A Few Rogue Grounds

I don't cry anymore when I see myself in photos, but the woman and the body are still unrecognizable. The idea that hating others is to hate oneself is somehow easier to swallow than the idea that hating oneself is to hate others. Narcissus may still have a few things to teach. You who carries the sea in your eyes, how can you look upon the waters and not fall in love?

All morning I am netted in his sentences. Remember reading aloud to me? In one pure act I became both a child and woman – one, curling up chastely in the bend of your body as you read – the other, lowering her mouth near your lap, wondering how long you could read with the warmth of my breath on your thigh. I hear your voice in your words and mostly all I can do is melt. Soar, sink and swim. But mostly, melt.

Couscous and black beans. The morning’s cold coffee leaves a few rogue grounds beneath my tongue. I honestly cannot remember how long it has been since I’ve been fishing. However, I do recall my own small hands tying hooks and adding sinkers. And I remember the confusion of impaling worms – so that one might impale a fish – so that one could throw it back. Another knot around violence and men.

I am not a siren singing in the sea. Nor am I serpent, eating her tail, around your neck. I am a dog who loves who she loves, never wavering. Not even in death.

Folds Painted Periwinkle

Men who must be taught when to take their turn. Women who learn to rest in longing. Iris arms rise like swords from the earth but then, oh my god, the blooms open like the gift only a woman can give. Folds painted periwinkle loosening to the point of total surrender.

Morning spreads like a bruise, getting darker in the moments before the storm. The backyard is overrun with violets almost knee-high. Those weeds but not others. I keep saying I cannot manage the land myself – I need engagement – I'd like help. This and other wishes burning up on falling stars. I'm starting to get the idea John Donne would not be a friend of mine.

When they asked, “are you from Hudsonville” I saw restrained judgement pulsing in the blood vessels of their eyes. Sure, you can accurately call that projection, but I saw it. It is in a witch's purview to root her feet into the earth as loving kindness while also despising the encroaching darkness. Jays eat all my strawberries yet I grow more. It's like that.

Who controls my body and why? I am not a field to be fenced. Female subordination for male power both terrifies and bores me. Grow up.

I gather spilled coffee beans from the counter to grind what is left of the day.

Would You Date a Dragon

Mama cardinal preens in the lilac bush after her dip in the creek. This and other white-picket moments. The wanting of “elsewhere” means what exactly? I imagine rusting barn door hinges and thinning rafters, birds making nests in the eaves, the smell of old hay. Instead, I know the distinct musk of seaweed caught in rocks along the lake shore at dawn. Purple Martins skim the stills of memory before lifting into their roost under the boat hoist canopy.

Dad made us clean the boat but did not allow us to get it dirty. Remembering this raises a tide of ire or a sense of injustice. But justice is not penalty. Judge not and you will waken.

Roller derby, hard cider, library friendships. The ability to discuss the depths of anything from Shakespeare to “would you date a dragon” is new.

The one who needs nothing, takes nothing. So now what? Turn the compost pile; weed the garden; pour a brimful cup of mindful tea. I do not arrive anywhere. This is the moral of the story. Butterflies and bees visit the wilding patch and without warning, the area where my heart lives spills heat all over my insides.

These letters – these faint inscriptions upon found stones – what choice do I have but to keep offering the intercourse of my truth? Frogs and crickets laugh saying, “well, you could just not.”

Driftwood into the Everlasting

It is not wisdom which builds the ark, nor insight, nor charm. Faith may raise or lower it, like locks on a waterway, but it is not belief or canon which composes the vessel upon which Heaven is navigated. Rather, it is the joining of minds which redeems, shapes and strengthens driftwood into the everlasting chancel of peace and freedom.

Around the time I stopped putting living things in a jar, I noticed that I might be lonely in this life. Alone? No. But possibly estranged or apart. Dogs help with that – as does a certain surrender to the play that unfolds before one's eyes. Yet obviously I was a part of a dreamscape which shimmered at some angles and burned like fire at others.

Depression is the blackest black. It is the sepulchral tear at the bottom of the sea. And it wasn't until you reached your redeeming hand towards me that I was able gather my own light. This is how I know a teacher as savior. This is how we are never alone.

The equability of Light!

When I came to from surgery, Kyle was holding my hand. He said I smiled at him and it made him feel good. It seems if you position yourself directly in the center of a moment, somewhere between desire and fulfillment, you can simply move and be, not prejudicing one thing over another. One can hold all things at once – all the light – all the love – no matter what distance we pretend exists. Whose bride am I; the answer is – yes.

Hunger not Shame

Another surgery.

In the shower, images of washing a volunteer sacrifice or a corpse come to mind. For whom am I clean? Red-winged blackbirds dive from telephone wires to tapered cattails against train tracks the entire way. Of what does healing consist, my love? If it is peace, then someone forgot to tell the doctors. That reminds me, can one still be hungry when at peace? Late night bonfires, buzzing stars, the wish that has not yet come to pass. Or has it passed?

Oliver and her geese, rising at dawn, delicately finding what is viable and true. I have not heard the sea's plainsong for many years now. East unravels me every time. In this way, dawn always marches into me as a shieldmaiden. Please, do not fight without me. Do you follow?

I remember as a child, sneaking down the cedar stairs in the middle of the night to nibble leftover steak in the refrigerator. Food is food, but sometimes there is shame, and that is not the steak's fault. For a time, I only ate vegetables and all was well, but I missed steak and would even dream about it. Perhaps the drunken stars, the camp fire, and the union which contemplates consummation, is a sentence about a given hunger. It is a wish or a dream or a flame that burns in many different forms, but for me, well . . . you know.

Who is Asking

Is it possible in matters of love, like with most things, we have an appetite that is too big for us? Is there a smaller bite to take and make it our God?

Steel cut oatmeal with stevia, chia, hemp hearts and oat milk. The Glazunov floats from the three-seasons room over hastas and ferns, lifting between pine and oak to be ferried by west winds. May departs more quickly than it arrived. This and other ways that truth is an accident.

What of our substance is due to the external? At night when we shiver, a blanket is sought. At high noon when we melt, one finds shade. Who is the “I” which stays a little longer in the cold or demonstrates some sort of defiance by passing out from the heat? What part of man is more than a machine?

Yesterday's coffee, early morning watering, birds being lovely. Childhood hymns surface from who knows where. Morning has broken, like the first morning. Black bird has spoken, like the first bird . . .

The priest's gaze cut through all externals, melted the internals, and planted his staff at the core of my soul. The sea of me parted that day and you were revealed.

I still am only speaking to, for and of you, beloved. Would you bring to bed a tiny bowl of black raspberry ice cream to share after making love? This is not your queen asking but God's shared light, Herself.

Morality as Buffer

Lately, the idea that making feet happy is to make the world happy.

More ferns, less stress.

We fell into a little gap. Yet, we found each other and together, built a bridge. The witch in the forest was satisfied, the little boy slept with ease, and little Red Riding Hood was no longer offered as a sacrifice because she was no longer a virgin.

He came home without his wedding ring and expressed a sorrow or frustration over losing it to which I said, “honestly, that is the least of my concerns.”

A palm-sized chipmunk laps water from the seam in the deck and nibbles various tree-given morsels, too small for my eye to see.

Flowers appear on the dogwood like a gradual starry night thereby upending the narrative that it is mostly dead.

What if we are made up entirely of habits and if that is so, wouldn't we need to know all of our habits in order to free ourselves or to make any real changes? Thinking, moving and feeling would all be inanimate. We would be machines. But what if we do give these things attention? Can one notice how often one “identifies” or melds? And how can this apply externally as well as internally? Sometimes I think that the processing we do of external considerations leads to a false definition or motivation of honesty. And when we are “just being honest” about something or someone, we are not identifying what is real or true, but instead, seeing some sort of buffer we created.

Morality as buffers.

You called “I” to the surface.

Now I am here.

Are we together?

Sometimes Calves Die

What we give up to become who we are.

And like the turning of summer into the crisp clarity of autumn, it breaks my heart a little – as if hearts could break.

Meanwhile, terribly soft rain at dawn, as in, that critical juncture where rainfall turns to mist. Six a.m. is a shroud, casting a blindness over suburbia's normal calamity. I sit under it, dampened, mulling confessions. Speaking of, I am so very jealous. How I have always longed to be your queen; how instead I will always be the servant handmaiden. Jesus says that is okay. He holds my hand over the high bridge. Yet even he has Mary Magdalene to thank.

Two of the black raspberry seedlings did not take and for a little while, I am confused and upset. Then I remembered staying with Uncle Pete on his farm for a week in the hottest part of summer. He taught me how to milk cows and avoid electric fences. He showed me the joy of waking at four a.m., even before the animals became restless for hay. He told me sometimes calves die.

My sister and I helped him deliver a calf that week – one that required a rope tied around its torso to be pulled from the birth canal. Mother cow was distraught during delivery, yet she remained chained to her feeding slot and could not turn back towards her almost-born calf. The calf was saved but the veil over my eyes thinned in knowing these cows were merely prisoners.

We named the calf “Honey” and when we asked about her a few years later, we also learned that Honey's only freedom was in death.

“Ya win some, ya lose some” they say – maybe; but I think it is our call to love with everything we’ve got.

You May Call Me Grandmother

I am the water who waters no one.

She is no longer “in love,” for what point is there if the other faces away towards other magic?

Vows of chastity until the one who is worthy builds the fire, spreads the blanket, and destroys the universe for me.

Rain and pollen mix to make the deck slimy and slick. Around 5 a.m. I sweep the sloppy mélange because why not. Mama Blue Jay watches nervously from her nest as I watch nervously for Papa Blue Jay who often drops down out of the pine to ward off those who get too close.

In this new phase, I can see that others want me to be sadder, angrier and afraid. It is no small thing to be at peace when those around you need something else. The earth tilts towards this and things grow. Can you not see it?

No longer do I keep pace, in fact, there is no otherwise. Any benediction I extend now begins with: slow down. See. Hear. Collect today's manna and that is all.

Orisons become older, more ancient, rising from the phallic flowering of the Baobab at dusk, extending beyond its crown unto the unknowable sea of starlight.

To see the Baobab is to suddenly have knowledge with understanding, and in standing next to one, you know you have been located.

We've been called back to this homeland because it is here that time began. The Mara whispers names we have forgotten, and it still births generations of inherited aliveness.

The Baobab says, “you may call me Grandmother.”

And upon seeing Her, I say, “I love you.”

Daisy Windows

What other kind of peace paces the time spent watching a tiny rabbit nibble greens at dawn?

Every step we take can be on lush, flourishing ground. Speaking of Sting, he gives a decent concert and his son is not a bad song writer either.

I am still only thinking of myself when I ask to be held or kissed or desired. Let it ride, you say? Letting it all go is what it means to love one another as We are truly Loved. This lesson may have presented itself for the last time. The amethyst-turned-pendant nested against my thigh in the pocket of my pants during the biopsies – a gift given away, and a lesson about how to give it all away.

What you want is what I want. This and other scrawled wisdom in lemon-lime pollen dusting everything which stays still for awhile.

Whatever we think is happening, we have done it to ourselves, and this is the secret we keep from our own heart.

Daisy windows slightly ajar before summer. June already rises despite May's mousy presentation of spring.

We are all innocent or all guilty. There is no otherwise. The remembrance of this is the only memory that will not plague us, beloved. All else we must let go.

Forest trillium, lilac bushes in bloom, the first butterflies choreographing summer.

I'm no longer interested in holding the past against the now. This ancient new, speaking of today's blooms only.

To Eat and To Be Eaten

Life's sudden fatigue.

Wildflowers ignite along the back fence and finally something feels right in the world.

The garden is planted but not without a lesson about who is tending whom and why.

Daybreak greetings to all of the not-yet flowers; all the toads frantically looking for leaf cover; all the milkweed seeds taking hold.

Lily of the Valley in the tiny jam jar on the nightstand.

There is a sense of contempt in the idea that breasts nourish life for the young, desire for the old, and death to the host who must bear them all. These bodies are somehow equipped to assist in the transference of life and light, and yet, they also take us so far away from all of that. It is getting harder and harder to accept the idea that bodies are useful for that which endures forever.

So what does love have to do with bodies?
Despite everything,
nothing.

I remember ice skating across the bay, the sun's reflection off the garish whiteness of winter. Wind burned my cheeks as I swung my arms side to side, gaining speed and lengthening my stride. In my head, the faster I skated, the less likely I would be to break through the ice and drown. Occasionally my toe pick would catch on rough ice or a divot in the glassy track, sending me hard onto my face or worse, directly onto my knees. I remember lying there after a fall, staring face down into the deep waters. I imagined turtles safely asleep but also, I feared something toothy and huge swimming by, ready to break through and devour me.

I didn't fear Hansel's hungry witch, but put a giant, shadowy, fish with teeth in the mix and I'm out!

Remember when the white, male, physics teacher hit on me when I was 16 years old? Sometimes we think we are looking at one thing when really, we are looking another.

A witch, a giant fish, a predatory man – how we are fed matters – how we feed one another matters too.

Unplanted

Soft nights of starlight and peeper poems.

Though soothed by rounded darkness, some things still have edges. The garden remains unplanted. Weeds overtake perennials. The dog would rather watch young rabbits dart about from her porch cushion than give chase. This strange cyclical dream need not be labeled “sad” or “lonesome.”

And yet.

Purple distance, my consummate teacher. The problem with being the first one up is that I always have to finish the leftover coffee. Mom interrupts the flow of conversation to say that there are so many more turtles this year. Though, she adds, a bald eagle came by and plucked a large turtle right out of the water yesterday.

Woodpeckers drumming into a humid, dewy dawn. How vivid, this life! Yet how utterly far away.

She kept trying to tell me how sex becomes less desired. Yet I thought the battles of wanting and not getting or giving and wanting or not wanting and not giving would go on forever – as in, that is the nature of the dance or of the beast or of whatever other saying works best for you.

Who is worthy is not here. Who is here has lost fire. Who has fire is unclear. Who is unclear becomes faint and disappears into the last of the morning mist.

Purple Trails to the Altar

So many violets.

The gradient tendency of midnight makes a play.

Music falls flat, no pun intended, having nothing to offer that which has now faded beyond anything recognizable.

Yet, birds at 5 a.m.

Yet, sentences that seem to embody the impossible tangerine licks of dawn.

In the dark, Kora startles a rabbit under the evergreen bush and in turn, startles herself. I make the assumption that we are pre-mosquito so I leave screen-less windows and doors open to let in the cooler air. I remember sleeping in an open air hut on Lamu Island in Kenya – the Indian Ocean lapping all night, soft breezes carrying whispers from around the word, the absence of electricity, people, and walls. I knew something then that I don't know now. Yes, beloved, memory vs. idea is a thing.

Suddenly, I am too fatigued to plant the garden. Marigolds border the seedless soil and chicken wire is coiled like a shiny, legless cannon. The seedlings are ready, standing at attention, growing in their tiny pots and trays. The new trellises need a little work but they lie unused in a half-assed stack near the back fence line. I don't know what is happening but I know it isn't really happening, so I ride the wave under my bed sheets as spring bursts forth onto the scene without my help.

I remember learning about Twenty Sentences from a heaven-on-earth teacher, and to this very day, it feels that they will never not be a part of how this world is parsed, examined and sewn back together. You are “they” because you are the sentences and you are all. Tulip heads fall clean off and three azalea sisters drop purple petals in a perfect trail to the altar. And the old dog begins to show signs of finishing this life in slow, quiet sleep. Yet, I live.

A Few Watery Breaths

More scans.

Biopsies.

It's not nothing.

To ponder regrets and unclaimed dreams means very little unless one plans to act. How do I get there before it's too late?

A spider drops from the ceiling, almost landing in the soup. Spicy, oven roasted potatoes with a side of vegetable rice pilaf. Also, I think it's green smoothies from here on out.

The path to take will rise in an imminent fashion. Please prepare for all the seas to meet, beloved.

Kora zooms around the yard with aging hips, but on occasion, her body buckles as she misjudges either the height of the step or her ability to make the jump. She rolls hard, gathers herself, and finishes the course with a limp.

The stark squeal of spiritual rubber meeting the road.

After the doctor's appointment, I stopped by the Grand River to take a few watery breaths. A bald eagle lowered himself to enter and hold me. The red-winged blackbirds trilled in the knowable distance.

There is a certain bewitching in the use of analogy – a way of “seeing” – an experience held by the one who transmits experience is such a way. Jesus makes quick work of our human density when he employs this childlike playfulness; he became the magician we all need to render our yokes lighter – our burdens easier. In this way, we are still at the river.

Trellises All the Way

A mallard and hen found their way to the man-made creek in the back yard this morning. The creek is east of the house, sitting with purpose under dawn's rising sun. As the ducks preened and swam, a rabbit joined; and a squirrel; and a Baltimore Oriole. Daffodils and tulips bloom on the periphery as hastas and ferns push their way skyward. For me, this picture of Earth Mother, this healing and being healed, is a more honest Mother's Day.

She
will not be suppressed
or made powerless.

She
will not forget to heal
or be healed.

She
will blaze the way
of peace.

Her grace and power, unopposed. Her depth and height, immeasurable. Her very heartbeat is found in every thing that lives or has lived.

Is this so difficult to see?

The dream does end.

Our limitations dissolve to give way to the ineffable gift awaiting our acceptance. We share the light Mother extends.

*

Red-winged blackbirds and trellises all the way. Flowering trees in the distance. No idea of me is me, or you. And in this thought, it may be said, whoever you are to whoever I am, is just a sketch drawn by an aging hand in a world of dust.

Yet still I draw a heart around the sea and call you love.

It's All About the Swords

Concentric ripples overlap in pooling rainfall.

The earth drinks as flowers are baptized into hopefulness. Surrendered from the waters: It is impossible that anything be lost, if what you have is what you are.

My arms fall away as dust, leaving more room for Love to fill. At some point, no more metaphor is needed. When love and peace lives at home, why leave? What is real can only be known without form.

The house now expands with the kids and their stuff arriving for summer. Everything increases. Azaleas in bloom; tulips at the ready; copious violets leading in the way only they know how. How do you feel about a few blackberry plantings?

Lately in tarot it's all about the swords. A meeting with the Wiccan grandmother implanted itself in my mind and now I cannot forget what her eyes said to me. We know each other. I remember as a child arranging leaves, stones, and found forest jewels on the ground and enclosing them with a circle. This and other ways a 7 year old knows how to leave thank-you notes.

I have often imagined myself without breasts – wondering about the freedom or confinement they elicit – always examining the weight of the anchor that is this body. Cannot it not be that the body is also a symbol we do not need? In this and other limits we have chosen to impose, it seems bodies are given to transcend; a gateway to that which is real; a chance to leave shackles behind in full knowledge and gratitude of escaping death. I have collected a few bodies, beloved, and placed them in the circle. Please, come and enter freely.

Magenta Power

Three sister azalea bushes begin to offer blooms, albeit shyly, but not without a sense of graceful, magenta power. I am in awe of blooms – the way they harness the world and give back something . . . better.

Donne's poetry, meditations on tarot, and a discontinued search for being.

May's cold start offers very little to distract from the invitation to an extended hermitage. The still voice whispers go in dark, early hours. Yet, it also firmly pursues me in the bustle of daylight! I know this voice and I know how it will grow in clarity and intensity especially as I delay. For now, how about a nap? A chocolate no-bake cookie? A long walk with the dog? Anything but the logistics of leaving.

Saturday, I was on the side of the highway with a flat tire and an approaching storm. GPS said I was nowhere and so hours passed in the dark - not quite scared but not quite at ease either. We don't really need a savior, do we? And yet, sometimes there is one.

For Mother's Day, I want collective hands in the dirt. Let's build a better trellis for vegetables and flowers and all things which climb to thrive. One day a year, a certain kind of woman is showered with adoration and allowances. It's almost demeaning, if I am honest.

Yet forgiveness as the lesson for learning the past has finished.

The Magdalene Kneels

Inescapably, there is no decision and therein lies the freedom. What is not true is brought to the river for submersion. What is true emerges pure and wholly simple. Receive all it. The Magdalene kneels here and washes away even the need for salvation. The real world awaits this separation from separation. In this borderless space, we have joined.

I think that day by the river in Vermont, we sat and walked on sinless, holy ground. Fearing love was not possible. The river ran fast and furiously but on those banks, I had never been safer in my entire life. We were received as a gift. We prodigals fell into a father's embrace.

Does any time remain? In the absence of choice, perhaps not. In so, our river-walk has passed, yet We have not. Let the dead bury the dead and be forgotten in peace. And this is why chickadee's and red winged blackbirds and you exist – a reminder there is only now in the forever of one.

Love Letter on the Wind

Supermarket sushi eaten on the 5th floor of a hotel room bed. Beyond the parking lot, oceanic gray meets a horizon of witches' brooms, just now coming back to life.

What if I do not respect death? What is death but another nothing? If peace is the thing, the only thing, then every thing else is a temporary exhale.

The lover appeared in this morning's dream. We saw each other by surprise and embraced for a long time – too long. The husband asks, “so, are you friends still?” And the lover answered, “No.” But the lover's meaning was different than that of the husband's, for the lover meant that we are far, far beyond friendship. I woke to the wind causing the hotel window to whine and moan. I finally let the cold air in for peace.

Husband, hear the wind: nobody loses. What you have walled off is lost to the multitude. You nor I nor the lover is to be sacrificed. My prayer now is only for the kind of freedom that blankets existence in peace.

What we have is not ours. Let us give it away so that there is no loss to suffer, no sacrifices to be made, no problem to solve.

That is the most loving thing I can say right now. The remembrance of perfect love is blowing in on the invisible winds beyond the borderland.

Beyond the River

To hold back that which is not earned – is it righteousness under the gaze of the One who gives all unearned things? A gold band rests in a silver dish as a symbol of alchemy I cannot change. Ending as beginning. This ouroboros life. What is beyond is actually right here and the heat of this is almost unbearable.

A few spring snow flakes posing as blossoms on the wind. Robins shuffling leaves to find breakfast and fodder for nesting. Steady oaks reminding us all to serve and then, to serve some more. A sense of justice transforms when understanding sin is no more. Impartiality is our true king.

Dawn follows me chanting peace be with you the whole way. Only now do I respond, “and also with you.” Even to want this peace is a hunger that cannot abide in such a light. Even the red bird calls out the truth: surrender. And surrender again.

All values of this world must mark a point beyond which we must pass. Beyond laws and vows. Beyond Caesar and God. Even beyond that sacred river and the fertile ground it offers on the banks.

It is my turn to speak from this sacred place.