In the Light

I mean there are things drowning in my EYEballs on the regular,
my skin circles me as I shed, my face turns toward me, expectantly
listening as my voice--out there--somewhere, fizzes like a walkie-talkie.

No one is sure where we are anymore, and if they are, we yell "fake! fake"
until they turn and blip away. It is an autumn morning inside a beautiful painting
drunk on beauty, high on drugs, wandering around in something someone made up.

Sometimes our laughter or tears escape us slowly, and we try to urge them on:
be free, be free of us! You can do it! Then life feels like a summer afternoon--so very
long, all about the waiting, words breathing themselves to life--trying to find their source.

_

Lift

You said to sing with you:
I start off like a boat

dropped into the water
turning round and round

worrying and wondering
at the same movement

until I catch the uplift
and the current leads us and

we're at the top of the next note
floating, the size of an insect

which then washes over, catching
us in the clear curl of the wave

* I don't know where this came from, but I will say Nu and I have perfected the howl part of Lady Gaga's shalalalalalalow, and sing it every time we're on our way to school.
_

Wordless

I am the child with a knife--
for all my years now,
and in monosyllables

I have been digging in the
softness, the door
to some other worlds

Moon is eyeball today
side-eye tomorrow
I stay here, I witness.

_

Today at UU

Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich

[The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (New York: Norton, 1984) ]

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
–And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.

**********************************************
Every mention of death in the sermon today seemed like a special message just for me. And I would start thinking about how my children are too young for me to disappear. And I would imagine that Scout and Huckie would be bewildered; that Nu would be devastated,  become hard; that At would rally, becoming more vulnerable as he goes. That they'll all keep looking for me everywhere. Ugh.

_

Sun's Light

...passes through me--
it makes me strange
flashing like sighs
signing rainbows

melting extravagantly
becoming sweet, sweaty
celebrating, stumbling
determined this is love

In an epilogue, we may seem
imprisoned, undermined--
But here, we are optimistic,
glittering in our sisterhood, one.





_

Lost

I make dinner from beans,
things I dig out from the ice
of the aging freezer (foraging)

Up close--pores on rocks
I can remember veins on leaves
Do you remember threads of moss

as words run out
and scenes are spun out
what if this is (apocalypse)

trees bleeding water
their wounds like mouths
breathe until empty, are still staring

It happens so fast--from hit to hurl
in a blink--I meant to leave you words
now I barely have time left to think (love)


_______________
It's literally colder than Mars right now AND I'm beginning to get cold feet about leaving the fam next week AND I know I will have to do some driving on127N soon AND I'm panicking from the weather forecast AND hearing someone say that the world may end in our lifetime...
_

Glyph of Myself

my prayers soon wick 

into still damp night air

incensed with fear, fervor

they will stick--resting 

here, wrestling over there, 

hope blossoming into prayer

so quick as my once human 

landscape--conjured from time

and conquered through age--fades

_

Ticking

shaping my time into dials
into calendars and structure
into life, into legacy after death

collapsing the words and worlds
casting new spells to tell you truth
demanding all the years to do it with

little changes from sunrise to sunset
little changes from sunrise to sunrise
little changes all the way into summer

_

Northward Rant

I'm one sigh away
from freezing, I release
like a light bubble

like fluorescent nighttime
hospital--heart beats
in intervals: no no no

dropoffs pickups
activities... O my
hello, goodbye

I'm returning turning
I will come back
irresponsible

like that like this
like you can like
only this

_

January

I keep on feeling my thoughts

You too?

It's a knife--

in the shape of a puffy heart.

*

My child is grandmother's.

Her child,

my mother--

serenades every sunrise.

*

I sit here, the sun sets too

an earthling,

lost on earth, 

feeling the slide of inertia 

_

Took the kids to yoga today

almost every bite at breakfast
is all please and bargaining
every footstep up to class
echoes with reluctance
every pose is desolate
as exit wounds
                                            I'm holding, steadying, angling
                                            them in my side vision--where
                                            they're right there--by the door
                                            so my practice speckles with
                                            chuckles overfilling and now
                                            spilling from my lungs

We're nicer on the way back
loosened and relaxed--me
from yoga, them because
they're done, by the time
we're home again, it's all
already a memory
                                          And I think there will be other classes
                                          warmed by them, memories of them--
                                          keeping unspoiled from year to year;
                                          the quiet, slow wonder of a stone
                                          released and now flying lightly
                                          borne forever over the water


_____________________________________

Took the kids to yoga because the health chart was a desert (Friday, Dec 28th).

_

Station

Her eyes grow cloudy
soon there will be rain
her thoughts steal past
like slow, noisy trains

No, that's really not me
No reason it would be--
Her heart mourns parting
mine's torn from certainty


_

Meditation

water bridges these banks
sun must spill everywhere

I can ask, I can seek
who knows how long

as if it matters--
there's no reason

for despair
(if so it is)

#MSU #RedCedarRiver

A Plan

I'm traveling--or so
I have been telling
everyone--so now
travel--will unravel

Perhaps periphrastic--
or no--logic underlies
my disguised, feigned
un-annotation of terrain

I prep through these fears--
it helps a little that millions
of years of orbital earth will
still spin in place for me

_

In the Old World

I am to reread their wrinkles
search their weeds for memories

even as ancestors' eyes are forced
to close, go masked, invisible.

It will make sense
until you ask about it.

*
They want to open my mind
wrest, twist it wide

then tip it like the overfilled point
of a plate, at the moment when

you're suddenly sated,
free of the desire for it.

*
I mime their scolding for I have no will,
and I am meek. Still they are forgotten

even so, every time--memory by memory
in a language my children will never speak

Aiyo--to think I meant at the start
to hold and shape love

as it pooled its fast and fluid
escape in my heart.

****

Year's End

Arre, what would you do?
You too are split between
this year and the new one

these hopes are damsels
dismal in the silent dark.
I take their place myself

until I am inside myself
--oh, what have I done?
I too am waiting to know.

_

In the Machines

The ghosts call me late
most nights, rocking
the cradle of the landline

we never use. I never pick up
but I see their faces vaporize
in my icy breath,

their empty mouths asking
You put away all the leftovers? 
Do you know who we are?

I can see their mouths form it,
feel their curses touch my body
I mumble irritably

and try to solve their hungry
riddle, without magic:
pointing them to the fridge

_

Fragment

Hopping on the threshold I can taste
the sunshines of every past and future
tears magnify all my dreams

-

Company

I start with the titles of food
attaching surprise ingredients
until label matures into recipe

Tomato-cucumber-salad with
cumin-roasted eggplant + feta
layered on a spring mix base...

Sadly like a mom, I bring jokes:
autumnal hope springs eternal--
I say--before everyone leaves.

_________________________
At went back to college yesterday, and three other students driving back up to Alma stopped to have dinner with us.

In Autumn

My hands are birds praying
in time to heart beat, my feet.

Fingers flying across the open
face of my phone, I am looking

for you in a midwestern town
where you have never lived

I am looking for my father
I am looking at my father

I am writing our name in pain
even as the pen runs dry, dies

-------------------------------------------------------



*This was supposed to be a picture of autumn tones in Bakersfield Park, but my phone died as I tried to take a picture. As best as I can tell, it died... from the cold? Apparently winter is coming for more than just tropical me.