Saturday, March 30, 2013

Easter 2013: Tallis Canon


All praise to Thee.

I am so thick with memories. It is as if
I'd never washed at all -

the mud and wet hay,
that soft fur, the kid goat's muzzle,
the gray bare trees
and cerulean sky.

Ducks guzzling in puddles,
chickens squawking,
the cow chewing stolidly,
the white mother nanny
hard and disinterested.

What happens when we grow -
do we blink in the light,
shy away, then go
and find the world too small?

Or can we somehow enter again
our mother, choose from the beginning
to give all burstingly?

To wait for months underground
and wake as freshly,
undaunted, lean and fasted,
singing greenly
what we lived for in our first undoing.

I am finding
it was safe under snow and
Almighty wings.






"All praise to Thee" and "Almighty wings" taken from the Thomas Tallis canon.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Spring Peepers

I have not looked at your face
this way in a long time.
I forgot that peaked chin,

those eyebrows asking questions,
infant delicate.

The water of your pond-brown eyes,
the slipped chisel on your nose, those
indented happy accidents.

Lips more resolute
than I remembered.



I have not heard spring peepers in so long
I almost did not notice. There are sounds now -

Red-winged blackbirds,
song sparrows, a raven picking bits

of sticks to nest with. I stopped to watch,
but he chid me, dropped them
innocently.

I left a trail of prints in the chilled mud,
spreading my toes,
hoping they'd be smiled at.





Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Born Today

What is a new day,
taken like a vitamin,
a fresh Q-tip,
the tang of citrus?

What are days for
except to parcel up our lives
as tidy gifts,
bombs,
and time capsules?

I wrote once,
           People shouldn't be allowed 
                              to be this angry
And another time,
          Why am I so unconscionably happy?

One day I cringe beneath the weight
of my own head's hair,
another feel the lift
of every leaf.

No wonder you named me 
secretly,
in a deep place where I could not scream
and did not want to know
what that wetness was,
dripping down my throat -
your cold hands 
pressed to my temples -

because what other 
throb than this
burns through
pores and cleanly
births me?




Tuesday, March 12, 2013

White Mountains


This is the
world.

Love created it.

God moved His hand here, 
over a sleeping body.

Signs pass, mountains pass. Snowy camels, crouching lions.
Perfect Nubian Dairy Goats.

The slant sun amber on the pines.
I would like to live on a mountaintop,
To turn an age you can turn over in your hand, 
that feels the same.

We repair slowly. 
I am free.

Love can unmake it.

I would like to live on a mountaintop. 
"That's where the sun touches last."







"Love made the bond. Love can break it, too."
-Terrence Malick's The New World

-Naarita Arnold-Avila