So Sayeth the Red Bird

Morning's stained-glass light. A few melodies ascending. We lack nothing – or so the tune goes.

Steel cut oats, coffee with cream, heat rising from still waters. Steam is a comforting way to carry the intangible.

What does it mean to hate father and mother, sister and brother, husband and child . . . and even one's self, all to be a disciple of the Serpent Treader?

In the true vineyard of life we find out that we are servants, not lords. So sayeth the red bird in the pines.

I looked straight through all the jokes and said, “not every body enjoys a fool.” I sleep alone and now you know why.

I used to have this dream when I was younger of being swallowed by a giant fish. Swimming in the lake unaware, I would suddenly become entombed inside the tight, wet tongue of a whale. It was hard to breathe but I could not die. I could not die.

Sun-warmed shoulders, freckled and rounded. Serious eyes, smiling. A purified kiss. Dreams are dreams but we do not die. Beloved, I am a readied apple, crisp, with beads of dew. I fall when it's time; but who is there?

Put Your Hands Here

On the long drive bisecting cornfields and deer graves, a confession of nothing spiritual since Kenya. Tell me more. Somehow we both know we cannot recreate the spring of life we drank from so deeply in those highlands.

And to compound the sense of something past, I cannot ready this land, our land, in time, by myself. This earth wants to join and marry – she whispers to me about it. I hear her at night and in the early morning. She speaks while I'm at work or at the market. She calls beyond God and I feel her aching bosom leaking for connection. And yet, and yet.

Daffodils bob and twist a lemony dance while tulips delay. A smattering of hyacinth send their fragrance on night air through open windows in remembrance of the day she was born. Our spring storm. Now and always another woman of fire.

Another beginning.

A dim but ever brightening morning. You spoke peace, shared it, and now I see the light. Now I have the eyes to see.

Climbing the mountain is not nearly as important as kneeling where it rises from the soft, tender earth. Put your hands here. That is where peace grows.

Held and Not Venerated

The dog's breath hangs in frigid air for several seconds while plumes of scented smoke rise from dryer vents. If one lends attention in just the right way, one can see the sun pulling dampness off the bark of oaks. The power of light; the danger of hope.

Have you ever held a Willedorf Woman? To be venerated and not held; to be held and not venerated. When do we get to have to all? But then again, this is it, right? This, this.

In the darkness of night, sounds of the brook racing down the mountain expands into airy dreams. Apple slices served on a small plate. Watching your soft glance of searching as it becomes the wince of desire.

Working all day in the yard means dancing around April's first bonfire, alone. The wind shifts and the smoke stings my eyes. Dropping to my knees to get my bearings, I cannot escape the feeling that this is all a dress rehearsal for something else. Someone else.

I thought there was a higher value placed on making every decision together – a sense of equity and fairness prevailing – making compromise and negotiation the proof of health and well being. Yet one day you said, “I would defer all of that to you . . .” and suddenly I understood what true equality is. How can I just ignore that? Again, more questions than answers. In this poverty I take such lamenting to Jesus, who then nods towards Mary Magdalene and says, “come stay the night with us – you will find everything you are looking for.”

Gifting the Gods

With sunlight bursting through leaden canopy, I suddenly understand the power of making him look at the goddess. One need not wait to be seen; one need only be. Someone turned on the light. Someone keeps the flame. Yet there is still more to learn, Someone, do you not agree?

Ever-green, rooted in you.
The Masaai Mara's ancient sway.
A matriarch's stare into that which makes us whole.
The world around us speaks of a concentration without effort.
Who has ears to hear?

A ghost in the Adult Non-Fiction section vies for attention. We are never alone or separated. In my dream, I am assaulted and thrown in a shed. Show me a man I need not fear. Daffodils, tulips and crocus all begin.

No Gun Lake retreat this spring; no hiking soggy horse trails with the dog; no naked sunbathing on the porch. An exhaustion swarms around the absence of being whoever it is that I am. I dab essential oils between my breasts, in the soft of my neck an my inner elbows before dressing. A longing turns the oils into a gift to the gods.

Tell me the one about holding hands again.

Horizontal Eight

An owl swoops across gradient violet light. It perches in the old oak and calls out over frosted roofs and woodsmoke. I feel its feminine presence in my shoulders and down my spine. Yet also, the masculine power of presence takes my breath.

An awareness rises of the heft required to bear the opposites of divine opposites.

Sunlight breaks to highlight the transfiguration of eros into the immortal prism that it is. Maybe I cannot do this, beloved. Maybe I am the fool on the cliff, about to step off, barely feeling the tug to hold. Cannot it not be true that as above so is below? Fall or fly? Sink or swim?

Two bald eagles fly in a Lemniscate fashion over the flooded river bank, one inhaling as the other exhales. In a dream, you wake, walk out of the bedroom, and lean over me working at my desk – a soft kiss on the neck and we fall all over again. Tell me again why this is a dream? New tarot liquifying all the ground on which I stand.

The eternity of rhythm. Concentration without effort. Silence without desires. How to calm these waters remains a mystery I am not allowed to understand. I drink of the silence and still, I do not know a thing.

Dead Fish and Turtles Rising

What is left but poetry and surrender?

The crow announces this darker dawn from a peak just beyond view. Sleet/freezing rain/wind. Ache slips in the doorway like autumn leaves I refuse to sweep away.

A memory surfaces of my father lighting water-proof M-80's and throwing them in the lake. He'd run backwards like a trickster, squealing a little as he laughed. Do as I say, not as do. At night, dead fish and turtles would float to the surface in my dreams. How man is a paradox of healing and destruction. Perception as reality. Is this how I know?

No one's home. I turn up the beats in hopes that my heart will realign. Dancing in my black robe, sending love in all directions. I know the dervish I could be. And yet, and yet. Please hate me. That would feel better.

Someone beautiful enough to hold me.

To handle it.

God help me.

Overhead Conversations

The weight is becoming unbearable again.

Snow falls on tulip coils, pine branches and dogs sleeping outside, alike. She won't come in anymore unless she must and it kind of breaks my heart.

Yet birds still sing spring songs and daffodil shoots still push green prayers through remnants of what tries to remain.

From the writing desk, I watched yesterday's robin bow left and right on the picket fence post. Something about the mathematical elegance of existence leaves me a little unstable. Lately, the luminous understanding of life as “descent.”

Geese in overhead conversations begin to lower two by two unto mounding nests. Ascent and descent as stroke and counterstroke of one direction. We corkscrew forward through time and space as way of revealing our inexhaustibly divine heart. Can you feel this, beloved?

Wish list in simpatico with a shoeless man: mushrooms, Mass, fireside nights and a swim in midnight's starry pond. Shimmering fragments of glass, turning this way and that, creating something new. I am enfolding into an expansive Trinity. Regathering.

He has made known to us his hidden purpose
made so kindly in Christ from the beginning
to be effected when the time was ripe
that all heaven and earth be brought together
in unity through Christ.

• Ephesians 1:12

Shall we discuss? My place or yours?

A wingspan tested in a move from systematic theology to metaphysical poetry. An unfathomed depth to water.

The Enemy is not the Enemy

Lightening from the anvil of storms.

I write letters that are never sent. It's a process; an ego check; a way to reach for the bottom.

Studying the interplay of two polarities calling forth a third. This additional force added to a binary system can be a mediating or reconciling principle. Interwoven, dancing, falling together – the trinity can create a fourth principle, in another realm. This is true. I've seen it. And while the thinking mind will never quite make sense of it, perhaps another look at the Trinity will shed some light. This is what we are doing here. This is what we do next.

Three tumbling beams of light uniting as a process instead of an acranum to worship. There is a time to move beyond archetypes and binary opposites. The “enemy” is never the enemy but instead, he is what is given for the deepening, widening allowance of another essence.

New arises from old. Components bear offspring. We can live beyond the opposites. Oh my beloved, you who writes straight with crooked lines! Perhaps it is time to midwife the other way.

I am where I have always been.

Here.

Libra Issues

In the thaw, a return to the three-seasons room. More light and yet, the half empty tissue box is still on the floor from our last phone call. A light stack of papers spent the whole winter on the corduroy ottoman: printed lyrics to “Let it Be,” typed notes referencing the feminine reclaiming the power of the snake, a poem by Lucy Pierce, and a few hand scrawled questions I never asked you. Eucalyptus and lavender tied with twine hangs from the edge of the side table. With exception of mourning dove coos, it's quieter in here. Softer.

I remember freezing out here at 4 a.m. just to have a chance to connect. Slight frostbite on my left middle toe; candles and hot tea, burning.

If I'm honest, spring brings back what never left. If I'm dishonest, spring brings forth the new beginning.

Snowdrops by the creek.
Green curled funnels of emerging tulips.
Woodpeckers drumming out their call for love.

Our amethyst hangs on a string, cradled in copper wire, manifesting what it means to gift and to receive. The war is center stage but people seem to forget that it was always waging; always erupting; always proving what we are too sleepy to know. Tell me, what is next? Are we ready?

This sorrow and others. Work has taken more of me than I thought it would. The imbalance is not maintainable. Libra and her issues – am I right?

No Slipping Into It

Collective instincts.

When given the image of a bird to follow, you follow. A pathway of return.

Dylan as proxy, his psalm crying out: I know I'm around you but I don't know where.

Crisp moonlight tangles in bald branches at 4 a.m. Winter's edge softens enough to go barefooted for a better view. Like the bears, a charted restlessness makes its way earlier to morning and later into night. In the quickening, a purposeful time of centering and contemplation becomes more important than anything else. There are no dragons or sea monsters ahead, but in the release of what is known, certain realms may require more deaths than planned. This cooperation is not esoteric, however, a willingness to fall or jump is required. I think of that time on the bluff overlooking the river, so close to falling, fighting hard to stay on solid ground. I no longer wonder if I would allow myself to fall if given the chance again. Deathlessness has already carried me away. Jump; don't jump. Fall backwards or lean in. Either way, there is no slipping into it. We decided this long ago, beloved.

I face east on my yellow zafu every morning and open to each dawn, now reaching my face earlier and earlier. Sun and savior, love and annihilation. The eagle flies by day and I follow.

Fire I Cannot Build or Extinguish

March begins to bleed April light. It is no coincidence that Longing leans back into the orb that we are. I cannot foretell what offspring will come of this, but we are growing still, beloved. Can you not see?

Steel cut oats with chia seeds. Flat lime seltzer water left over from yesterday. My body is speaking louder than my mind – and my heart, louder yet.

Young squirrels gather bundles of leaves and race up the giant oaks. The dog is unfazed. She only moves now in hopes of a walk. Even food does not turn her head. Children play outside past suppertime, screeching away all of their caged angst. And the woodpeckers have begun their drumming. All these signs are mere life doing what it does and yet, I cannot un-tether from their chorus. They sing to me and remind me of a fire I cannot build nor extinguish.

When he was drunk he said that my obsession with music is annoying. When I was drunk, I told him that his beard hurts my face. Let me ask: do you think he shaved and do you think I keep my music preferences in a prison? We quickly moved on to a discussion about the Boot Strap Paradox in Back to the Future. But that's still about music, right?

Happy Companion in the Night

Working at the library has its perks, like bringing home Bob Dylan on vinyl. You add rum to take away the ache but somehow the black liquid simply drowns your heart from the inside out.

Drunk in the music, it is obvious that volume is a lousy indicator of impending violence. Middle Income America forgets this and uses their educated, softer tones to project wisdom or even worse, the idea that the poverty households are somehow not wise enough because of the need to be heard over the noise.

I am well versed in the study of proxemics and haptics. Please come sit a little closer.

Winter now appears and recedes like ocean tides. Snow laps up toward the front door in the morning but by noon, constricts into last fall's leaf litter. Elongated light stirs the drumming in my bones. Sleep settles less and less. Last week's moonlight fell upon my naked thigh in bed – a happy companion in the night. Tell me, beloved, are there any more dreams left?

We play cards and drink with our daughter at the dining room table until 3 a.m. She cries a lot when she is drinking, I guess. There is no way to know the totality of a person, even if you conceived, birthed and lived with them. So when I miss the rivers of Vermont, am I missing something that doesn’t exist any longer?

Red Winged Blackbirds and seeds in my pocket. I watch the breath rising from my dog's mouth in below freezing temperatures. She no longer likes to be inside the house and it wounds me a little bit. One day I will find her with no more breath, curled up in death, just the same as life.

How the Wind Owns Me

This terrible wind – straightening flags – bringing down rotted limbs – seems wild and full of mind, as if it weren't just the action of physics. I remind myself of this, alone in bed as I pull the blanket around my neck and over head, as if that would protect me from trees giving up their claim on the land. The wind owns me in way that fire and water does not.

She wrote, “the solar system of seeds” and just like that, I knew what I would be planting this spring.

Love; that’s the whole sentence.

The neighbor's Christmas lights dripping down from the roof like flashing icicles at 4 a.m. They are in my line of sight as I face east for morning balancing. Praying?

Another un-homed family comes to the library to get warm and find safety. Woodsmoke and the scent of rough, outdoor living contrasts the faint bookish smell of time. They ask questions about how to get a library card without an address. Later, there are needles and blood in the men's bathroom. Many come; we know their names and wonder where they've gone when they are no longer here.

Do you see that we've taken ourselves captive? Millions of sleeping people trying eliminate millions of sleeping people. Be and know another way. I am thinking about the times when Jesus said awake, watch, sleep not.

When I miss you, a sad song enters my chest and my bones slowly melt away as if trying to endure deadly heat.

Another snow fall after a 60 degree day of spring teasing. The invisible kingdom takes shape and I only want to make sure you can see it.

Deadfall's Gavel

A judgement of crows hangs high in leafless oaks. One nation's slack is another nation’s noose. Yet, if you pull up high enough, it is all the same.

It's too soon to wait on little yellow cups lending their soft mouths to the sun. Yet, sunlight's holy crown glows earlier and earlier through what seems barren. This and other signs, if you are in to that sort of thing.

Wind lashes against windows like an angry sea, and deadfall's gavel against the roof declares a sleepless verdict. In the dark I wonder about what is taken from the sea, rather, what I have taken from the sea – shells, fish, the power to empty. Now a deeper dive to more tranquil waters as treatment for what gapes and seeps.

After the storm, dawn climbs the backside of houses, shooting beams of light through woodsmoke. The vapor becomes a projection screen for nearby tree trunks and the occasional sparrow flying through like a magician. We begin again despite any real proof anything needs to begin or end.

We took ourselves captive and then remembered how to be free. Love is beyond this life and yet, it IS this life.

What truly lives, cannot die.

We've built upon the rock.

And yet, and to quote my beloved, “and yet. . . ”

I light a candle to refocus a longing – an infinite fall into the abyss – a watershed of sorrow over what could be.

Such a small flame, teaching me how to dance.

Forgive me.

Breaking Midnight's Sternum

A spring birdsong teases, despite winter settled in place. It's like that – not entirely free from time but also, empowered to vibrate forward, backwards, beyond, and in, this.

Heading north on 131, just outside of the city, an encampment of blue and gray tents stands next to the flooded river. These humans experiencing homelessness do not want the rules and regulations of the shelter a few miles downriver. In non trivial ways, their journey is not my journey and yet, it is a shared pilgrimage. This war is our war and yet, there is no war at all. Step back. Further. Climb the highest cliff. Look over your trembling feet to what is unfolding below. That is how it is.

The doctor said no more coffee or caffeine but honestly, how does that even work? Half-cafe, oatmeal, and few apple slices. Light breaks the sternum of midnight earlier each day. This quickening is never not wanted or appreciated. How does a garden get planted and tended when one is at work? When does the dog get her companion back? Who records the way light falls through ever-greening canopies? The equation of give-and-take is not so simple.

The instrument of our phenomenal self – how to play it – how to love it. What we cannot outgrow meets us in another way; what we must outgrow falls to the ground as leaves shed for the earth's nutriment.

The Consciousness of Stones

Hours pass staring into winter fields from the car window, witnessing moments no one else has seen – a black cat crouching between old corn stalks, deer far, but not too far, from the roadside, last fall's crops flooded with winter-melt in such a way that the landscape becomes alien. In no time really, my feet will know the dewey coolness of summer grass at night. The trees will un-clench and the ground will give way to the fruit of our efforts. And yet, in this moment, with these eyes of gray, a deep sorrow anchors all anticipation.

I can hear your voice, “sorrow is the perception of lack, and you lack nothing.” Yet, there are empty fields before me, flooding and icing, instead of being filled by radical self honesty, the resistance to penetrate the essence of things in order to understand themselves. I push and invite and present; still, so many choose to remain hidden or fragmented, with the consciousness of stones. There is some sort of lack of seriousness in this pursuit which leaves me, as an observer and companion, with a gaping sense of bafflement and emptiness.

I miss what blazes and burns before the melt into soft, luminous knowing. And in this biting sorrow, I cultivate freedom, from attachment, from cultural convictions, from automation of our mechanisms.

So then, soon enough, even sorrow will give way to that summer night feeling. A path has been given that cannot be outrun or ignored. More rightly said, there is no path, but how else can one convey the loss of independent will?

Around 4 a.m. I pad into the kitchen to make tea. This is the only time left to read and write, and even then, the dog wants my attention. It's time to go again . . . I feel the shallows creeping up my legs. Soon, it will be hard to breathe.

In this dark, I recalled her choir singing Geistliches Lied, Op.30, as I flooded my mask with tears in the full auditorium. A cascade of “Amens” took me deeper than cannabis or prayer or thought of tasting your kiss for real this time. Well, maybe not that last one, because God lives there.

Beyond Chopin and Dylan

There is a seed which holds a lien on my life. The quickening has begun. Enough light now enters.

How love rekindles a heart. How incandescence pass through this earthly body and mind to become the transmission between realms.

A container must be built, my love, for what comes next. We will fuse in our transfigured eros in order to ripen the agape fruit blooming from our transformation.

We stand at the eye of the needle, perplexed by our call to pass through it. And yet, we must not sidestep!

Use the friction, the struggle between “yes” and “no,” to crystalize and illuminate – to separate wheat from chaff – to mirror the profound transfiguration of the heart. These birth pangs bring the “abler soul” into existence. Our name is beyond hunger and desire.

One real kiss will tell you what you cannot believe. One hundred real kisses will usher you into the rebirth you dream of in the soft glow of dawn which pools in the back of your eyes each day.

The foundation has been laid. We need now only build that which will last beyond earthly death.

Beyond Chopin and Dylan. (great horse names, don't you think?)

Beyond marriage and rivers and turtles.

Our intrinsic generosity awaits.

Tip of Tallow and Wick

The wind howls and shreds all night, turning snow to glass in edgy moonlight. Hours before dawn I struggle to start a fire. Perhaps the kindling is dampened or my patience too taunt. The dog waits for her walk in the dark but it's 6 degrees below zero. Every thing and every one is lingering. Or resistant.

You who is always sunlight to me.

Purification insists on winnowing. Friendships thin; ambitions fade; eros feeds agape and is satisfied. Flames are now contained in the iron fireplace or at the tip of tallow and wick. Peace makes a home here, but refuses stasis. Communication in upward transmissions vibrates with a sense of urgency. Peace, yes. Stillness? Not so much.

I am made more supple and animate, and for that, I rise each morning with a sense of wonder and grace.

Snow falls crisscross – quickly at some angles – barely drifting against the current at others. Juice Newton on the turntable, hard boiled eggs and yesterday's coffee.

No slant here – only truth.

Another Thing Entirely

Dawn leaks from whatever lovely poustinia it had been occupying throughout winter's night. It can be said that this light is meant to fall upon those structures which further our unfolding. Yet at some point, we must surrender to what is beyond us and actually let go of the very containers we needed. Birdsong calls us to expansion: Did you know you are vast and open like the sky? We are another thing entirely.

I remember thinking that his body is his book, but not his story. How else could one transmute eros into the maintenance of agape? There is value in the personal for a time. Balance. A settling of sorts. Whispers of gentleness emerge and flavors of tenderness. Chickadees and daffodil shoots. Melting creeks and dampened bark. In this new-old sway, the cosmos can pour forth in us.

There is a holy, un-created abyss, too vast to know. The only hope we can share is the ecstatic transformation flowing from loving-kindness. Allow the light of love into these concentric circles so that we can play our role in the cosmos – afford balance, build a raft in this unfathomable sea, dance with all the partners.

February fades and accordingly, my heart breaks free from its suburban cadence. What is wild transcends any narrative one tries to tell. Book – story – selfhood – they only feed the hungry essence of the “abler soul.”

What Song Do You Hear

A warming trend.

Garden stones peak through what lessens. A heart can quicken this way. Is there doubt, lovely? For doubt births a two-ness, a breaking of the compass our existence has been so prepared for. Our lesson is not merely a metaphorical roadmap. A literal dissolution between material realms has been exposed. Look hard at the metaphysics. I promise it will take you beyond – beyond the esoteric understandings of the imaginal, beyond the elusive nature of realms, and into a collective and concrete, evolutionary importance. Wilber, Bourgeault, Gurdjieff . . . why not you?

Glass teeth fall from eaves and break apart in a toss of diamonds. When the grandmothers came through, the veil covering love fell completely. Alchemy went to work and all of the sudden, there is nothing left to know. A shimmering mandala of gratitude and love. All you need is love. . . .the Ewen McGregor, Moulin Rouge, Elephant Medley version.

The nuthatch shows us our place in the scheme of things. Up and down the tree at all angles, unfazed by which way the sky unfurls, he fulfills his purpose with delicate grace. If a seed falls from his beak to the earth, then a Eucharist for our roots is ordained. Hope is a body that lives regardless of our acceptance, fed and nourished by the higher ecological intuition of who we really are. What celestial birdsong do you hear?