Why Am I Still Here

To be in my body is to wake each morning under almost unbearable gravity – a leaden blanket of my own weight fighting to rise or move. My spine is an electrical center overloaded with messages, scrambling non-pain pulses with pain pulses, only to be sent along without editing. I'm overweight according all metrics, most crucially, my own. As I roll towards the edge of the bed, my stomach spills over the edge of my underwear and the weight of my breasts fall against one another like two newborns on my sternum.

My first thoughts of the day are ones of shame and frustration. Despite all efforts to ignore the body in favor of strengthening or soothing the mind, no relief comes from this suffering I've sealed myself within – no forgetfulness of the body – no signs of beauty overcoming the faulty wiring I've either inherited or twisted together myself.

To get dressed is put on clothing I don't like. Threads don't stretch enough. Bra bands dig into my ribs. In the mirror I can see grooves where the straps have rested on my shoulders for decades. Maybe that is a link to my affinity for donkeys. In Kenya, these animals bore the brunt of unspeakable abuse and terrible work loads. Their faces and backs show the wear of the leather harness, deep grooves unnaturally marring a landscape without choice. It feels that way sometimes. Most times.

I look back at pictures of myself a teen, as a young woman, and even as a young mother. I was so beautiful and yet I never once knew or felt it; I never once didn't feel like an imposter in this world of bodies.

Well, there were a few times when I knew and owned a beauty reflected into my unhealed existence. Perhaps this is why I am still here. And so are you.

Ask Any Quilter

my body
an imperialist colony –
what does Desire desire?

What does it look like for a woman to write from an anti-imperialist framework as it pertains to female bodies, sex and desire? It is a horrific dawning when one learns she is not the keeper of her own narrative. I bring the relationship from fiction to non-fiction. I will not punish myself for that, nor allow any to punish me.

Be long. Be longing. Belonging.
He has not kissed me in the shadow of trees.
But you, my poem on your body, no lipstick –

will you come
as the moon
faint on my skin
in the dark ?

Mimic, deceive, devour.
No wonder we are the witch in all tales.
Who creates the role of creator or healer? The shadows are more strict in your telling.

Kimoko writes: it must mean something that our hearts are cut by men like a dress pattern, but sewn by women. Yes, we wield the needle in more deft ways than you can imagine. Ask any quilter. Maybe we women should share more poems with one another. Maybe we should fall in love differently.

Fate of Motes

Sticks, feathers, string, lavender sprigs.

Coffee with cream in a delicate, white mug.

What relationship do you have to family ties or witches or the praying mantis that eats her lover while still mating? Cailleach paces with deliberation as she prepares to exhale the last warm breaths of summer. Lately, my body begins to release the small chards of glass it subsumed as a youth.

A certain happiness simmers while building my own apothecary. Full moon, grounding, the pull to add herbs to Michigan hibernation. Am I bear, a witch, or an impetuous child? A man said, “thank you, goddess” when assisted with a small matter at work and for days I wondered if I am truly anyone's goddess.

I sweep the floor, dust surfaces and purge anything not useful or beautiful. Are you still here or have you claimed the fate of motes, fading in and out of sunlight?

Kora curls up in the corner, dry under the eaves, rain finally unleashing itself from miles of atmosphere. She reminds me that loyalty is similar to complacency. Speaking of which, I recently learned what quilts meant to the women who endured the early quests of colonial men. Virgin fingers counting stitches. Don't confuse collar bones for wishes.

Pearl buttons, nautilus shells, a crayfish skeleton. But what would his lips feel like? God asks if I really need to know. There is no trickery in these sentences, but one must enter careful attention.

One last thing to remember: never touch Father's things, for you will never be indulged.

Pinewood Heart, Rat's Nests and Church

Winding back roads are the only roads home.

Paved serpents partition a path through Yankee Springs Recreation Area, piercing Dead Man's Curve and giving one last bit of traction up Heartbreak Hill before turning into dirt and gravel. I drive slowly enough to prevent the kick-back of whirling dust behind the car and also, to avoid collisions with surprised walkers or leaping deer.

Knotty pine floorboards and ceilings ground and vault the remembrance of the forest which birthed me. We used to be the only family on this part of the lake but the wealthier have built summer homes three times the size of Weather's Wood. I grew up under the moniker of that which I find sacred and profane – a man's name on a plaque along side the woods that gave everything.

Mom would brush through my long, crimson hair in the mornings before school. She would tire of the constant tangles and complain about the “rat's nest” which seemed to build itself over night. Why not a bird's nest or some other more lovable creature? To this day, I am called “Ratsy,” though, less and less does she appear within or before me when visiting the lake.

One time, while my mom was talking on the phone, I decided to play “beauty salon,” with my sister being my first and only customer. She allowed me to cut off her hair with the orange handled sewing scissors and as the story goes, both of us were quite proud to show off the new hairdo. I have no memory of this and yet, the story is told ad nauseam.

Is it a curse or redemption that my hair now remains long while my sister's hair always remains short?

I remember summer Sundays sitting in the tiny catholic church, fanning myself with the bulletin, often succumbing to the rhythm of hymns. The organist sang songs of adoration and forgiveness, loudly and off key. The windows were mottled glass so that there would be no distraction from the solemnity at hand. I never understood how veneration and communion belonged only to this sealed mausoleum.

With the recollection such things, I ask: can one forfeit their history or erase the birthmark on one's heart?

Gun Lake Ghosts and Groundhog Traps

The sickle of autumn is made ready to sever and harvest, to give and take away. Night air bites a little harder and dawn sleeps a little longer. My bones begin to brace themselves against skin and muscle, trying to store any heat offered for the desolate days to come.

I work and ready the soil in order to add more wild growing flowers and plants. Otherwise, there is little to report as summer allows the death of daises and the ending of ferns. Kendra and I speak of past lives and the ancestry from which we have yet to hear. This and other ways we leave everyone a million miles behind when we speak.

Rain flecks my window as I consider my proximity to rivers and lakes. Who learns from our choices? Who becomes enslaved? Krishnamurti says, “Relationship is communion without fear, freedom to understand each other, to communicate directly.” Suddenly I see how the ones we love become more important than love itself. Look how I have hidden in comfort and made love an object! And that is how a relationship loses depth, significance and beauty. It isn't their fault; it is mine.

Gun Lake and all those ghosts. A groundhog trap sat empty on the deck railing and when I asked about it, Dad explained it was a part of a “re-homing program.” When I requested honesty he said, “Yes; I will relocate him . . . in the lake.” In that moment, I looked deeply into my father and wondered what lesson I am supposed to learn in this moment, because surely it wasn't to hate or fear further.

I am responsible for the recession of love but also, for its true allowance in this world.

Dullness of the Surface

The world is our relationship to one another.

To understand the image of another, I must understand who I am – not who I aspire to be. I am no longer interested in spending my life cultivating virtue. I want the freedom that comes from understanding what is.

I have lived my life observing patterns and adjusting accordingly. Don't leave your bike outside and it won't get thrown at you. Do get good grades, behave morally, and you will not be punished. Don't express your true feelings, only then there will be peace.

And I'm tired of living in the dullness of the surface. I near depletion of the ability to make space for that which simply longs to be.

7 a.m.

It is still dark and just like that, the light of summer turns down like the old kerosene lamp that used to sit on my mother’s buffet table.

Symbols as dreams. Thought as distraction.

Anything I might think with the mind is a result of the past. Even desire – or, especially desire – comes from a process of idealizing a future instead of seeing what is. Desire is a thought resulting in possession, not freedom. And for the first time, I have entered desire in order to understand who I am, and who I am not. In the center of it all, desire is a structure that involves fear. Not love.

I'm tired of 'me' building; can we sleep at peace now?

Lofty Benevolent Clouds

Soft, hesitant mornings are now the norm.

Another round of sleeplessness rakes my face.

If I do slip into sleep, fitful dreams leak into one another, mostly about skunks suddenly discovering my presence. I wake feeling as if I have narrowly escaped something which would make me very unwell.

Happiness and peace pose as noble goals. However, I no longer believe they are a state of being or a truth one needs to strive for. I've tasted and known both – both are beautiful and love-filled. And yet, I think there is something just beyond such lofty, benevolent clouds.

On sex, power, and fear vs. Love:

Aside from the evolutionary drive to procreate, sex can paradoxically be a portal through which one can lose the body, gender, and conscious separation. When awareness and deeper reflection is brought into the meet, there is no great effort or leap to seeing God, Love, or one's Self as neither male or female, mortal or eternal, body or spirit. This fusion into oblivion is not relegated to sex alone. However, the symbolic and mystical power of two, defined, entities bringing their vibrations into synchronicity, can result in a physical manifestation of that which is normally just barely described or teased out with words.

We are splintered from the whole. The illusion of and desire for power or control keeps us in an unnecessary struggle to see ourselves as individuals. I am curious about the power dynamic in and around sex, and I am wondering if power can systematically be eliminated, resulting in the transcendence of gender, separation, and the bonds of society and self which seem to keep us small.

I believe we have restricted ourselves as individuals to the determent of understanding ourselves as Whole. I'm not suggesting sex as being necessary. I am suggesting a slight turn in the prism of vibration in which physical union can remind a person, through the setting aside of power and gender, what it feels like to be One.

The garden flourishes with squash, tomatoes and strawberries, even in these late days; do you know One I feed?

Letters to the Sea

You used to show up when I was ready to surrender in complete exasperation. Songs – prisms – metaphors held in the tension of desire.

C. asked if I was tired of suffering, because if I don't want to suffer any longer, I don't need to. Fuck. Why is every one smarter than I am?

Dear Icarus, the cost of flight comes not from incineration; the cost is in the landing.

A gradual sea of color fading in sunset. Oh the sea, the sea.

In the fall, I imagine building fires with broken apple boughs and wearing an oversized flannel shirt that smells like sweat and the outdoors around my cold shoulders. Acorns and curated stones in the chest pocket.

The sea – often confused with the light from clear October skies. Blue and light, which owns nothing, and yet, has everything.

My back on this planet, my breasts tip skyward, opening to descending starlight. Dew at my fingertips, grass tickling my neck. Hercules' Knot on my wrist. I must empty; I must find the truth in this silence.

I find myself praying in the garden lately. The intention to pray is not conscious, yet words simply leave, knees hit the dirt and my head bows. Tears come easily here.

I wonder if the plants can tell.

Portholes, Cannabis and Swimming in Desire

No sand in the hour glass.

I have to end this vexing, this spiral. Desire moves from marginalia to core text, and in this story there is no happy ending.

The last of summer's campfire smoke finds no barriers into my bedroom throughout the night. Crickets pulsing. Occasional acorns hitting roofs and outdoor furniture like a shotgun fired in the dark.

My room is a boat at sea. One porthole opens to the west through which to see whatever entirety exists at present. Oneport hole opens to the northeast, which, at night is darkest, but at dawn is everything.

Echoes of distant storms and the dark trance of winter begins to hum even at night.

I thought God and nature ordained this. This this. But that's the problem, isn't it – I thought.

More cannabis lately. More need to know or be or see or forget. When I am high, I don't register the ache of bringing anyone close or letting anyone go. Love is sea in which we all swim, this much is clear. Yet, it is not so easy to overlook how swimming is a verb and a verb must act. Will I not eventually drown if I don't swim . . . through desire, through loneliness, through the everyday status quo?

Mortification of the flesh is easier than this.

My Own Goddess-Queen

The amalgam of she.

She noticed my earrings: rainbow beads strung above a sliver feather.
She shushed me in the library when my story became too boisterous.
She exposed dead forget-me-nots on her arms when she wore a sleeveless shirt.

She drives every day to see her rescued horse in a rented stable.

She.

*

What does she want
and
can she have it?

*

Reading Emily Dickinson before having sex only works if Emily is in the mood.

*

No man has ever taken a knee or served in a way which calls me queen. Coffee in bed, dinner after a long day of work, the desire to open the kingdom of ecstasy for my pleasure alone...

While I use love and compassion as trail signs or guideposts for those with whom I journey, it is clear that I must be my own goddess-queen. I must serve the muliebral calling buzzing as bees around the hot, honeyed glow of my heart.

Enough totem or talisman carving.

No more casting of runes.

*

Do you know the smell of a pine forest floor in autumn, on a crisp day, whereby a few long-sleeved beams of sunlight make it through the canopy? That is the goddess I serve and She is the One who says: get on your knees only if it serves you to do so, woman.

That moaning.

That untranslatable sigh which leads to comprehension beyond your propensity for logos.

*

Mary Magdalene did not serve a man.

She saw Love in human form and allowed it ignite the remembrance of her royalty.

Threshold of Throats

She wrote vesper sparrows and I felt myself cook from the inside out. Who doesn't fall into lust with a woman who says something like that?

Memories can be like spies, pressing in to evaluate the current situation. Are you a letter from the past or the future, my love?

Speaking of letters, there is a wonderment of leaving words buried in a provocative desert. Let us moan instead. Why carry the proxy of depth when you can listen to the deep spirit song of moans and instantly know what cannot be articulated?

Nothing touches the interior like that which escapes the deepest threshold of throats. Anguish or pleasure – both an intercessory – both a state of extraordinary spiritual attenuation.

Life is dialogical and yet, is not constrained to words. The moan is a birthing sound, a movement towards the creative response to oppression and an entry into the heart of contemplation. It is a sound of anguish and pain rising from the crucible of life. Moans stitch horror and survival instincts into a creation narrative which always has something to teach a listening student.

Surely there is something sacred and holy in that. Surely it would be interesting to find out, yes?

A tree crew cuts a few 75 year old oaks from the neighbor's yard and I swear to god it feels like I am watching downed bird being sliced open while still alive. The heartbeat ends as the spectral viscera glitters like confetti in the damnation of August breezes. My throat seizes and a small moan escapes. Death needs its metaphors, too.

Kenya's red dust and the remnant of green tea air in my lungs – please come close enough to hear.

Notes on Desire

Let us go into desire.

As desire arises from thought, in theory, one must only alter thought to shift desire into its consented and acceptable manifestation. Awareness of this pattern is the first step. This is what it means to walk the trail given. This is where peace lies for those wishing to meander safely in the forest.

Yet for me, what if entering desire is where peace lives? What if exchanging my sure footing of the well-groomed path for the unexplored, shadow-deeps of the living woods is where the beast who eats my desire lives?

Like the part of the song where the cello breaks your heart, desire holds something that hurts in a way that is necessary for the whole song.

Maybe real poetry is written in the cool ashes after the fire.

Maybe in another life I burn it all down to finally see what remains.

But in this life, I am arranged by sex, given shelter and food in the appropriate barn, and visited by ghosts of other lifetimes as reminder of what was or what could have been.

All of that is thought.

And that isn't real.

It isn't Love.

I guess I always thought that it was the relationship itself which created a third existence, and this existence was the bridge to reaching what one could not reach alone.

And I thought desire enters as the gushing river which roars, “you must cross me to reach the other side.” But then again, that's what thinking gets me . . . the imaginal, the unreal.

And I suppose these sentences belong as an entry in the “Love” file, but babe, I have clearly not even begun to breathe that crisp, pine-soak, northern air of Love.

For in this moment, desire remains untapped, untouched, and bound to a purgatorial better luck next time.

As for the container and manifestation of my desire, well, it was the third thing thrown in the river that day; it belongs to her now.

I have no choice but to surrender, and that’s the truest thing I have said all day.

This Ursine Calling

B and his car were not home when I returned – that kind of gut punch – that sort of empty room, which is not really empty at all.

When Dad showed up unexpectedly to the maternal blessing and benediction, my fingertips surged with flame and my arms began to writhe like hungry snakes. I wanted to destroy his selfishness, his lack of consideration, his unawareness.

A vision of that day at the river came to mind – how safe I felt – how Love showed me that nothing could touch or harm me – not ever. And I was reminded of how Love doesn't need fear or anger to enter the power play.

Power. Can we talk about it? There are things I need to know.

K gifted sprigs of lavender from her garden and also, three pizzas. Those who know a little something about benevolence probably know a little something about injury and injustice.

I asked tarot about taking my clothes off for a man and the card showed a woman putting her hand in the lion's mouth. He has his paw on her leg and her free hand is gently caressing his mane. He is hungry but does not eat her. She is Strength and is not afraid. Tarot added: p.s. - stop asking others for validation.

Even given the sanctity of trails, it is in the absence of a trail whereby one understands or appreciates what a trail is. Walking through what is uncut is entirely different than the mildly meditative pace of drifting a path.

This ursine calling; this eternal homage.

And now, fireflies have left nighttime's shapeless hours to the crickets.
This.

A Lover's Leap

Redbirds in the pines make themselves known at dawn. Their redness elicits attention and yet, soothes something always aching in me. I dreamed a lover's leap off Sapphic cliffs. I woke higher up than before.

I remember lake wind billowing my bed sheets hung over the deck railing and also being helplessly (hopelessly?) lost in attics. Beloved taught me to write letters to ancestors and I found a fire breath, stoking embers and light. It's amazing I am not a fire sign given my propensity for tinder and flames.

A long drive back with Mom. I wrote that sentence before the drive happened, which is an example of how the image of me interacts with the image of her. Begin again. Choose differently. Perhaps, then, I am not really mourning B's new residence status. And I am not really wondering it might ever feel totally undone.

Stain the deck.
Continue to harvest.
Tell autumn to delay just a little longer.
Find a tea kettle.
Give the dog a bath.
Hang red bed sheets on the line without a hint of challenge to the cardinals which always be luminous and alive in front of all attempts to work at anything on this life's surface.

Sunday makes a list; I check it twice.

Graveyard of Summer

Sunset rests on the treeline like a glowing cap before cooly slipping beyond dusk. Mourning doves coo back and forth alongside the sounds of children reveling in their last hurrah before school begins. I hear Lexi's Ferling Etudes flutter into the bruising sky as I turn to make my way up the street towards home. Cicada rattling, acorns rolling down roofs, night falling sooner than I am ready.

Maybe I will stay up late enough to see the Northern Lights. Or maybe I will sleep all night long for the first time in years. Oh August . . . why must you always be the graveyard of summer?

Chicory and lace. Monarchs in a sweet tango around mauve-y milkweed blooms. Krishnamurti said: when you see yourself clearly you can discard the mirror. This Narcissus story line just does not quit!

Zucchini and summer squash take over the garden, and a monster volunteer butternut squash plant covers the entire compost pile. It gains height along the wooden privacy fence, almost climbing over and I just love watching it GO.

And yet, B's belongings gather in the living room. Star Wars coffee mug, board games, his self-built computer, a favorite blanket, guitar . . . his collection of being stacks up against my tightening chest. Maybe I won't really miss him; maybe I will miss the story of him.

The thing about the Narcissus story is that we are all Narcissus and we are all the reflecting pond, that is, until we find the necessary death within this life. People love us; we love others; and we love ourselves. But the truth about Love is just beyond the veil of everything you have thought or made. Get in the pond, splash around a bit, swim and dive deep – what we are truly looking for is not on the surface.

Simple Acts of Truth and Freedom

I guess, in the end, relationships are complicated. Living a life entirely devoted to one person is complicated. One must lose a little for the other to gain, and although gaining and losing ebbs and flows, a true balance or freedom of being never exists. Why can't we just make love already as a simple act of truth and freedom? The world I live in is more narrow than this. One cannot live on the Savannah and live a life apart from the Savannah. You follow?

So, this abounding garden in August – late and getting later.

Learning to walk further, in all directions.

Greek salad for days and Black Jack taffy; no alcohol, yes cannabis.

No longer do I wait for a day that isn't mine to prepare.

What do you know of the Africana contemplative experience before the Middle Passage? I am not black but I ate the red dust. I drank from the Baobab and slept in its belly. The Matriarch and I included everyone. That is the song I cannot fully forget, Bwana. You have a different name there and so do I.

God, I wish you could hear the vastness of the Mara. Maybe nothing would change. But I do know this, nothing would matter.

Congruence of a Thousand Doors

What I am trying to express is beyond logic. It is ancient and recursive. Yesterday as the future of today.

Lex and I went to the middle school parking lot to shoot hoops. When she texted her dad to tell him where we were, he responded, “Oh! Ready to get schooled!” The reminder of how he knows me. Knew me?

Midnight dark is not mute. Insects purr and delicate breezes rustle a chorus of pine, oak and maple. Light winking from the past exhausts itself on its way to my window. I listen to my whole life and let each note pass as a fleeting moment. My body as an altar passes too.

Two mourning doves scatter from the garden each time I water. A particular door is closed to me and yet, a congruence of a thousand others open unto unending fields of beginnings and unfulfilled prophecies. Yet in my notebook, I write for you an impossible song.

I'm going to be honest with you and say that I wish I had a pill to take whereby I fall asleep instantly and wake refreshed and restored each morning. Instead I stay awake, writing letters to dead ancestors about aviators and poets, dogs and coffee, and my belief that we have all been here and done this before now.

A Shell Game I Only Occasionally Win

We, the destroyers of time. Did not the book of Revelation allude to time being no more? Rest now beyond time. This and other koans.

The sense I am stuck between two correct things – two places in time – two ways of being and with whom – never leaves. Two hard boiled eggs, salt and peppered with a little left over street corn for breakfast; I mean, coffee is a given, right?

Blisters on my heels bleed through my socks from walking. I switch one pain for another like a shell game I only occasionally win. But this morning – oh the stars – the light cleft from something past!

Dawn as a dam breaking over my tired garden and a few rabbits tasting clover. The memory of water is always lucid. Kissing – floating – swimming . . . on which side of the river shall I wait and rest?

There are ways in which wedding veils and funeral lace are the same. Do we wait until we are dead to alter vows? Only one calls me to account and only one can take me darkly into the sun's heart.

I remember in the 1980's spending hours in my bedroom winding mangled and unreeled cassette tape back into its cartridge. Surgeries were performed, cutting chewed-up sections out of the tape and re-affixing the ends. Heal the tape – heal the music – heal Jessica.

How strange for this gumption to dissolve. Now, the marriage of lyric and note-vibration need not be honored for the understanding of love or its poetry.

Serpants, Senses, and Self-Love

Do I only know the other through self-love?

Walking at 4 a.m. without the dog these days. I pick her up on the cool down lap and she seems happy with this arrangement. A man appeared out of the mist this morning and I had to decide if my flashlight would be my weapon of choice. We passed one another without incident but at some level, there is always an incident.

For the most part, I think everyone has missed the point in the Garden of Eden. We are neither Adam nor are we Eve. We are the serpent slithering and sliding on the ground. We are the devil and tempter, asleep in our sublunery limitations, waiting to be lifted up and brought out of the dirt. Can we not see how Jesus taught us how to wake and walk forward?

God as dimension beyond what is accessible to the senses.

Both the first moment and the last are happening this instant. There is no last first kiss. No birth or death day; no here without you; no you without river.

The used poetry book smelled of perfume – an alchemy of something so familiar and yet, not. It was soft and clean but somehow aged. A newspaper clipping of the poet's suicide in the year I returned from Kenya was placed in between the pages, slipping out as leafed a few pages. Unlike Plath, I didn't see the anguish or despair in this author's work. I saw myself.

And now I see the indictment of self-love.

Bassinet of Another Christ

Eyelids fluttering with dreams and images of yawning light.

Giver says / she is bewitched / go below the roots

A thousand years is the same as a thousand miles. In the span of distance, no one is afraid of body as altar or luscious words as incense. Yet I think we are called to sew together the gap – unburden the moon's cold light – face a never ending dawn, shoulder to shoulder, then breast to breast.

Sensation as mother and how difficult she is to overcome. What is seen is not everything and in fact, perhaps it is nothing.

“We are save by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopeth for that which he seeth?” Romans 8:24

Love as the bassinet of another Christ.

4 a.m. walks – suburban sprinklers in the dark – sound of American flags shifting in a light breeze. Kora is aging too quickly for these jaunts but waits at the door for a cool-down lap. Not a single turtle has crossed my path this summer but feathers – oh my god.

There is no “after you” and so I ask myself: what is missing? My heart is in my pocket; what's in yours?

Concert ticket as a bookmark. Music as liberator. Woman as redeemer.

The phenomena of release is complicated by my affinity for the sensual, though I will say, this sense or awareness is not strictly outfacing or outward. Yet I, as a woman, have been coerced. Stop telling me what to do. Stop telling me to 'be good'.

I'm so tired of yesterday and tomorrow; be with me today.