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

Melodramatic Tree-Hugger, Nov. 20

The weight of a dropped nut in my hand
Reminds me of a thimble.
Embarrassed alone in the woods, wanting to cover over obscenities on trees with my bare hands.
Do the leaves know what is scored into their bark? A scar of the shame of humanity:
The desire to deface the good and holy.

There are a few trees I have befriended. One to press my hand on six days of the week. One which made a chair for me when I found it in the snow, and now shelters a cairn of stones.
But this       white       wonder
Is a tragedy worthy of the prayers of the saints...

A tangle of helpless elegance supports it from a slide down the forest's incline,
For it is a broken body, voluptuous and angled in a dozen curves and bends of almost human forms,
But fallen with its arms outstretched along the ground, beseeching travelers to muse on the passing of the  white beech of Round Pond.
Clearly, this is a friend in need of company (I will kiss you youngly while I rest my cheek and neck against the swoop of your outstretched arm).

I am a waif of melodramatic tendencies, and my raw feet will reproach me in the morning.

But for now, I only smile at myself and the yapping dog who found me.
Somehow a wooden family soothes my wounded soul, and grows my heart another ring.

Forsythia

On the almost frozen ground

The young spring up, the old fall down.

O tender, tender, tender,

Why do you bloom in November?

Why do you bloom in November?

Umbrella

It was easier for me. I've been learning floating anyway, so relaxing was an exercise in life. Resting was a prayer in itself (but I admit to thinking how funny it would be if I held the ceiling handle, like our mother does).

I wondered if you felt carried as I did, or if you felt the pressure of causality, the burden of decision in a complicated way. Your voice sounded flushed. Nevertheless, we made it safe.

-

However do they drive so bravely? There are several things I am stepping out to learn. I am climbing in behind this wheel with real fears from all that I have (never) done before. Signal, Merge.
Single, Merge.

-

Rain pounds our faces faster and harder than we are prepared for. City lights blaze over black water like music and clinking glass. We taste wine on our lips. Or maybe it is blood, from biting them. A white flash - and the danger is behind us. We have passed.

Maybe, I hope, you understood,
That as I sang the words of those songs,
I meant them for you.

In some ways they were written for us,
For last night on the ride back.



Credits: "Umbrella" by The Innocence Mission.

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.

Patience in a Pulse and Helplessness

Bring me back to the child, forward to the woman,
Only let me hear music in the air and feel your breath.
My ivory tower is easy to hide in: it's only on top of my neck.
My hands once were clenched
Around what little I could gather for my confidence,
But now they are open, and what filters through my fingers leaves them heavy and confused.
If You were a bed of nails, I would pray You bend the laws of physics, so that I could lay down, and
You would pierce me through and through.
Do not leave me halfway shedding my cocoon.

Let me prove to you that I am afraid of helplessness:
I have already acquired a share of the viciousness and shame that I see in the lame, in the man that limped along with his walking wife, heavy and slow, intent on healing though couple after couple and dog after dog and jogger after jogger passed by. I wanted to tell him he was kingly, but I did not know how. His wife was a queen in her patient prodding love.

So much of life is helplessness,
How stubbornly we struggle for independence!
And again, we are caught, against rain storms and our impotence.