Offering

These walls know,

the way the light changes.

The way the rooms are painted.

The candles are lit, start the fire.

The blessings are made, the bath is drawn,

blankets are offered, pour the wine.

This house is a shrine.

See the old pictures, see the books on the shelf,

Notice the art in each corner.

These walls crave solitude, though no one is alone.

Look how the ghosts take a seat at her table.

Springtime in the Village

The windows are open again,
and outside, everything is waking up at once.
People are spilling out into the streets,
like swarms of noisy bees.

When summer comes,
and the sun beckons everyone from their homes;
when it calls them out to worship,

there will be bands in celebration,
and communion on every patio.

There will be singing in the church,
and concerts in the garden.

Their hymns of strings will rise,
in the balmy night air,
where lawn chairs line the path.

Couples will walk hand in hand, each in rhythm with the other.

And they will do this for no other purpose,
but to be held by the arms,

of a new and holy season.

I Did Not See a Radio, but a Typewriter

Because lately, I have no use for the news

for work, or even for food.

For outdoors or for walks, though I am envious of the trees and their icy coats,

each one in its own glassy skin, protective and shimmering against the light.

(The ground is too slippery to walk, why must I go out at all?)

But I am the winter bear who has risen too early from her slumber,
no longer under the spell of sleep but with a head still half-tired and tied up in dreams.

All that I'm hungry for now, are words.

I'd rather spend my days feasting on poems and playing in those summer grasses of the mind,
trying to make something of its beauty.

(Nature writes it's own poetry though and has no need of a translator)

Nonetheless, the breath of the soul calls out, it wants to anyway;
to give it's own song a name--

a voice that comes from someplace else.

So I anchor myself in wood: my antique table,
the hand-carved chest in front of the couch,

The chair in the kitchen.
the one I ask Marc to paint, to strip, to make new again.

Wanting of him to make us a bench; to make use of his hands, 

if only for the sake of beauty.

A man's offering to the world.

Overview

I'm on top of the world

Economy class and smug

In my heels, silk-coat and my hair,

Wind-swept and deliberate,

My pass in my hand,

A lady in charge turning heads.

I feel like I've been rushing toward this train all my life,

And I can afford this ticket for once.

And It won't be alarming,

The bus station late,

Where the homeless get taken on stretchers away,

And the man intrudes the space where I sit,

But you'd think that it would be,

For someone like me--

PTSD.

But this is where I feel at ease

All those years I spent wandering alone,

Lugging every last thing that I had--

My baggage, a journal and pen

Saber-tooth in the jungle and me.

Tonight's talk is a bee in my head-

"The highest form of forgiveness, has nothing to forgive, and that saber-tooth served you."

It did it's best.

I've learned to travel light,

Just my purse on this trip,

A sweater, a scarf and some flats

Because the rest is at home,

Where I want to be,

And both of them loved me,

....I loved them back.

"...and this is what opens your heart" he says 

Thai Massage

lay on the floor, close your eyes and breath

But there is no summer breeze in the evening,

listlessly moving the un-locked gate.

No sun-kissed children soaring on swings,

or wool-wrapped ladies, rocking in chairs.

No bundled-up babies napping within,

or playful pups chasing the last of the leaves.

There is no country house in this home,

of crowded and cramped muscle and bone.

A nervous creature kept in a frame,

flapping its wings against iron and rib.

still the body keeps trying to fly

First Snow

We felt the first bite of cold as we explored

The newly fallen snow on the shore.

Even with the last three days on the lake,

Wind-swept and cloud-heavy,

It came as a suprise

And although the skies carried the promise of rain,

And the lake picked up, loud and full

We expected nothing more.

Yet like an unwanted guest it came,

It's gusty skeleton rattling in the night

Clanking the cottage furnace and waking us both.

We closed the door and rolled over until morning,

When we were awoken by icicle fingers at the window

And thunder--

Cleverly disguised.

Then like a curtain rising and revealing the stage,

I pulled open the blinds.

There stood our restless messenger

We were weary eyed and unprepared for the show.

A quick pang of grief,

Followed by a sobering acceptance

Of a mid-October winter,

And forgiveness of this event.

For nature, in all her glory,

Is an oblivious intruder,

And blameless she remains,

As it is our own hand,

That forces the seasons.

Here we fret like hungry children at our tired mother

And she responds as one would--

Can't satisfy the need.

Our all consuming, always taking

Forever taking, greed.

She's depleted and erratic, unpredictable, unkind.

So she brings us long winter.

We are no match.

Forcing her rhythms to suit our own

Distracted, hot-tempered, flighty,

Unsure....

What Was Kept

I grabbed some of your things

from the cluttered, downstairs room

tins and scraps, notes without meaning, 

two shirts.

Like everything else in that house,

They were stale

thick with smoke and yellowed by neglect,

though you hung them with a care,

that I knew was pride.

Shirts not worn since before I was born, but still you held on.

You held on.

In my desperate attempt to hold on, too

in the midst of what grief does to a daughter,

I grasped at those things, anything

as if they would disappear as quickly and as absolutely as your body did,

when they carried you away.

In your wake were the fragments of our shattered lives,

in that muddied wasteland of us

a junkyard of immortal love trapped in mortal law

gripped by an animal-like sorrow, packing shirts into a broken vintage suitcase

Whatever would fit before leaving.

That night I knew nothing of the relief I had felt,

in the moments after waking up that morning,

in the moments between knowing and not knowing 

when you told me in my dreams,

you were free from all that now.

Sleepless

Sleeplessness has got me hallowed out.

Only a question remains: how can one be so empty

And consumed all at once

Everything but sleep upon me,

Pale-white as a sheet and

The days grow colder still

They say a weather warning is approaching.

The pharmacist spoke of it as he dolled out my pills

I am but a quiet, dry shell

Waiting

On the couch at 5am

The lightest dreams flew into me,

Like a hundred soft grey moths

Safekeeping

I want to show up empty-handed,

Hungry for bread, open as a field

I want to bring only my cup,

And ask for wine 

I want to arrive light, 

Where we take off our coats

I want to leave them at the door,

To both of our homes

I want to take what is stored there,

Whatever is dark

To hold what is hidden, 

In a delicate box

Lined carefully with silk,

...a safekeeping
of talk.

Everything In This Room Is Loved

Like you, but not with the same ease

Before you, and after, in a tapestry of lives

Gifts that I worship: altars

To know beauty and where it came from

Comfort lies in these material things

Without doubt, without 

The terrifying truth of being

The impermanence of breath, attests