Advice on Returning from Retreat

If you are round, stay round.
You have let tears soften
your jagged fear,
stars polish away pride
and the shelter of meekness.
You have found your place,
and if you change shape,
you will lose it.

What has been born forms many angles,
the sinew of incarnation.
Wolves have sharp teeth,
and some take up knives against them.
Some will throw anchors to stay as they are,
some will lay tracks to get away,
some will break into pieces.

Allow them all to become you
to pass through you
and return to what is unmade.

If you must, gently push them through
and they will become round,
round as the earth whence they came.

Death

This morning, a willow shimmered and then,
took out my heart did she.
The tree was an angel
who bent there to me
and said only
now you are not sure,
as fall a river of your tears,
if you can trust.

That was all she said
and she embraced
the empty space
with her delicate branches,
as a tree that is an angel must.

While You are on Retreat

You are the tear in my eye,
you are the picture of grace,
I am the riverbank that holds you.
Run, my love for the dying ones,
run for those little and lost,
bring them your life.
Learn the portents of the sky,
bend deeper than the willow,
let the night set your bones
upon the Raft.

Bring this warrant to Charon,
that in darkness black,
I am ever the husband
of my darling wife.

Crow

Thoughts are but teeth on a larger gear,
where angels of stone are thought to draw near.
Now the wheels of the cart have begun to come off,
in the half light of aging as sense disappears.

It is written that we breathe but a short while.
It is written that we make dust into piles.
May I take back the things that I have profaned,
the names and the measures sequestered in files?

I walk in the rain of a blackening evening.
Crow was sentenced to speak without singing
for stealing us rhythm and meter and verse
to touch the sunset to which we are winging.

Performance Review

I ask them how they like working here,
and they say they enjoy it.
We go through the list of duties.
I tell them they are doing a good job,
and they smile.
I've said it here and there all year,
like Oh good idea, or That is excellent,
but we have not paused to look at each other,
which is so much more honest,
which honors this time and space
and reviews the most important thing,
how we are together.

Fox

I saw a fox by the roadside
perhaps looking to cross.
He was standing in the grain
with one of those looks on his face
like I know I get on Sunday morning,
when work looms,
and nothing productive is on tap.
Here are some suggestions for him:
1) Build a new room in the den.
2) Bring home a mole for the kits.
3) Run faster, harder and longer,
you'll find a settling of the body.
4) Let it all be,
stop trying so hard to be in control.

That was a strange look he had, though,
so much more human than animal.
He must have had rabies.

Strings

When I was young I did not want to change things.
I was like a sheet drying on the line,
waving, watching cabbage butterflies go by.
I was a cabbage butterfly
dancing around the sheet,
I was a waterfall of silver water in the sun,
I was dragonflies,
a tiny fossil in a big pile of shale,
and an enormous luna moth in porchlight.
I did not know my mother,
who sat in the kitchen like a puppet.

As I write and grow older by degrees,
I realize how often I forget to go outside.

Retreat

You are packing up for retreat.
I hold you and we both cry.
I've become attached to you, you say.
I find it ironic and right as rain,
that you are going to find
the unbound essence of things,
set free the little angels that
somehow become tethered to us,
let your definition warp like a willow,
become still as a ghost at tea,
and that you are mine forever.

When you return,
I will be loud and ungainly,
fumbling and moody,
but my love for you will be
like a cup
I have put away
most quietly and gently,
since you left.

Sycamore

Treetops blow around
in the ten-o-clock breeze,
I am walking to my car.
Last year's seedpods waft,
light but tethered
to proud branches.
They are as clean and free
as myself at the end of the day,
driving to my proud little home,
far above what has not been settled,
pushed up safely by effort,
ready to fall, or to stay held,
or to decorate my maker.

Back Home

The light of dawn hits the window
and I walk out in a fresh wind.
At night, I am watching my breath,
while the blue deepens around me.
I do not move while my breath rises
I do not move while it falls.

I had thought for so long
that my attention was somewhere,
waiting for sunrise.
But it is the window,
golden or black.

Otherwise I'm Fine

How will I handle the conversation,
what will I do with the list,
where will I find the resources?

It suddenly seems odd
to contend with myself,
but it is a habit of the mind
to make wild things
more dangerous than they are.

Magnolia

I watch a thousand petals of magnolia
shower onto the earth.
I hear a song in the back of my mind,
when the singer's voice was young.
He has died and he has been buried.
My loneliness has also grown old,
once decorating a brilliant pink tree
in a desolate and dry spring.

I walk in the many voices of daffodil,
I hear the wind ask of me,
Give me what must let go.
My roots, I understand,
will be nourished by this waning lament.

Like Deja Vu

The feeling that you are experiencing
a feeling of mythical proportions;
You imagine that
you are leaning to kiss her
by a trellis in the warm blue afternoon
behind the white alabaster library,
for the first time.

The sense that this spot is sacred,
even with the angry cars on their lost road,
and the wandering poor,
this place is right with everything,
and that the sparrows and the apple blossoms
are little notes on an eternal sheet of music.

The recollection that you are apprehended by something
like a mother's sunlit eye
upon the gift she has been given,
and that eye holds you,
and everything is equally loved
and pain is only comparison.

The spreading of strength
through nerves, muscle and even bone,
the slight curl of toes
through your shoes as you walk,
balanced on the strong curve of the earth,
where you have been invited to grow.

Standing right next to yourself
with shock and compassion
at what is foolish and right with you,
or steeping the personality
of someone beside you
inside you, as a tea.

Mulch

The beds have been covered with mulch today,
and only a few blades of onion grass rise above.
Other clumps of grass and weeds must die.
I was spreading in the sun,
say a bunch of dandelion spears.
Why is it night? Says crabgrass,
as the little plantain struggles against the black chips.
They all push upward toward the sun,
bend and wither, their roots with less to nourish,
until one day, the message comes to let go.

I throw such dress on what of me I cannot show
or leave open to the elements,
or see the natural beauty in,
and I suffer.

Dream III

I remember you now,
you were the soft and tan-skinned girl
that I am in love with.
I am dreaming that I am far away,
crossing the Himalaya with some porters,
and then suddenly in a market square
floating in the treetops,
drifting down to you,
where we embrace under the moon.

Those are good places to find you,
to remember that I am next to you,
lying in bed after a long day
writing the details of stories
other than mine.

Stars

The stars are many colors tonight,
copper, sapphire, white and yellow.
They hang there a hundred feet up.
The sky is indigo, the sky is warm.
I am running to the house with you.

They look out for us, I think,
because we are in love,
dip our touch in mystery,
dilate out pupils,
map our nerves like
wizened shamans.

Our mother, the Milky Way,
sends them to stand above us,
knit together our hearts
and await our return.

Rocket

I am building a rocket to slip the bonds of life
because it ends in death.
It is shiny and candyapple red,
riveted in bright brass.
It is fueled with unstable desire
and I am counting down.

Come to the launchpad,
rush up the steps, pull me back,
I will leave this mad design,
and live with you and our cats
in the soft blue night air
that settles over the pines.

Toast

White bread may kill me,
it lays in a loaf, and in my gullet
like the plain hope of Ronald Reagan,
right and fiberless,
utopian and blind.

But it holds butter and jam
without getting in the way,
and proffers light brown ease.
It is where Jesus has been found.
He has not appeared in multi-grain,
soft white wonder that he is.

Stories the Buddha Never Told

The world will fold in upon itself soon,
the black-eyed sea will be hit by the moon.
The name of this place can now be whispered,
as long as your teeth do not part in hunger.

This is a school where the sleeping are wakened,
this is where the boys play at war,
here is the cliffside of lovers' despair,
next to the launchpad of bright metal dreams.
Here is the night where things aren't what they seem,
and a sunrise of chickadees' mournful notes,
there are words you will find on the doorstep
to weave into heaven's unchaperoned boat.

Go in and ride for your life,
narrow and wasp-eyed angels are waiting.
Happily ever after offer your hand
to the smooth and quickening clay of creating.

Mind

I explode when you drop into my brain
gently, like a dandelion in a gust,
scattering all of me up and away,
happy to go all the places I must.

You visit like drops of rain on my window,
that touch and collect and run into streams,
you pull me up into a cloud and a shadow,
let me go, let me knit again into earth's seams.

I come home at the close of day to find you,
my parasol settles upon your arcade.
We harvest the tender saplings that bind you,
weave them by grace into our own glade.

Loving You

It's finding a golden newt,
its radio waves in my fillings,
a publisher's high five,
a bath of spring wind
over lavender earth,
the bell the sun rings
to awaken an infant,
the invisible songs
that pour forth from cats,
its doing a thing that I'm quite sure I can't.
The cockeyed encounters
that slumber in hats,
and balsa wood planes
with rubber band wishes
that fly through the sky
on a wing and a prayer
and my fingers that drift
through your warm chestnut hair.

Prosperity Church

I am faithful.
I gave half of my energy to my dreams,
and it was not enough, so I gave it all.
It was the dream of undying,
of golden leaves in my name,
of a seat in the Master's house,
in purple robes with golden threads,
and blushing pears for everyone.

Tomorrow, I will eat potato chips,
walk three miles with you at sunset,
and sleep like the dead,
but in my mind,
I will be driving the Deacon's Rolls
down to North Carolina.

Mid-March

The foxes are in their den somewhere,
the trees are gray with small red buds.
Along the road, cars whiz by
with the bodies of winding lives.

Another season is arriving
asking for the reception of a friend,
who will just be there,
offer tears for what has died,
hope and love for what is growing,
a little cake for the hungry,
because there is no better place to be.

Sheen

If I don’t check the internet
like every five minutes,
something could happen I’d miss,
like Feather Cells Tell of Tiny Dinosaur's Crowlike Sheen,
I mean really, that was in there today
and I almost blew by it.
Think about it.
That goddamn fantastic tiny dinosaur
and its crowlike sheen.
I can see it now.
Honey, are those crows, or what?

I wish I had a crowlike sheen.
That’d be awesome.
Wait, look, check it out, is that it?

Pears

Touch anything gently enough
and it will start speaking with you.
It could be a pear, or a thought,
or the thought of a pear.
They are not ripe for long,
green, brown, they wait without a sound.

I might be sated with one,
delicious after a long hot run,
or musing in the presence of none.
I might be angry at pears, or not,
I can measure my anger thereby,
and the quick of me with their decay.

You are like me, says the pear,
Briefly full of nectar,
mostly meant to propagate,
with little time to spare.
I replied That's true,
and reached for meaning,
but at last there was no more,
no me, nor pear, but bliss'
ever-present blossom.

Muse

My muse has strong wings,
under the steep pine she sleeps.
At the hour of her waking
rising surely in the rain,
to my candle in the night.

She is the heart of words
that forever beats,
the conjunction of planets
in their endless rings,
and the secrets that they keep.

She brings memoirs of instants,
in the binding dust of time,
the measure of atoms,
the touch of two blind tigers
in a forest of desire.

I want her in my spine, liquid,
or sewn into my chest,
for to keep the song alive
that rolls me over Jordan.
But she goes to other muses,
subject of the Wheel as well.

Oasis

A warm March night
settles 'round the house,
opening flower tombs
that daub dusk
with daisy dirt.
The black is thicker,
safer, a spreading oasis
in desperate dunes.
I rest and I drink
with all of me here.

Morning

I remember driving to your house
years ago for five hypnotic hours,
with a big dark coffee at hour one
that put me in the picture,
tuned in the music, embossed my mind
with the bright plaque of our love.
When I arrived, you pulled me close
to your coconut skin, your songbird heart,
and I lifted you up to your room.
Your room looked just as I'd expected it to,
friendly to silence, bowing to aches,
in sand, red, grey and a little calico.
It was our island in the night,
we were friends, lovers, and witches,
monks, grunion, and stars for a while.
In the morning, a soft gold dawn
rolled up from India to whisper to us,
tired, yes, but worth every mile.

Time

Time is quite a lady,
shy, then bold.
Off kilter every new moon,
amused at my odyssey
in her fullness.
She was a baker's daughter,
she harvested and baked me,
sliced and toasted me,
and spread the jelly of space
to give me life, across my face.
I don't like that,
want to make myself,
and I run around spoiled,
til time runs out.

We parade like ants
in this temporary thing.
But at last, I see,
time wants me to dance,
spin til she collapses,
patch her tattered wings.

Looking Outward

I hold the cat and we look out the window,
her little paws fit just over my shoulder.
Warm and curious
we both say at the same time.

We both know this is why
the universe expanded.

Rouen

Work rolls on,
Pam sings an aching goodbye to Bryant
at another graduation on the psychiatric unit.
I forget to mention it to staff
as we leave for home on Friday.
I would have said
That was beautiful.

Forgetfulness is a dove
that could not find his way home
from Rouen after bringing release to Joan of Arc.

I look at the sky sometimes and don't know why.