Solar Flare

These things we push away from us
dirty, scarred, ripped and torn
are half shells of truth
stripped down to the bone,
their wings now debt.

These learned, sidestepped paths
that took me down to those hollow veins
and shone in a grimy light
the ways in which I was
Not.

Not this.
Not this.
Or that or this,
knocking every one down with splintered bats
from sidewinder curves
and misses
and outs.

These will not be soul-breaking labors.

The births that mark time on this strange tree
have no power to make me less,
only more true
more true
and more true.

Every revelation
a solar flare of deeper law
that brings me home.

Hafiz, again

This

Sky

Where we live

Is no place to lose your wings

So love, love

Love.

Watch this, too. So, so beautiful.

Holding Form

There are seams in the drywall
and dimpled, popped-out nails
resentful of holding things together,
straining against their purpose.

And then there is me -
succumbing with every stuttered beat,
every line of light.

Everything holds form around me
in divine recognition.

It is the most joyous work
I have ever done.

An Abiding Yes

It is a deep sinking into the earth
it is energy, raw and primal
you cannot dip your toes, only dive

so you must be ready
as ready as you can be.

There are hands to hold
and ways to find
but this bottomless grasp,
this symbiotic link

it cannot be forged.

It is an abiding yes,
pure intent.

More Than Either Or

the truth is
there are more than these two choices
more than either/or

branches upon branches,
thousands of doors
leading back to the one way.
every word I write takes me there

and you -
you bring me there, too.
every meeting a new lesson
in the ways of myself.

thank you, my teachers.

The Great Pulse of the World

I think maybe the path
and the trees and the leaves
know me better than man.

They have no business to worry
no advertising save pollen
set free in spring's breeze.

I do not compete here
in this cacophony of woods.
The brook and stone
and moss covered floor
let me take of their green
and ivy'd shores
even as I bleed for them
and share my warmth.

There is no contract writ
between our beating hearts,
only the great pulse
of the world
to rule our breath.

Everything Shines

I spend days
trying to dig out
some semblance of a beautiful thought
excavate it like an emerald
smuggled thoroughly
hidden safely
in a dark pocket.

I'm seeing it all wrong.
all wrong.
I only have to look at it
to make it shine.

attention.
This must be the key.

everything shines
when it is truly seen.

There Is a Sleep That Rests In Our Bones

There is a sleep that rests in our bones,
independent of time,
waking only when the fullness of life
has brightened our door.

It is the demon we learn to love,
the spectre and weight of the price for this flesh,
the patient of grief who claims us all in our turn,
the knowledge that sorrow can't stay.

Anchor Stone

I can already feel myself
tethered down to you,
this strong anchor stone
in my shifting sands.

How do you navigate me,
as solid as you are,
when I am changing thus:
everyday new?

Maybe you are the blade
that catches my tempest,
transforming movement
into the stored energy of us.

I do not have to name it
only claim you as mine,
this weighted
solid
anchor of love.

Walt

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward . . . and nothing collapses

***

I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground. . .the weeds of the sea have. . .the animals.

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!

-Walt Whitman, excerpts from Leaves of Grass

The Great North Road

Where did I begin?
From some Great North Road,
through the womb?
That is the place from which I come.

And here.
Here.
Here there is light in every direction
an undulating river of light that plots my course.
There are stone walls to guide the sun and
the Great Arrow
that leads me home.

But who am I?
I am a builder of clay
some boulder of time
who erodes so slowly,
so carefully.
Every intent gets woven
into this vitreous stone
which,
upon breaking,
has made the proper sacrifice
so that I may begin again.

The Ledge

We all rest
on this ledge
believing a lie
of brokenness

How long until
we do not forget
that we are whole
we are one
we are free

Hafiz

Just sit there right now
Don't do a thing
Just rest.

For your separation from God,
From love,

Is the hardest work
In this World.

(excerpt from "A Cushion for Your Head", The Gift by Hafiz)

Fulgerite

In this haze, this
morning of loss,
what would you have me surrender?
When faced with
this road
and that
do I choose this lightning struck trail,
so seemingly ruined?

Do I place
one
searing
footstep
into the burning house
and let it consume me,
rid me of all passion,
all suffering?

I say,
if sorrow is the price I must pay
to see flames of stone
built into this heated land,
I will walk plainly
through fog bank and rain
and let only my knowing
bring me to this House of Fire.

Consumption is a god's task.
I surrender the burden easily.

This Body of Time

This body of time
that moves outside of me,
a great flowing ocean
of adamant possibility -
tighter I clasp
white-knuckled and grasping
like holding on to air
without wing or lung.

It is all beautiful
immortal
precious.
Nothing will escape,
least of all
me.

Light at Last

This cairn that buried me
these thousand years
is cracking,
freedom, inescapable
and fearsome,
bites at my heels.
An angel archaeologist
chips silently away at
petrified bits,
flesh and bone made
stone
and precious gem -
a shining prism
turned to light at last.

A Stronger Heart

There are waves
that touch me in this emptiness,
great forms of light
and meaning.
I struggle to sort ill intention
from blindness
and to accept that consequence
disregards them both.

I fight to learn how
to take joy as it comes,
to travel that lemon yellow
stream of light
to a source I know as myself.

I would not
that I had less Sight
but stronger feet,
a stronger Heart
to witness the blindness of men.

"Go out into your heart. . . "

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke's Book of Hours
(Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Parent Arms

Comfort comes in such strange languages -
the arch of a pendulum's swing,
the faces of forgotten gods,
the gentle sway of smoke in this stranger home.

But,
it comes because I ask,
my reach short as a child's -
the Universe unable to do nothing less
than respond with parent arms,
gather me close
and whisper love in my ear.

Dryline Boundary

In the woods of my heart
I wait for you.
It's some promise I made
many lives past
echoing through valleys
and broken streams
over cracked crags
crossing my dryline boundary.

You are the squall line of tempest
that hems me in,
the strong hand that shutters other storms
who might swallow me whole.

Together we are the earth and sky
the wind and the scrying rain.
All you are settles into me,
even from this distance.

You are the coming love,
my gravity wave.

An Unexpected Grace

I am far out to sea,
newly wrought from when I had you last.
I have been reborn, reshaped
and set to sail into new currents
yet
I mourn you still.

My phantom pains are sneaker waves,
the past colliding with the matter I have now become.

1600 days since you were taken and torn
but in your place
(that emptiness where you once lived)
filaments of the sun have been strung,
mapping out a blueprint of sorts,
a new topography that lights the core of me.

It is an unexpected grace.

What could not grow in your waters,
what I could not birth then
now escapes through my skin in finely stranded echoes of light,
an indirect labor
in the harbors of these new lands.

No Coda

Your name is my prayer.
Surely gods tire of this
single syllable I speak.
It is the only refrain I afford,
no coda,
nothing repeats -
just the thousands of ways
I can speak your name.

Terminus

There is a quiet, dense
secret
forming inside me.

It is the key to all hidden things.

Somehow, mysteries
now shimmer faintly for me
at the edge of sight -
a world of shadowed,
irridescent, gossamer threads.

Ostensibly, there is some door I pushed,
not knowing its destination,
whose threshold has, not wrongly,
brought me to myself.

She is a flawed, grasping,
Divine thing
called forth from fevered nights.

Mystery no longer, she is Known.

She is who has been beneath my skin
all this time.

The Line You Drew

I am the water that covers the line you drew,
a puddle that overflows
to become stream and river
and in my time I make a divide,
a separation you must cross
to find me again.

The Curfews of Man

Confess me,
fallen as you are,
all waxen limbs
and feather thoughts.
Together we are
the pure brilliance of youth
dying a knowing death.

On planted cords
your absolution overflows me.
Oppression releases in torrents
and new seas are made
in the hour.

Our merging hearts
become the new light,
a new world bound bright
whose boundaries
reach further
than the curfews of man
can contain.

Nothing But the River

(for Jena)

Nothing can stay in this place you made
for we are all larger,
in thought,
in quark and motion,
than space could ever hold.

Nothing can live in this sameness
where breath is stopped
and change is choked back,
for every particle of us
moves
and becomes.

What was, what is, what comes
is not more or better,
is not lesser or dead.

See the water of your hands.
The truth is that.
There is nothing but the river
the rocks
the water
the white capped rapids
the seemingly placid depths.
They all travel
from this place to that place:
stream to sky,
rain to bush,
back again,
but never still.

Entrainment

I know of a silence
between hearth and wood.

It is tacit agreement
in the compounding math
that is the movement
between you and me.

The threshold cradles
5,000 acre cuts
of russet shade,
a creeping, liminal breath
and newly birthed facets
of ever-expanding matter.

It is the belly of stone. Mother.
It is that series of eternal moments
between heat
and ignition
in which rest the whole of our existence.

It is choice.
It is entrainment,
a willing burn,
contained
and radiant
inside fragile thought.

A Paid Genealogy

As the hazy dusk of twilight falls
and folds
into cathedral corners
of wing and bone,
all that you rend from me
is a pittance,
a paid genealogy.

The winter asks much more than dues
with its inching fingers
and sharp bites.
The call of the geese from the field,
the path to family
and away,
all these exact a more punishing price
than the memory of you
does
anymore.

And I do not know how to worship
that revelation
more than in this moment.

This Liminal Place

I do not know
what it was that shattered me so,
errant breath
whose will would overtake my own,
only that I closed
as morning glory in full night
when Seeing
should have saved me so.

The world gave name to him,
the one who sawed the chord I would sing,
and instead silence was the price I paid,
a score of years
without breath to become
that which ether and submission
had borne.

In silence, then,
it is not surprising to note,
is release undertaken once again.
A stillness in which no weight is carried hence.
This liminal place
in ever-stretching hands
holds every damaged salve
in conflict no more.

Ever Turning

There are spheres in the world
that contain the whole of who we are:
the womb that carries us,
the sky of night by which loving voices
sing to us,
the cup of palm,
the grace of skull
and forming bone,
the round tone of voice which paints
such heartbreak of love,
the wheel of time,
the curve of ripened fruit
that lets us imbibe unbroken summers.

These will twist and turn us,
heating all sides
until we are encompassed by fire
in a wave of creation to which
we are born
ever perfect
ever turning
never ending.

Burned Blue

Every one of our words were burned -
flame-ignited, smoke and ash,
not a single syllable to be seen.

Only heat remained,
inexorable
curling licks of it
passing through our hands.

And finally,
when the world would let us stand
for each other,
naught but burning remained,
our words whisked away in smoke
again,
into a witnessed fire
that burned blue at the edges.

I have a book!

Blurb.com is awesome. I now have my own little book! It's called Starling Barge.

Super Nova

I am feeling sick in my cocoon.
It is fever hot
and painful to the touch.
There is nothing
save movement,
everything becoming.
I
myself
me
I am the same,
at one with the walls that hold me.
But the wings are forming.
The soon intolerant touch
of the earth
holds sway no longer.
I transform into delicacy
and flight.
Every incarnation on my way
is torment, though.
Molecular super novas
burn clouds of sight
from old eyes.

The gravity of light
now holds my life
captive
and free.

The Mire and the Field

It is not about
escaping the mire
in which you find yourself.

It's about squishing your toes
deeper into the mud,
grasping the reeds,
letting the panic of constriction
shorten your breath
and quicken your heart -

and finding peace
within that sunken stance,
finding Spirit there with you -

that which teaches us
not only that the mire and you
are One
but that there is dry ground
and wide field
and that
you are One with them, too.

Crucible

The world is what winnows me away.
I come in to you,
burned by the outside.
I come in to you
reduced to my elements,
a shining Truth.
I come in to you
and hope you are not blind today.

Mariner

I do not ask the light to come,
this force that breathes life
and beauty
into this moment
but arrives with quiet progression.

It carries the house of joy
and a key to unlock the rooms
of distant oceans.

I cannot say where the light takes me,
where I sail on these seas,
only that you are my destination.

The light brings me to you
and offers me up
in this time that runs short.

Our shrinking minutes
are shaped by your grace,
descending like motes on the sun's last rays.

And in the end -
my journey's maps,
my carrier waves?
They are vast
but hold nothing
when measured against you.

You are my end,
my joy,
my oceans,
my golden hour.

To See Such Light

Beneath the light
that turns me daily towards home,
a strange crucible has formed.

Between tire
and pavement
a collection of fall has consorted
and consents in time
to a mortar and pestle of sorts -
an end which brings
such heartbreaking memory to mind
that I drive not home
but deeper into
remembrance of love's first light
a decade past.

The smell and stain of tannin
has left me marked with you.

I breathe you in again
and out again
and see such light
as the leaves may bring.

Build Me a Sentence of Myself

I know this language.
I know these words.

They shape the curve of your lips
the arching brow
the rough nape of your neck
where the hairs are short
and tickle my palm.

The syllables fall like water drops
rolling easily along your hot skin.
I am lost in the language of you,
my native tongue
the pulsing recognition
of neurons
that never forget
the syntax
and pace
of your worried hush.

Build me a sentence
of myself
that we may unite
together
songs
of devastating love.
Our voice will still the ocean.

El Corazon Amarillo

I found a gold balloon
tucked safely in
your book of words.

You speak of yellow hearts
and foreign lands
and returning from the sea.

I know none of these things
but through your eyes.
Indeed,
I know very little.
I am still on shore
and wondering
what use I am.

I left this life once, you see -
a chance given,
my soul took its flight.
But still,
I linger, tethered
and no reason remains.

I am compacted ash
waiting for the rains
and wind
to make sense of me again.

Nameless Suns

There is a time
that is about stripping away
all from your life
that does not make you live.

There is a time
that is about paring down
and turning around
and down and back again
until all you have is a
worn circle of dirt
beneath bare feet.

There is a time
of peeling back your skin
and standing pink
under a burning sky
of falling friends
and ashes for homes.

There is a time
for all of this,
but it is
not
now.
Now is the building time,
now is the mending time,
now is the learning time.

Now is a slow creation
with skilled breaths
and cheated hearts that still love
and rusty voices
that never forget
how to weave matter
and thought
into nameless suns.

Misplaced

I have been
misplacing my pens
lately.

Or maybe I place them
and then move my self
to more empty locations.

Words are pouring in
like the sickness that came
in the night
but it doesn't get better.
They only beget more.

I hold them close,
the only children I will bear.
Though they are neither disease
nor child, truth be told.

They are Spirit.
They are Divine,
they are Neruda, Oliver, Rilke
following me home
in slim volumes
that sleep with me
on blankets of down.

They jostle as I reach
for the pen I cannot place
and whisper,
"More."

The Devil's Hand

It feels like the devil's hand
all fire and want
bubbling up from damned places.

All there is to do
is let it burn me down,
and find that silver flame,
the thin kite string back to me
and follow it out
of the dowsing waters.

And on the other side
I blink the ashes free
and find I am not lost,
just pink skin
and tired mind
but not destroyed at all.

Starling Barge

Everything is brilliance
and dust
and dying stars
on my doorsteps.

Shame and shining joy
war for coverage of my heart
and just for the night
I let joy win,
knowing shame is never far.

For now, joy's door
is easy to nudge open,
the setting sun holds it there,
a barge that pushes and ferries
my unkempt wildness
into wordless song.

In joy's light
everything is starling moments,
beginnings
and formless creation -
the root of me
sunken deep in the dark soils of time.

It is splendor -
uncontained,
wild and free
the dust of the Universe
breathed in through my
solar sun
and lighting softly
on the heart.

For now,
it is all that I am.
It is enough.

Pablo

"It is born"

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.

-Pablo Neruda

My Hoard

All the Hail Marys
rotting with the refuse in
gutters now strewn
with once holy thoughts.

All the wishes whispered
in night's dark camp
now hanging from limbs
like last season's nest.

All the pocket treasures
buried deep in badger burrows
waiting to sprout
thrift stores of broken marbles
and balls of string.

All these enshrined things
now turned to dust
but you still live in me
inciting sacred lines
and nightly wishes.
You are my pocket treasure
growing tall,
hoarded safely in soft hands.

Timbre

I am the sound,
the violence of clapper
and bell curve
contained in wave after wave
of shape
moving through you
becoming new
and changing the tide.

I am the echo of love
in flesh and blood
and the tear of time
in memory's wake
because nothing more remains.

I am every shape,
every vibration not seen
with human eyes.

I am everything that was,
I am all that is left,
I am that which is unborn,
still,
the sound wave of creation.

The Firefly's Light

I dream of making daisy chains
in shrouded meadows
bright in my mind.

I count petals and the days of summer
and sing tuneless hymns
in the fields of night.

I try to light like the fireflies,
project a beacon for coming home.

All I do, really, is shine for you
split my stems
fit another one in,
links in a chain of timeless lives.

I whisper to the growing trees,
they are all I see
no forest or glen.

Your eyes are in every one.

Daisy

It is one petal,
white against green
multiplied a hundred times.

It is yellow centers
and quiet love,
the promise of tomorrow
and only now.

It is mid-summer
and cooling nights
and the brush of wind
across my heated face.

It is the word you write
and your voice in song,
temptation's fight
and what belongs.

It is everything in me
that pushes out to change my world.
It is rewriting me,
rewiring me,
remodeling all the aging bits
into streamlined
clean
clear spaces
that can hold just one more day.

Only the Wind

In the quiet of a dawning night
everything stills into this motion of you
plucking my stems
and halving me in quick bites.

You separate pit from flesh.
The newly pink is bitter against your tongue,
the ripened parts are sweetness and juice
down your chin.

And the concave shape that is left,
where you dented and grew inside of me,
is consumed again
and changed again
and remolded so wholly into a newer life.

Without you I will be the wild cherry tree,
brought to season far from selective hands
growing tall with only wind to seduce me.

Pencil Lines

I lay out the stones
on little drawn grids,
faint pencil lines and eraser bits
on cream colored paper.

It almost looks a toy from far away,
maybe marbles
or jacks
but it is a gentle conjure
of new thought.
It is the paving of new roads,
not lining the old
over top of deep ruts and potholes.

It is a question that brings deep truth,
a rainbow strand floating
on newly moved water.

I lay out the stones
on little drawn grids,
say my prayers,
my penance,
redraw the pencil lines
and leave the rest
for tomorrow.