Dear love
Dear sun and moon and wooden spoons
Here are the stars in my curled palm
For you alone
When love leaves you
I hope you remember how your eyes can shine
See the spine of the mountain
Cradling the sun and your sorrow
Tomorrow you will find new ways to unfold
To massage the creases cutting through cloth
Hang it all on a rope between pines
For breezes to swing and lend new life
Here is your hope,
Here is your heart
Just hold on.
Stay there and don’t say a word
Ethereally, eternally I watch you lift the floor boards
Hush and hide
Some strange melody tickles at the back of my throat
A prayer or a promise or what is anything at all
The bigness of opening
So peculiar in its allure
She tumbles down the hillside
Brambles and brush thorns biting her legs
I see you sometimes there
Your arms outstretched and those hickory hazel eyes
I see you sometimes there
Beg you to let me through
To break open the humid haze between us
Let me sink into some kind of certainty
What are you so afraid of, child?
Light cannot be held or fractured
You are a mirror
Look up and light the sky
There is nothing here to lose.
Happiness was once the kiss of monarch wings on little palms
A cup of milk warmed on the stove and sprinkled with cinnamon
Quiet corners where I would fold myself into the warmth of the world
Exchanging darkness for snow sparkle with each strong breath
Blessed is the place where the shining dust of yesterdays settled in sunbeams
Broken is the place where my mind tries to make roses of colored paper
Here is where I reach out to you and sing my little song
Where only I can hear the pulse of pavement beneath my feet
Tomorrow always comes too soon
The spaciousness of sunrises sweating softly into clouds
Peaks sweet as clementine rinds wrought brightly against blue
This is where I wonder, where I reach straight out to you.
When tomorrow comes
I want you to hold your thumb to the moon
Fit the curve of its grey whale back against your seashell nail in an ocean of starry indigo
Did you know, that no matter how bright and belonging the moon may seem
It is never larger in the sky
That your thumbprint's kiss?
I don't suppose to know what that means
But somehow it sings of some soft sadness
That something so striking could whittle down to illusion and nothing more - just a horizon and atmosphere and light and your eyes
Perhaps keep your thumb tucked tight in your fist instead
Perhaps hold a little song in your sorrow
Perhaps to believe is to see
And either way now, darling, what does it matter to you anyways?
And then you are underwater
The feathery opalescent haze
Coiling bony palms around your ankles
Depths and disaster and kisses you never meant to mean goodbye
I hold your aura in my arms
Clutching and begging you to come home
Phantoms of forever rotting in my chest like
Knotted rope and boiling water
How dare you?
How could you?
Who are you?
Come home.
When I let you go
I will pray that your days stretch long into the evening hours to give you that light you love
I will have nothing left to say except that everything everywhere always, is still here
I will whisper I am sorry to you and the one who I so believed you to be
I will tether the joy bubbling in my belly that tells me tomorrow is where I will be free
This is a song
This is Joni Mitchell at midnight
Christmas music in September
Just to make your mind as quiet as those nights around the holiday tree
The little toy train tracks clattering beneath your feet like the pebbles
Slipping from your overflowing hands as you ran to the edge of the pond
To skip the flattest of stones
Towards the fairy house you built of leaves and twigs at the base of the old oak tree.
This is the wisps of steam arising from a cup of hot vanilla milk—taking you back to nights in the rocking chair, freshly bathed, freshly-brushed hair dripping down a nightgown as momma turned pages
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
The way the tired street lamp made the air sparkle when it snowed, made your breathy fog on the window pane glisten
Before your little fingers rubbed it away
Or wrote a secret message
To grandpa, so long gone, and watching you placidly from a nearby frame
Just to say hello.
This is quiet time.
The evenings when the world paused just to listen to the sound daddy’s newspaper made when he turned a page
The padding of sweet brother feet toddling across the wooden floors,
His bubbling laughter when the sticky bottoms of his pajama socks failed and he would slide
And the record player in the corner would echo a velvet put-put-put in response.
This is the space between the antique toolbox and the scalding old-fashioned heater
Where I would crawl and make myself small enough to fold into the sweet spot of a fictitious land
Spilling from the pages of a book thicker than the reverberation of mommy hitting the highest note of Ave Maria
From the kitchen where dinner simmered on the stove
As she quietly muttered about the deal she and daddy made when they married,
To each do half of the cooking, but the turn of her smile nonetheless
When the old wooden porch creaked to the tune of three thumping steps, and Wallace and Gromit keys jingled against a briefcase
Bringing a close to a long day apart.
This is my heart
And how it would ache for as long as I could recall.
The twisting of my stomach and the tears as “I’m sorry,” “I’m sorry,” “I’m sorry,” spilled from my lips
And “For what?” brought no answer--
No reprise, no relief, no remedy.
This is sharp words
And the sourness of your tongue as they crawled out of her lips
The bitter shame of knowing and letting go.
This is a hope to no longer rob air from the old oak trees at the sweet age of 9
Of tissue twisted in palms
Curling myself under the covers my parents tucked me within
Until I felt secure, until my irrationality said it was as exhausted as I,
I was now safe, and it was time for rest.
This is sitting on my desktop, my feet resting upon the chair,
Spinning, drawing fanciful lovelies on paper,
As I listened to his voice
Amen, amen, amen. A poem of sweet hope.
The sigh of the phone line after melancholily winning a game of “You hang up first,”
When he hung up first.
This is the secret that was really a room
A chair, a lamp, a cup of hot vanilla milk
A player piano, the tile in the entryway sweeping bare feet, the softness of Bailey’s sweet fur during thunderstorms,
The weightlessness of water, the hot of the green deck chairs against summered legs,
The little village on the windowsill with the chimney that really worked, the snapping of spearmint gum,
Watching thumbs tapping against a steering wheel from the backseat, tracing Noah’s Ark wallpaper with loving strokes,
Amen, amen, amen.
This is the room that had only one door
That can only be opened in the stillness of the world pausing just to listen to the sound daddy’s newspaper made when it turned a page
In the space between the antique toolbox and the old-fashioned heater
Where I would crawl and make myself small enough to fold into
The fairy house I built of leaves and twigs, like those that crinkled beneath soles at the edge of the pond
Your hands overflowing with pebbles as you ran
Clattering like the little toy train tracks
Around the holiday tree, on nights when your mind was quiet
Where I was now safe, and it was time for rest.
This is amen, amen, amen. A poem of prayers of sweet hope.
When “For what?” brought no answer--
No reprise, no relief, no remedy.
And how it would ache for as long as I could recall.
Until I felt secure, until my irrationality said it was as exhausted as I,
And let Joni Mitchell at 2 am play me home
To the room that had only one door
A window where you could see the tired street lamp make the air sparkle when it snowed, make your breathy fog glisten
Before your little fingers rubbed it away
Or wrote a secret message
And when the record player in the corner at quiet time
Would echo a velvet put-put-put in response
Just to say hello.
Everything is forever,
if just a little piece.
01
Palm my pieces
Feel each fragment, one-by-one
See how somehow
They still catch light
02
Crocheting wildflower chains
I sat with you and wondered
If I tied enough beautiful things together
Could they become whole?
03
Roots still sunk deep in soil
Wandering through the earth
Searching for sunny sweetness
A place to grow again
04
Geodes are simply stones
Waiting to be split in two pieces to shine
Perhaps that is what happened
The night you walked away
05
Something to remember a time
Before edges and borders and seams
Like when we stepped out of the forest
Whole,
And everything was in-between.
You saw so much stitched
Between red and white stripes
But when you read between those lines
I sometimes wonder,
Did the field of stars burn so brightly
You were left blinded by hope?
All of these words her weary mind parts with, I will catch on my tongue to make poetry in their leaving.
You do not have to untangle
Your strength is knotted
Best appreciated in the fullness of complexity
Your patchwork of in-betweens
May be a gray area
But that is never to say
You are without color.
I write to finish the story you started here.
And we laugh
There on the dock
Feet beside paws
Wet on rough wood
Your cheeks flush with sunshine
Light lilting on white-kissed waters
Beyond bent oak arms
And we speak with fingers entwined
Vines budding evermore bound
Daydreams blush
Against yesterdays
We solemnly promise to heal as a whole
Pinkies lacing through golden honey hours
Around each kitchen waltz
And we walk wet leaves
Mud, earth, sand, sky, seashells scattering
This whispering trail
Seems a lily-laced aisle
You yesterday
Where these soles first met soil, while tomorrow
Unwinds the tight-rope horizon, such a beautiful bride
And we trace time in wonder,
For today, always, is the sweetest day.
I hope you feel the hush of resounding
Nothing more and nothing less
Than the infinite the impenetrable the immaculate
Honey,
the woods are so still tonight.
She had a love blooming in her belly
Riper than an orange
Everything that could have been
Lingering sweetness
Untasted on your tongue
Your footfalls in bare rooms
Windowsills balancing places
Behind a sweating glass
Miles from where I first drew
Words that promised you full
Still-frame wisps wrought on ancient wood
Freckled with the dust of palms
That never quite touched
Closet wishes bled onto the synchronicity
Of wristwatches past bedtimes
Snowstorm cemeteries and the hush
The sound of nothing and everything
Cascading onto all there already, always was
White echoes in midnight-bright forests
The stillest moment I ever saw
Headlights flooding sleepy streets
Stale coffee warming hands never held
Stage fright songs singing softly
Searching for truth
Between the lamplights and home
Keep me in your pocket
Like treasures returned
Words I wish never left my lips
Blurred to broken
As my brittle bones
Warm haunted halls
Lit with James Taylor
Coupling a secret too sweet to share
Sweet as nectarine honey
Blooming in bellies
Goodnight, ghosts.
To the girlhood bridges
Soaked in summer sun
Where dewy moss met wet wood,
Certainty stood in the kiss of insect legs on copper waters
Long young years saw days reflected
In little laugh-lines
Drawn by the breezy ballet of tiger lilies,
Drenched in light combing pines and a whole lot of grace
Silently, these secrets of the world unfurled themselves
Like the bodies of ferns so green they were gold
I held my hand to your shadow even then
Wondering if that was how I would know you best
August-bleached daydreams no longer linger
Atop liquid hinges of tomorrow
Your laughter this morning, is a canyon wall echo
Filling pauses once pocketed like pennies
Our gully courses copper rivers through its belly
Sanding rickety rock to smooth skipping stones
All this life and its brightness
Ever always wandering towards hazy sweet seas
With attics embroidered by roots of lilies and red oaks
Immaculately, immortally, imperfectly
Our bodies temper tirelessly
Bending beneath the soft weight of water
Now I know,
This is how I love you best.
I saw a farmhouse in the country
White paint on wood
Birch trees shedding their skin
Years and honey-warm afternoons
I ran through a meadow there
That home nestled like a baby bird
The windows there glittering
Brighter than childhood chapels
I touched the tops of the ferns
To feel anything at all
Reached and waited,
For you to hold on.
Do you remember the night we found God?
The night was so still, the air was so hot
You held my hand and together we cried
Stitching together our own lullaby
So hold my hand,
Together we’ll cry
Break out the whiskey,
Apologize
For words said too soon and words left unsaid
Words brought to life by a life on the mend.