XXVI

Perfect as lentils soaking, each round pebble
Bathed where the water laps, drifts against the current gently.

There juniper exudes a pungent meady scent, and the wood birds are wiser
Than their cultivated brothers. Warbler and thrush have darkly glinting eyes,
And are never startled.
They know these trees, this stream, like their own voices.

And in this heavy bearded wood there are more loamy secrets,
Where spiky pine blankets the condescending lumps of fallen trees.
There a blunderer may find himself in dreams of a peculiar kind,
When light and desire conspire to draw him deeper
Into the forest's pleroma,
And except he is a fool, he will not know it.

There moves the forest's guardian, all draped.
He is the earthy and the intoxicating spirit of this place.
In shape he frustrates any illustration, complete is he,
And any portrait makes his parts absurdity, for he is beauty.

Any eye that sees him finds its deepest fear and dearest joy,
The wanderer is rested in his soul, the hunter rankled,
The lover spoiled of any cheapening love.
Here, in this fecund stillness
Is the utter soul of worlds.

The Yard In Winter

Face down to resuscitate the earth. Breathe the frost away, smell the fertile spring awakening under warm breath. The milky bitter grass. The scalpy smell of roots, the death. The life,
And the sweet content of the ground beneath, heaving like a chest in sleep, and me upon it.
Resting, a child on its mother's breast. The heartbeat of the world beneath my cheek. And gleaming
In the skies, there is my father, and through his eyes there winks the spark of stories. There connect and intersect the paths of slaves to freedom.
Follow me north.
Did I know each nest? And now I kiss your neck, your fingers, you who whisper, Shall we say love us more? Or love us less? Which shall pain you more? I sigh into your dry and smoky skin. Your sleeves are fringed with lichen. And I am leaving you already...
For the same sky under different branches.

And I said You never change. But change the way we understand. To know You.

Never, The End

They say Comedies end with weddings.
But what do weddings end with?

I've been aching ever since the tale began,
For this? Disappointment in the union I awaited.

Stir my heart again, and - defy me! - make me see
The end for which I bleed.

Candle I

What am I waiting for?
I am waiting for you to come down
On me, like the sun on Vermeer's milkmaid, (be starlight)
On me in my frumpy flannel nightgown,
Kneeling in my room tonight.

I'm home. You're home, sister. Cause a stir at the dinner table with the band
on your left hand ring finger (tease me that way; I forget what it feels like).
Take pleasure in collecting thoughts while picking meat, washing dishes. Blow out the candle. He's coming (could I light it again?), breathe in His fragrance with the flame.

Unpack and explain to yourself why you need all these things. Whisper, "what freedom in a room like Vincent's!" Bury your face in your grandmother's quilt: it's no crime, but a thing to be held lightly.
What is gifting this year? What can be made from my hands but a patchwork of half-thoughts and a quavering love, a few colors, a hint of peppermint and pine? What of the children enamored by bright plastic for a week, and a string of lights?

Sometimes I feel this life is too offal to be right. Is this bowl of red meat worth it, after sloughing so much white?
Our jolly old record plays, I look at the gleaming bulbs in the window. Something did happen here, in this world where someone was telling earthy jokes and someone holding out one more day, to see You born.

A Debilitating Strength

I tend to take small directives seriously, moving obstacles out of pathways. Perhaps someone blind or absent-minded will come by. I never know, and so a stone sticks in my conscience like shrapnel until I turn back and kick it into the brush by the road.


I wrap a bit of glass in a lamb's ear; carry it in my coat pocket. Those who protect others will be protected.


I can't stand to smell the doubts of others. I must swallow them, and be sickened when my love is not enough. Feeding a child with dysentery. 


But there are some words I forget, so familiar etched in the backs of my hands. My few scars are faint, but clear enough to show that I've known pain. And perhaps I've made an idol of my buckled, rustling pages, but they melt heavy on my tongue, earthy and leaden like rain. 


So maybe your brother died. And you feel to blame for silence. So maybe you wake each morning guilty for your daughter, keeping her in sagging dim hotels. If I can't make it whole, let me help you make it evenly broken. 


No one believes you. And I want to. I know that I've felt more than breezes on my spine. Those white things you see are begging you silently for peace...and your eyes, selfless and helplessly seeing, crumble soft like glowing embers. A sound like breath on powder, in the burning orange.


Maybe I can comfort when... 
And try to extend some solace... 


It is getting cold. But I am still barefoot.

The Memory of Birds

I reached her house and saw her sitting cross-legged in the front yard, in the shade of the big maple tree. She was looking up the street, so our eyes met at the same time. She smiled, but she didn’t get up. I smiled too, not knowing what to say, and ambled across the lawn to her. There was something small and brown in her hands that quivered slightly.

I felt tall and awkward, walking up to Eliza sitting there in the grass. She didn’t say anything until I was right in front of her, and then she asked,

“Would you like to hold him?”

I grinned and said yes. She told me to sit down. Then she placed the brown fluffy thing in my hands. Geoffrey adjusted his stubby wings to regain his balance after the transfer. I wasn’t prepared to feel how light he was, how fragile, like a handful of grandfather dandelions. The queerest thing was the sensation of his body against my fingers; I could distinctly make out his breastbones beneath the down. That surprised me. There seemed to be nothing but airy fluff and a thin membrane of skin between my fingertips and his ribs. But below I felt his round belly, warm and moist. It swelled in and out. His little feet clutched at my skin in a funny way, so I laughed, and Eliza looked at me, enjoying my initiation. I felt like I should say something.

“How old is he?”

She answered that he was probably about two weeks old. She said she knew this because his eyes were fully open but he still had baby fluff.

I was always impressed by Eliza’s solemn knowledge. Maybe that was why she charmed me like no other girl I’d ever met. She was a child, but her mind was sensible and probing. I still don’t know what she saw in me; I was such an overgrown excuse for a teenager. Maybe she sensed how I saw meaning in things, the way she did.

I gazed back down at Geoffrey, who was blinking and rustling his little sheathed wings. I bent my head to inspect them. Each feather was growing out of a semi-transparent tube, made of quill material. The tips of his feathers were free and fanning out, but the roots were still tightly bound in tube-sheaths.

With my face close to Geoffrey like that, I smelled him for the first time. It was a curious, delicate smell: eggy, sweet, with a hint of urea. I didn’t find it offensive, and leant there, inhaling for a moment.

Then Eliza shifted beside me and I saw her pick up a recycled yogurt container from beside her leg. She pulled out a small worm, took it between her fingers, and methodically tore it into three bits. They wriggled and exuded guts, but she placidly laid two of the pieces on her bare knee, and leaned over to feed Geoffrey the third. I watched in silent admiration. As her hand neared Geoffrey, he lifted his head, beak open, and flapped his tiny wings, letting out a series of sharp, shrill chirps. I could feel his whole body straining up toward that bit of worm. With the writhing morsel safely in his beak, he bobbed his head and swallowed it, his eyes pressed shut.

“Don’t the parents sometimes regurgitate the food for their babies? I asked. “Would spitting on the pieces help Geoffrey digest them?” I hoped this was an intelligent question.

Eliza leaned back and squinted for a moment in thought. Then she turned to her knee and picked up a second bit of worm, saying,

“Bird saliva is different from human saliva.”

I nodded. And I watched Eliza carefully feed Geoffrey the rest of the worm. His body was warm, and my palm sweated, so his down feathers stuck to my skin. When I gave him back to Eliza my hand felt cool in the air. Eliza took him in a motherly sort of way, and I felt something like a father. Protective, and proud, and a little in awe.

As I walked home I brushed my nose, and smelled Geoffrey on my hand. 

In Trutina

Lucy and Schröder in a cardboard box,
Herman and his dogs,
Neanderthals.

Andy Warhol offers me saltwater taffy under the barn door.
Will the absurdity of this moment induce me to succumb?
Yellow hay is strewn around his shoes.

Quivering in balance,
Between pungent printed pages and a bundle of letters, wrapped in diaphanous white, from four and a quarter years of patience.

Wrapped in blinding white,
I will carry a rock in each hand,
And climb this fragrant summit,
Damp in the scents of myrrh, cinnamon, cane, and cassia.


"In Trutina": Carl Orff

Penned Again

Glittering like bits of blowing tinsel, the stars gathered in a patch of
midnight sky, the Pleiades one bright smudge against the darkness.
This will be a brief meeting, a one quick feeding in the lawn before being
penned again.
- Eat of the earth's richness while you can -
But my plate is too full: feed my soul.

Press my eyes closed. I will feel it is you by your fingertips.
Hold me as tight as I hold you. Tighter. Your bark is rough on my lips.

Branches design to blind me as I run,
(Run? Stumble, as inebriated as I am with the sap of stars)
Cold mud numbs my spinning feet to the point of pain.
I will not will not stop until I fly, or fall. It has begun.
I will not linger at the threshold. I will run down the aisle to your arms.

We Are Separate Flours

Grow me a garden of this kind of nothing,
Draw me a picture of this kind of fine.

Tell me why I can't sneak back inside
After playing school in the yard until midnight.

You hear me scratch at the window, and turn your head.
We are separate flours.
Together, we'll make bread.

Two Coins

My lips aren't close enough,
My mouth, my throat, my ribcage...
-I'm wishing it was safe to sleep outside-
...I cannot swallow this into my
Heart.


1.
You tuck my arm in yours, fondly,
And guide me firmly through a crowd I can almost see -
Stifling in a different way.
I smiled, surprised to realize I might have been afraid.


2.
It was the naturallest thing in the world, the way you slowly recognized me, smiled. Our talk was smooth as the awkward unpolished good can be. But it ended just as naturally, reached its fresh end, and left me wishing differently.  What I meant to be a gift became a trade, and a gift the other way. You gave me more before I could object. You left, and I could not help feeling cut out from a catalogue, posing softly by the corner until you returned.
Conscious affectation of unselfconsciousness. Relaxation. Shuffle again.


You have your mother's eyes, your father's face,
And a strange way of being brother, ever loving everyone
In a way that I have yet to understand, without mistakes. 


Rejoice with me, I have found my almost-idol under the table
In the dark, groping over a filmy floor and squinting down sideways so a ray might glint on the surface.
It was vouchsafed, and by a gracious grace. The shadow on the stairs went down.
What You grant I will take, only not my will, but Thine.


I am left in the frost with two warm coins.
What do you live for?
All these songs have been heard before. What will make them live?
When there is nothing new to say, say what is.

Draw Me A Picture of This Kind of Fine

With you, it's like being continually in love with the world.
Are these the eyes that you see with?
You love the light of the morning, the deep dark arms of the night,
The steam in your cup of tea, the texture of tree bark.
Are we blind in love? Or is it then that we finally see
The truest true of things?

Let me only walk awhile with you so the sound of wind's fondlings makes up our silence.

You baptize your hands in a bucket of hot soapy rags. You are quiet and alive as morning sunlight.
You speed along streets as a bringer of peace, on your bike.
You write music in lamplit corners while the rest of us sleep.
You come back later to make sure I'm alright.

Let us breathe deep the delicate scents of time,
To remember later when we are grown too old for journeys,
And can only remember life.

Bruised Leaves

I.

Kneaded, pounded, steamed, thumbed,
Pica for tree bark or the flesh of my arm,

The crackling of oil, the spitting of fat,
The splatter of rain on the tempered glass.

You won't mind my voice if I sing quietly,


Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

II.

I have blistered my arm with my own little mouth,

And left bite-marks along it in childhood.

I have nothing but skin to hold myself in,
At least leaves have release, when they blood.

You won't mind my arms if I hold you lightly,

Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

III.

Tie up my ankles and hang me, after,
I flower, aromatic, from attic rafters.

I've waited two years if I've waited an hour,

To rake where I'll nest, to bring lark song and laughter.

You won't mind my leaves if I love you rightly,

Rosemary, laurel, lemon, thyme,

Balsam, yarrow, yew.

Remember to Remove Your High Places

If your mother is a priest's daughter, she will lead you well.
But remember to remove your high places.
Remember the distinction in the ooze, and glow, and burn of Fire itself.
Fasten the stones of your brothers to your shoulder blades,
- A bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate -
And choose to lay down traces of idolatry in graves.

Do you see, you are the prey of old questions,
Though you deem yourself a different kind of breed.
Are you brave enough to be a child, green?
Clear your dazzled eyes and smooth your pride down,
Smile to show where teeth have not grown in.

Live for when the tocsin and the knell toll death of self,
And where the vines entwine around the tree.
I will move, by grace, from where my fingers linger
To where my ribs cave in, and then bleed free.

The Ends

Sometimes I can trace to the ends of my hair,
To younger years, when I danced with my blanket wrapped around my back,
When I asked for stories from outside bathroom doors.

Today I read aloud from the other side of a shower curtain,
And I danced in the edges of a pond reflecting the moon,
With a shawl around my shoulders, my feet plashing softly.

The shadows of trees tell me I am old,
And the moon tells me more:
I am not wrong to love and be drawn,
Maidenly, to aspire to tender hopes.

In His Earth

The three of us slid out of Claire's car, I the only one unused to the growing plot,

The rising action, of this place.

He emerged and met us, slapped their hands, and shook mine,
and we stood in a square, talking.

Light, sweet conversation mellowed us as we faltered into words, the creamy air of the last stirring day of September awing us a little. It was almost as if our feet were planted under those old trees, by the silver car.

In time the word was spoken and we made a beginning, taking hoes in hand and two of us baring four feet to weed between the rows. We shifted irrigation hoses, spread ourselves out and cut into soft, caky earth with rectangular tools on rods.

I salvaged forgotten red onions scattered in the paths and hidden between lettuce and small greens. In tight rows, we stooped and kneaded soil with our hands. I knelt and let it saturate my knees. Vital odors permeated the air, clean in the unity of their composting growth, like sweating crowds singing praise and turning fresh. In His earth our minds turned to Him, and in both the clumps we formed we naturally talked of God.

The germ of division molded into mottled feet of clay. Metal met worm, words lilted across minds; conversations linked and un-linked as we stepped over lines. 

When the work was done, we crossed to the tents with their tables of ripened tomatoes, bright-colored crates littering the ground like lobster traps, and wagon loads of dark round watermelon and squash.

He generously offered that we carry home a harvest.

He leaned against the trailer bed edge, and cut up pink flesh into wedges, handing them around as we gathered. The thick brown earth on my hands was drying into dust. I smacked off a layer and ate, and watched the dripping juice stain my dirty hands darker where it fell. The seeds crunched and I swallowed most of them.

For most of an hour we savored food God had made, and laughed at the way we threw rinds, or fooled ourselves. When honesty caught the conversation, it came out smoothly, like breathing. Like I'd want it to be: bottled things aged carefully to perfection, but served liberally.

Good has power, and gentle can be rough and tumble, and clear blue has depth like the sky. There are new shoots even while things die. And knowledge doesn't make you wise.

As I carried my bursting paper bag back to my room, I bent and smelled the rich, sweet, varied scents of autumn's abundance, lent to me unexpectedly on a single rare Friday. I could not keep from smiling, and laughed in the shower.

September 24, Bridesmaid

Only a year ago
We sat at the top of the world you were about to enter.
We sat at the top of your stairs, in our nightclothes,
Wondering,
Awed, and calm, and terrified by terror and by joy.

The breath of trust blew through us from behind
The space above and the space below
Were the blending points of our two white thoughts,
That would grow gold.

That night I slept in your sisters' room, and your sister cried.
Cried to think of evenings without your soft voice hushing,
your love soothing,
your snowy arms hugging her goodnight.

But it was right to let the harmony begin
Love so desired, and love inspired a song that two could sing.

With the next coming of the cool moon over desert sand,
There was a new ring on your left hand
And all the stars rang together
With laughter.

A Saturday Without Gravity

When you asked me to be your mother, I didn't know how,
Except by carrying you longer
And letting you down.

To your sister I have been daughter, mother, father, lover;
Chef, and beast, and dressmaker.
Later I'll be wife, after waiting draws more than side-glances
Or startling stares through glass.

I wonder if the stories I tell you are my own,
If I'm waiting to be plunged into water.
It took death to make her love, love to make her live,
Life to make her feet ache on ground.

She's tied to twenty-two silken threads to keep from floating away.
I'm tied to my own apron strings.

The House of Blessing

We have prayed behind trees,
We have danced on young grass, young snow, in secret,
We have run barefoot on rocks in the rain.

We have met quietly in libraries,
We have staked ourselves in hallways
We have shaken with laughter, ached with tears.

We have watched a woman clutch men's hands and fling her body in a wheel of war,
Like a shot bird whirling, rolling on a road,
Like music, like a thrown stone, but "light as phyllo dough."

We have sung in the night,
We have talked until early,
We have sung in the morning, and made bread from memory.

We have carried tables up stairs,
Tangled fingers in sunny hair,
Un-knotted knots as we wished.

I have scrubbed behind closed doors, 

Told stories while stories were stored,

Eaten from the surface of the world.

You have woven home in close quarters,
Made beauty in a beater house,
Greeted change with grace.

You have blessed, and I have been blessed. Amen.

Near Austin, August 7

Open arms, open arms.

Your foster child is blessed, her room is hallowed, the great-grandmother has entered it.

Eighty-four years separate two women who will never remember each other. Both rejoice in the other, light up like clouds aflame in sunlight.

Here is a home, a home, a home,

Liberal and loving.

Open arms invite entrance to the heart

Can I trust vulnerability?

A warmth like a kiss in the corner of the mouth. A twitch, a smile, a gentle southern twang,

And the little one’s soft head and tender body passed from embrace to embrace. Conversation of fishing and of fishing. Caught fish must be cleaned, may wound you in the cleaning.

Peacemaking, our mother joins two hands across the table. Like a sign, the others cover them with their own.

Don’t Shave Dogs Past Easter becomes Don’t Say Pure Desire Ever Abandons those who lift up their hands…or spread them wide.

She will not remember you, but she will know red hair for kisses for the rest of her life.

Old Poems

Libraries

Jesus met me in the library.

I was afraid to go into the aisle where the bearded man was.

He was wearing a bright green shirt.

I was afraid to listen to my friend

Or to take the time to tell her how I really felt.

The girl with brown hair,

Who wasn’t really there,

Was there in my dream.

I was unafraid, and Jesus’ name broke the silence

As I proclaimed it and praised it in the parking lot -

Who He is: the Holy One, the Savior.

Why can’t I, don’t I, yell it in real life?

Why am I so careful to hide from others, that I hide it from myself?

Why don’t we die from forgetfulness?

Why do we forget that the universe is controlled

By God?

Why am I knotted inside?

Jesus, Jesus, the Holy One, the Savior.

The only name that should be yelled

In libraries.

If This is Learning Love

Keeper of my heart,

I want so much to be loved

By what I love

I want what I love

To love me

I want what I love

To love me.

Keeper of my soul’s keys

You must know what I mean

Isn’t all You’ve known with us

Wanting to be loved

By what You love,

Wanting to be loved

By what You love?

On the Heights

Hold me by my right hand

And take my fear away

Guide me with Your gentle words

And lead me in Your way

For what desire have I on earth?

There is nothing here but Thee

For You have called me your loved one

And set my spirit free.

Hide and Seek

Where are You hiding?

Are You hiding?

I am faint

For want of You.

One moment I am glad,

For Your hem brushes against me as You

Walk by

And I am warmed and

Comforted.

But now I have become

Cold,

And sadness settles on me like dew.

It is as if I see You

Only to lose sight of You again,

And to doubt whether it was really You

At all,

Since the emptiness remains.

You have passed by me

And the breath has left my lungs

To cling to You

So that I will not breathe again

Until I find You.

Branded

Come to us

Brand our backs with your Name

And the pain will draw us out of this complacency

These lies, this inconstancy.

Our hearts will flame and burn for You

All fear will fade

And love be true.

Draw us out of this numbness, this death

The truth is what we long for,

For passion, purpose, and for love

And righteousness…

Oh, for righteousness.

To battle like a warrior

To wash feet like a servant

To give You all we have

And find You gave us more in return.

So come to us

Come to us

Jesus.