Wavering Now and Then

Spider webbing loosely stays together in the corner of the window, wavering now and then. On the other side of the glass, a prism throws rainbows around the room above a yawning furnace. Golden maple light reflects in cold puddles on the back deck. Rain ending.

He held my hand and it was better than love. You can't go around what you have to go through. Some things are prayers. Some things are poems. Some lines are made when fire meets the sea. But those lines, they don't matter. Those prayers, they don't matter either. What always was, still is. I don't know how else to say it.

I wake with a crick in my neck, which is to say, I wear lightening bolts around my collar. I need something other than coffee in my stomach before working out. My insides are a ship at sea when considering the idea. No birds at this hour, only the grinding gears and flashing lights of garbage trucks.

Some small extinction happens when one chooses to the put the past in its place. Some death. Even the pressed daisy in Dickinson's book of poems can only tell you where you are not. Forgive me; perhaps I have digressed.

Christmas Between Us

The woods are waning. Bright color collects on the forest floor, one thin, papery, note at a time. I see myself in this season – slowly falling apart in ecstatic beauty. I am the precursor to January and yet, cannot ever cross its icy threshold. I have the bluest sky and a moon on fire. I am harvest and fertile seed. I am wood smoke rising and hot-soup-cuddles on the couch. I am the never mistaken sign of a long slumber ahead.

I am reborn and die every October. I can never stay as long as I want and I can never leave without genuflecting to the natural order of things. In between us is Christmas. It is only in His manger shall we meet.

Another day of cold rains. Maples are the only radiant light for now and I am never not grateful. Yellow crowns everywhere.

Each weekend until it snows will now be raking and managing leaves. I'm pretty sure that is not natural. How can I do better? I am twisted and wrung over oaken barrels.

Now it is time to get dressed; go to work; go to bed; sleep a little; wake tired; go to work.

Beyond the Blue

With day after day of cold rains, I find myself looking beyond what I can see.

beyond the blue
hour – sky – eyes
how we are distilled
immortality

Goldenrod, queen's lace, and chicory all fade into the earth. Sparrows and wrens pick whatever is left and squirrels spend whole days earthing and re-earthing morsels. But what is beyond this?

When I close my eyes and see nothing, body pain still exists. Despite pain's constancy, with a little willingness to be open, even pain can exceed its role as oppressor.

Pain is not a punishment or a justification. It is an intercessory. It is a call to remember how one is never alone but is always a surrogate of all those who hurt. There seems to be a collectiveness to it.

We, the pained, supersede words with our groans. We are reduced to mutters or even silence, together. Utterances from beyond are collectively heard in the groans of the universe, the cycles of birth and rebirth, and the longing for a just order. Pain elicits and vocalizes the terrible and the wonderful, cries of prayer, critiques, pleasure and sermons, all at once.

I think of the moans and cries from those who suffered the Middle Passage, all different tongues, tribes and religions, all unable to communicate with one another apart from the guttural articulations of united suffering. I wonder if this drew each or some into contemplation, by which I mean, a displacement of the ordinary to a temporary refuge, spiritual attenuation, and a removal to a level of reality that allows distance from the external.

A removal which also unifies.

In this way, maybe pain is generative.

Perhaps pain is yet just another portal unto discernment of that which is real or a dream.

I am

beyond the blue –beyond bad luck or accident – beyond bruises – beyond the decay of body and mind – beyond the pain –

I am

groaning with the eternal collective
of sparrow, spruce and shaman –

I am
always
here.

In the Blue Hour

Night stillness and its waning moon.

Morning brightens only slightly and her trees stand self-assured. Autumn stretches to a lenient silence. The golden stubble of leftover maize waits in sodden fields, making for a rough kiss. Seeds to legacy to harvest. Repeat.

Watching Lex conduct the jazz band left me teary. Her complete immersion in the journey of the music is stunning. And I wonder, is it too late for me? This lyrical path to ascension! This flame to our papery earth.

Images weather away to uncover vast swaths of the cosmos. Dead relatives give the message: there is no distance. Still, I wonder where certain poets will be buried and if they welcome starshine and moonlight as cloaks.

Its soup season! The secrets of my heart are not hidden from the one whose very existence is a key: a bowl of soup waiting on the table, a chapter read to me as I doze, a walk hand-in-hand beneath trembling trees.

The bejeweled gifts of eternity are never not given and so, to consider secrets (and their discernment) is beside the point. And yet, and yet. Please forgive me as I linger in such a sweet spot from time to time. Let us meet in the blue hour in the by-and-by.

Not Hungry for Fables

leaves in October
stained glass light
falling for it every time

Days now rust. Suddenly, everything is papered with wet leaves and pine needles. A bulge in the sky brings it all down more quickly than expected. Dampness is the mode for a while. In early morning darkness I leave for the gym and everything and everyone is so quiet at this hour that I forget they exist. I can hear the sound of my tires on the wet road.

The gym is a manifestation of both turmoil and healing for my mind-body. To move and push the limits of embodied incarnation creates an elopement from constant, everyday trap of chronic pain. A new path veers, but from a distance, one can now see how all trails lead to the same place. Returning, I walk the dog with a flashlight – not so we can see but so others can see us.

The smell of wet pine and rain-downed leaves reminds me that for two nights in a row, I didn't crawl through dark. No longer is there a need to feed me fables – things are gained between a rock and a hard place.

Fields turn fallow and fewer birds stop to feed. Soon it will all be floured two feet deep with ice and snow. Rain carries the smell of fish inland from the big lake. One is not so sure weather and landscape needs to be forged into words. Like this sentence. These and other disguises so nobly donned this time of year.

And yet, it is in the radiance of falling light, bent against trees and softened through the miracle of a grass-blade, that we are reminded of the Lover. It is They who unbind the truth of how we cannot save ourselves.

Poleward Coherence

Poverty of all but spirit turns up love like aces
That weren't in the deck at all.

The cadence of McGrath – his harmony – an expression I cannot relay.

I push hard against my body's desire to be awake at night and sleep in day. New routines replace what used to work and I cling to the life raft accordingly. The shore hooks around like a question mark leaving part of the view obscured. Yet I keep it in view the best that I can.

Maybe chocolate cake before bed is not the best idea.

Around a tall table at the brewery, four of us lobbed family baggage into the air like rouge travelers pitching themselves into a moving train car. I could hold down my meal but was less successful at shielding any static in my regulation. My social units were devoured in one sitting, so I retreated home to spend the afternoon in blanketed barracks. Though I do not lack grace, I do keep an ace of judgement up my sleeve.

Inky pine trees pierce Orion's belt in full view of a perfect moon. Walking in this light leads me beyond wars, destruction, and unkindly borders. My menstrual cycle syncs with the full moon and my every cell seems to sing in poleward coherence. True North marries all points of the compass and True North is where I am.

I'm remembering how to dance amongst transparent faces and I could use a little more practice. Sure, dubiety but also . . . I'm dancing!

Yesterday, under clear blue October skies, I picked the last tomatoes and kale for a mid-day salad. In two dark green camping chairs, one facing the other as a foot rest, I tilted everything skyward, as no thing came to mind.

Ah, so this is happiness.

East on the West River

Geese become tiny in a distant sky and crows hurry to their roost, like little black universes catching one's whole gaze. A pure frost in early morning hours seems like an unexpected windfall when the air becomes newly cold. Soon we will hasten to build fires, and we will cocoon for hours while listening to the growing darkness on the wind. Still, the sounds of autumn insects clack and clatter, despite newly angled shafts of light.

It is romantic to think of the sun and moon as lovers, dancing around something greater, giving and reflecting, warming and lifting. There is a peacefulness about that kind of story – an unmolested intensity of light with deep periods of rest – the untouchable given-ness of the promenade. We can make a gift of peace without these tales and dreams. Yet, because we do not understand the ones we need to gift, we believe peace itself to be elusive or not understandable.

Still yourself.
Watch the fire die down to white ash.
Find poetry which contains the silence, but is not itself silent.
The peace you seek comes through Love, as does justice.
And Love is beyond the myths, in between the worlds and words, after the translations of hand-made art.

I am newly in charge of myself which is not the same as being in charge of everyone else. No longer am I helpless facing east on the banks of the West River. The language of priests is callow compared to the profane love I have been shown. And this love, when allowed to make its own way, looks you straight in the eyes and says, “You were never not a gentle fisher of men.”

No longer do I need a tourist's map to make my way to the Mara. I never left. And neither did you.

Rosaries, Rosehips, Revelation

When the sun hits full in the face, a feeling floods every cell: I need not survive. In those moments, I'd die happily, giving no care or concern to any matter. The borderlands of soul disappear and body unhinges itself from its mooring.

To be this undone.
To understand none of it can be held.

A cloud eventually comes or a chickadee breaks the spell or I fall into a swift slumber. I remember picking one violet to honor the occasion, allowing it to dry, adding it to a bouquet of forget-me-nots.

These luminous webs of interbeing.
These great weavers of light and dew and air.

We are from the earth, sky, sea and yet, we have fallen asleep. We have forgotten the rosaries made from rosehips. We have counted the stars as a parade for our folly.

If we are white, the colonization of this land we call “ours” reverberates against the act's double consciousness – the act of stealing or conquering what belongs to another, and the fact that our ancestors perpetrated these crimes without reconciliation or recompense.

“Florida student-athletes are now required to report and track their periods online for eligibility.”

We keep returning to the ingrained, unhealed nightmares. We keep taking what is not ours.

Hail Mary, mother of miracles, wake us the fuck up.

The moon slides through pine, oak and maple on its way to dawn. Diffused light sees itself in gutter puddles and cooling lakes. My ancestors rise in the mist, unsettled in their crimes – unmoored in my future.

Witches, Judas, and Elders

Look into the spooky soul of the elder tree as it oozes with myth, magic and medicine – a home to goddesses – salve for the ailing. To cut one down is to risk revenge taken by the dryad living within, the one exception being the use of any of its parts for medicine or as a protective charm. Please ask the dryad reverently for permission.

With the rise of Christianity, the elder tree became a witch's tree. It was portrayed as a tree of sorrow because Judas was said to have hung himself from its branches. According to Christian lore, the reason for the tree's stooped demeanor and pliable branches is so that never again should anyone commit suicide with the help of an elder.

elder knots –
through gateways and gallows
Judas weds the witch

I told her it is illegal in Michigan to kill bats. How is it that we are made with feelings deeper than the greatest abyss and yet, we wear a stoic veil over mindfulness of the other? Fear stabs both eyes and the blood is enough sustenance for a lifetime.

And just like that, desire runs along snaggy-toothed banks of the river, all the way to the welcoming sea. What passes must not be Love. What floats beneath the willows must be let go.

Flowers, thistle and goldenrod all die back.
We die back.
I no longer walk the garden like a jailer, or carry armfuls of light.
This earth, our grave, as wretched as it is glorious.

Ode to the last of green things! Ode to the once wild blossoming of all of our cares.

Rest now in the fluid care of elder trees; in the passing of the river beyond my knoll; in the abundance of what we harvested for a time.

Wombs of Relationship

Lattice shadows slant westward through the gazebo. It is the crimson of October which curls up and rests as a fetus in my heart.

So, yeah, I married an aviator who is also a light house keeper. One persona flies close to the sun and the other tends light at the edge of the sea. It is good to remember that neither are the light.

These first frosted mornings.
These hints of brilliant diamonds glittering in northern light.
These dazzling harbingers of frozen stones and quieter songs.

Maybe this year I will love winter more. This and other ways it is better to be a stone than to fall into one.

Loose leaves begin to gather in the corner of doorways and rest at the base of steps. In the slightest breeze, their scratchy voices cry out in the tenor of the dead – beautifully here and not here – thin but not unheard.

Reading J's poetry I realize more than before how we all bleed from the same womb. What is left to discover in such a mirror and does it matter? I have a feeling that I exist because of this relationship to the reflection. Speaking of which, I raised my voice when talking with Mom about her lack of agency in the marriage. She has pain over it, complains, and yet, has some how forgotten how to say, “no. I do not want to clean the sail boat or haul it up the hill.”

As a woman, how does one live without reaching for power; without extending this idea into our society and governments; without being beholden to resistance at spiritual level?

We discover ourselves in the relationship of another – poetry, marriage, lovers, enemies – and we give attention to that which arises, thereby nurturing the soil for liberation.

Lakes Fall Asleep

Is there such a thing as an infinite lover?

Night lengthens beyond my comfortable boundaries and I begin to oppose my body even more. These passages through time begin to matter less, however, October light is still something of a fragile vessel on course for rough seas. Wells will freeze and lakes fall asleep.

Seedum capsizes in blushing heaviness. Those who romanticize falling leaves and apple-picking seem to have an ability to look past the process of dying. Then again, companion plants! Chamomile, mint, sage. Together we defer our bankruptcy.

In the dark tides of midnight more stars arrive by which to read life. Weaker morning light lends a laziness into sabbath. I wonder how Love remains the thing resisted – a force hovering over sky-colored glass – the scent of sea-wind 800 miles off shore.

Marigolds blend into October while chrysanthemum's rule the kingdom of flowers. The amaryllis thought dead has re-sprouted and grows tall towards Christmas. Kyle and I sip coffee on the couch and talk about the ecosystem of houseplants. Life has softened and none of it can be translated backwards. My heart is no longer a wrecking ball. I lie face down in my bed, kissing myself into the end of days. Blue jays forget to wake me and I haven't seen a robin in weeks.

Love, bring more wood in from the shed. It's that time of year.

October Casts Spells

October has its own light – golden in dawn – brisk and blue at midday.

In an overflow spot connected to the creek, water bugs drift in a circle. I am hypnotized in a way that is different than flower-watching. October casts spells. A few leaves and many acorns begin to reorder the sketch of land I borrow. I remember staring over the Sappic cliffs in August, knowing plainly why they call it a lover's leap. A wrist-thick rope held me back in some ways, also saving me against my will.

Early morning woodsmoke carries the senses upward from glittering roofs as a reminder of deities honored in the burning of certain woods. Consider the birch. In some Irish traditions, household fires are doused and relit from a central Yule fire made of birch. A broom is made of birch twigs and used to brush out the dust of the old year. A determined energy, a pureness, emanates from this wood. It is one of the first to present leaves in the spring and one of the first to grow back when an area of woodland has been cleared. Regeneration; rebirth; tenacity. Rise.

Thomas McGrath wrote a little poem about how water might be in love with fire, but not with the last of the winter ice, and I can't get it out of my head. An affinity for water is as oxygen, and the way I burn has everything to do with the incense of wood. And the poem may not have anything to do with that but somehow it kinda does.

breaking through morning
webs before seeing –
bridges disappear
as horizons gather and release
dawn

Season by season, I am moored and unmoored, traveling only as far as I can while yet keeping home in my sights.

Slowly Like Dawn

Turning the page of night, star and moonless, no conversation but the prayer for sleep.

Each fall, days and nights reverse in my body. By day I struggle to connect into the living. By night I am trapped in a burning building, unable to live or die. I'll work now to keep one tide back and bring forth another. Cannabis, the gym, hiking through dune grass. I stare deep into my cup of coffee knowing it is both allowing sanity and keeping me in thrall. No moon as companion. No bridge between light and dark.

Last of summer yield, clipped lavender and sage for drying. A few cherry tomatoes still redden, albeit slowly, like dawn. Lately I have been walking through webs because, though I am not seen, I am not a ghost. After garden inspection, McGrath poems:

AT LOST LAKE

Sometimes I don't know which is better:
The land at the edge of the water
Or the water at the edge of the land.

Now, though I am sleepless, dancing on edges of knives and dreams, I am innocent! No more blame and no more crying for Love. Only healing. It is possible I am awake to express my gratitude for “such a time as this.”

I was sun-blind by beauty crawling eastward and now, my eyelids are drowsy with the fullness of what Love has shown me.

Sticks and stones as art.
Turtles, rivers and lakes — the only way I know how to thank you.

A Few Sweet Moves

Night's embroidery.

In a dream, Dandelion says, “why not surrender to the wind and another path?”

Thus ends limbo.
Wither to grow.
Blooming to blaze.

Evening rises out of the ground with pine tree shadows touching one another before disappearing into the black iron night. My mind flees with argumentative geese as they announce their travel plans. Their souls leave here and come back in order to survive. The migration is part of a larger, involuntary dance, of which we all have a few sweet moves.

Yet, winter is quiet and still for so long. A human can become isolated in their December keep. Perhaps it is the preference for solitude which must surrender to another path. As fallen light changes the speed of harvest, the garden taps out almost overnight. I burn a few relics in order to add the ash to the soil. This is how I say goodnight in greatest gratitude.

Here are we, made from pollen and dirt, starlight and clouds. We are an eye unto the other side. Maybe it isn't our job to see, but instead to look.

Look at the dandelions in their white crowns, rising from earth, releasing unto the sky.
Look at the infinite ways to surrender unto the fertile unknown.

October True

Sleep, always scythed.

In yielding moments, breaths before dawn, I realize light itself is a pilgrimage. The first cold front of the season exaggerates the air and lends hints of the unknown to a retreating darkness. Bodies of trees begin to take shape and I weave among them, stepping only when my feet borrow what they need from each exact spot. This catechism.

Maybe because I am witchy or maybe because the river is too far away, my release will not be on watery banks. Mine will consummate in fire. A corroded fire pit teeters due to a missing leg, rusted off, but loosely set back under the iron bowl. What I place in the fire is nestled with rosemary sprigs, pine, and dried wildflowers picked from the mountainside in Vermont.

rebirth
sooted remnants returned
to this land –
holy flecks of change
recalling a pillar of salt

Dreams let loose. Clouds as little chapels nestled in a wooded hillside. Time to follow the light westward as a truer October peers over the horizon. She who is ever-she, welcomes a new name. Do you know it?

Leek soup, sourdough bread, my garden on a plate. The last of backyard flowers glow in my grandmother's vase. I often press rose petals to my lips, faintly taking in their scent as I trail the softness back and forth.

Soon we will be buried in leaves. I will allow it.

Buttercups

A Persian legend tells of a prince who falls in love with a nymph. One ending says, after the prince serenades the nymph day and night, they fall in love and wed. Another common ending says the nymph gets so annoyed by the prince, she turns him into a buttercup to silence him.

beautiful buttercups
silent golden kisses –
seen and not heard

Lately my struggle deepens with the perception that I am too loud, too much, too everything. It could be said that my life's calling is setting fires with the only problem being they lack the safe location of a hearth.

And suddenly I wish I wasn't allergic to cats.

We fall asleep in separate rooms, each tethered to our moonless cave of caves. Nations of geese leave for elsewhere yet I am still here. September begins the end.

God, Vermont in October would be . . . I can't even say it.

This unforgiving distance. This inability to lay down in the field of me.

Pot roast in the slow cooker and a week's worth of rice on the stove. The setting for my favorite dream has to do with food, ferns and fucking. We could keep to the woods, you know. We could chase the river downstream all the way to the sea. We could fall into bed whereby you read to me and I doze into a different dream. We don't choose this because we love others more than ourselves, which is just another way of saying we really don't know how to love quite yet.

But I am a buttercup, the product of annoyance, the vessel for a well-contained fire. I'm not settling for this; pick me and know.

This Charting of Light

My god, moss on damp stones.

My soul as river runoff.

The memory of water I cannot undo. I wash my soul's cloak there. I walk across the blankness of its frozen pathways. My shoreline erodes into an ever-hungry tow. On which side of lake shall I wait, beloved?

my body
an instrument
forbidding music

This is the road I die crossing. Can you not see or feel this? Will you not meet me there?

Dusk climbing into my heart earlier than expected. Dinner is eaten by lamplight and the woods begin to fill with falling leaves. A million dead things added to the pyre. The charting of light.

Spider webs broken on the morning hike. Goldenrod, chicory, and lace. I've thought about our sun-warmed backs, winding on the ancient trails. Migration patterns; am I right?

Wind off the small pond captures the exact moment I knew what I wanted, and it carries this note and no other.

Serving at the Pleasure of Another

The way dawn smells after an overnight shower –

waiting for rays
of morning
cardinal says
if you know who you are
you know what to do

Coffee, bare feet on sinking softness, the awareness of fleeting light. Kora refuses her food once again but still wants to go for a walk. We walk as hobbled beings, very aware of Silence as a character in this narrative. The other night, I saw the full moon over a marsh. The still waters looked like a crown with its cattail tines steering the eye towards a power I have yet to understand. A million nighttime creatures voicing in concert and yet, it all felt like silence.

Soon we will know the sound of footsteps in the snow and ice groaning. But that is not today. Today is

rosy-cheeked sedum
and a second blossoming
of hastas –
tell me again
how far we've come

After work, I enter through a door to a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes and the smell of rotting fruit. The dog happily barks and clickity-clacks her too-long nails across the vinyl floorboards. I settle my backpack, lunch bag and travel mug so that I can kneel to give pets and kisses. Kyle shouts, “welcome home” from the basement. I patter to my bedroom with heavy feet to shed my work clothes and collapse face down on the bed.

Essays in idleness, perhaps. Metaphor or code may be on the surface, but there are no fabrications here. At last I realize I am not an empress, yours or any other. You and I serve at the pleasure of another. I am here for that. Let's go to her.

Relationship All the Way Down

Convergence of tarot, cannabis and dreams.

The moment I say I love you, it ceases to be love. Love is not a self-activity. It is something always new. Yet we need the other to understand this. We need the relationship to pine trees and dogs and daisies. We need the lover who sees beautiful light in us or the partner who finds wisdom in saying, “no.”

It's relationship all the way down.

And though desire exists, it does not paint the whole picture. How could it? We are not to seek or capture it.

caught in the eddy
swirling as if a wish –
red maple leaf

Barefoot in a September garden, collect tomatoes and a few berries in my shirt-pouch, is not a bad life.

It is just a life.

A teacher arrived when gratification was needed but then, Teacher said, “Depend on yourself!” Easy answers are not the way, in fact, both guru and path lead to a confusion which must be cleared by understanding that it is the one who asks the question which has the answer.

Or some bullshit like that.

The squash plant leaves scratches on my delicate forearm skin and sweat bees vex the work. But then, as if by magical decree, little lemon-winged butterflies soften the violence of what is not.

This and other ways the truth floats in uninvited.

Gilded in Dying Marigold

I already miss summer heat so hot I cannot sit in direct sun for more than a few minutes at at time. There is joy in October but it is gilded in dying marigold –a blaze on its way to frozen nothingness.

*

Dozing in grass left too long, my eye travels the river of blue sky between crown-shy trees. I wish we were holding hands.

*

The only time I see the death of pine trees is along northern highways where exhaust mixes with spray from winter salt trucks. As women, there is no impunity for the desire born in us. You who has been been gratified moves north and south, traveling roads towards other places.

*

Bats at dusk. I am far from the lover's breadth now. Yet, autumn apples.

*

I'll never not be writing you. Fretting geese moving on. Long rains of regret.

*

Milkweed pods open entirely. Hope of next year, next time, is not the same as a promise. I sleep next to an open window to understand what is happening.

*

Sparrows pick at confettied seed. I am consumed and taken far from home. I thought you were my October but possession is another thing entirely.