SEPARATING HEAVEN & EARTH
Do not disturb us -
You who walk the stark fields
Of early Autumn
Beneath a slate sky.
You who trespass the border
Separating heaven & earth.It has found you
Even as mortality
Waved you on.Do not disturb we
Who have wings,
Who feed on wilderness & time.
We are thorns of wild rose.
We are wind
And white feathers.
We are running deer,
Beauty fallen
From God's palm.And you have broken us
With your human ego.
LANDSCAPE WITH HEART
This landscape
with its grey snowbanks
in winter
and wispy dancers
cavorting on clotheslines
in summer
will not remember
we called it home.
When we push
from this world
to the next
with split hearts
we will carry knowledge
like a sleeping child
held close in our arms.
NO PROMISE
The first face I loved
Had a voice that spoke
From leaves,
From horses,
From air.
The first face I loved
Was the face of God,
That white frequency
Of mystery
Which penetrates all things.
It stays in the memory
Like a faded tattoo,
Blue and fuzzy.
Only in moments of reaching
Will it come back to you.
INITIATION
Remember to remember
You come from the shine
Of coincidence,
The same way a mockingbird
Cannot mimic with precision.
The same way history
Precedes a beginning.You come from the sea
Where wisdom is a pearl
And death is shallow water.
Remember the silvery loam
Of the ocean's shadowy belly
When you slipped from the wide mouth
Into vast salt waters.
Remember your mother pushing you
Toward strange waters
So she would not eat you.You come from the sky
Double bright with sun
And a crowd of moons
Cradled in stars.
The black folds of space
Where words, numbers, desire
And time mean nothing,
And timing is everything.You come from a luminous cocoon
Ready to feed,
To shake hands with desire.
From chrysalis glow
To stained glass wings
Vivified orange, yellow and red.
You emerge from a flutter and move West
To steel cities
Ready to welcome you.You come from smooth symmetry
And snow white artifacts,
Elemental dynamics and obstacles.
Internal music, pulsions.
You come from Faust's
Bones of the dead,
Voltaire's tragedies
And Dostoyevski's multitude
Of suicides.
You come from the green past,
The starry future
And the purgatory of now.
You bloom every season,
Irrepressible,
A diamond mine
Always in progress.
RECOVERY
Unwilling to sympathize
with the slow progress of vines
I summon birds with broad wings
to blot out the light within
a distant, narrow room,
to beat erotic patterns
against the frosted panes.
Southern warmth pulls at them.
For a moment there is hesitation.
They want to show me
the slow, sure progress of vines,
to say, in syllables
of a common language,
that it is only your own voice
which reminds you of all
you strive to forget.
WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND
It will come as a surprise,
a day you will welcome
who you are
and forgive the ancient
misguided bones inside you.By then you will have left behind
most of what dazzled you,
what tempted you,
what made it difficult
to remain one person.You will have left behind
seashells collected in Maine
and the unmailed letters to old lovers.
You will have deserted
your favorite foods,
your child's first
pair of shoes.You will have shed
the quiet regrets
that sing in hollow moments,
exhausted all the dimensions of Earth
to embrace the manna
of simply
being.
SISTERS
There is memory even
In the broken voice
Of your hands.Something tells us
We must embrace melancholy
In the same way
We welcome joy.
We must enter every depression
With grace,
Make musical the common things.
Something tells us
We must reinvent oppression,
Press faith like a rose
Between chapters.
We must learn,
And learn again
It is only natural
To bleed.
OF WINGS
Pale Summer morning.
I have woken to a dull ache
In my lower back
Where wings are emerging.
The breakthrough
Has left scythe-shaped
Blood stains on the sheet.Barely spanning six inches
The buds are sea-foam green,
Damp with growth and progress.
Yet nothing else has changed.
My eyes are still travelled
With crow's feet.
My breasts, torso, hips
Remain humanly awkward.
But now I smile.
At last something in common
With Michael, Raphael & Gabriel.
Even Hecate, though mad,
Wore the implements of flight well.By nightfall
A full set of wings adorn me.
For all their beauty & charm
They are clumsy,
Impossible not to crush
In the daily mess of humanity.
I might've wished for them
In a dream,
Wrestled with a handsome angel
To win them.
But with the inheritance
I have lost the feel of home.
They pulse like a curse
And create an alien world
Where, like loving, I must learn
To fly in a world
Ruled by gravity.
SOLSTICE
"...and I am imagining how it would be
if we could infuse souls."
--Virginia Woolf
All night you have stood
In the street
Under the dim lamppost.
All night the western stars
And cold moon
Have slanted in your eyes.
You listen to birds
Rarely sounding past dark,
Their whirled nests in the wind
Slightly ajar.
In the window above
A girl brushes sun-colored hair,
Hums to herself
A song by Cole Porter.
You stay close,
Hold this unfinished desire
To your breast
Like a long journeyed angel
In need of earthly rest.
LATE FALL LIGHT
All day you have figured
in the soft words
of Trakl's Autumn Sonata
where apples and elderberry wine
sit on the oak table,
the late fall light
illuminating them.
Sleeping later
with eyes full of past empires
and stardust in your hair
you will only half remember
how verdant, how soft
the fields and leaves
once were.
AFTER THE LONG GATHERING
After the long gathering
You will enter a silence
Of stones,
Of leaves,
Of wings.You will know
That when anything ends
A singing begins.
It comes to break the tide,
To pierce the dark
And make you green again.
After the long gathering
You will enter a silence
Of stones,
Of leaves,
Of wings.
OFFERINGS
Winter morning arrives
Expectant as a blank page,
An envelope waiting to be filled.
I have only a few words.
All week a stray cat
Stepping like jazz piano
Has come into the yard
Sniffing for food.
Out of nowhere his hunger
Makes room for me.
I watch him return to my offerings,
Both of us dreaming
The easy flight of birds.
In the cold months, in the
Early darkness things are tender.
Ellis and Christian, blonde & dark-eyed
As mythical children,
Beg me to read to them.
I pull other worlds from the shelf
And soon their questions demand a detour.
How can I describe constant transition,
Things like pleasure and desire
That are never certain,
But learned forever.