasional lapping of water against craggy pylons. I pretended that night knew things that the day never would and I carried that illusion safely back to bed.

Warm brown rice with tamari sauce, ginger tea. Leaves the color of buttercups rewriting October terrain.

Rain says, “build the ark” and so we enter, two by two.

Air Supply, Love and Some Real God Shit

The function of Love is one.

Something happens and you wake underneath pouring rain and you don't hate listening to Air Supply all day long.

It is said “to love the Father is to love the Son” but in my case, to love the Son is to love the Father.

Sitting cross-legged at the writing desk, shanti rising between raindrops.

In the morning, we shared our dreams with one another. In mine, he and I were chosen to play in AC/DC's band – he on keyboards, me on guitar. In his dream, he and I were surrounded by female lions on the Mara, waiting to be eaten.

The other night, you touched me in a way that I have never been touched. I cannot prove any of it but I was once again unfastened. My body as a concept has been turned over to the One who Knows how to use it properly. In this way I accept all invitations; even yours; in and unto peace only.

And she said, “the color blue is some real God shit.”

Not martyrs now but teachers.

All of me hears the rain and all of us are soothed.

Making Love Out of Nothing at All.
All Out of Love.
Lost in Love.

It's all Love. Love. Love.

In the Key of Light

A relinquished body.
I diminish in dawn's dazzling frost.
We are the light beyond the vessel in these last hours of existence.
The dog softly whimpers in the dark.
She's okay.

*

This letter is in the key of light.
Dear Beloved, it's my turn to throw grief in the river.
Nestle close.
Bring a blanket.
Let us listen to Jesus landing on wildflowers.

*

4 a.m returns on moonbeams bending.
Open arms, open heart, open grave.
Amber awake in me.
October woods.
The earth rises to meet me.

*

Delight all you want, but pleasure is not peace.
Naked under the zipper hoodie.
Permission to make a pass, lay on the gas, go too fast, Sir!
Goddess achieves herself and so the narrative unfolds.
Dazzling light of mine, shine.