Talisman

When tongues tip to farewell

--fare well, fare wonderfully.

Like strangers, like heartbeat:

"Thank you for my childhood."

"Thank you for being my child."

* I tried to tell Scout this isn't yoga, but he just pouted.

A Little Love / Chorus (On)Line

wait and know the coming / of a little love ~ Carl Sandburg

Beginning is quiet

a blink, a tap, then waking

our eyes, the screen, and yearning

I think about people 

we used to know, used to date   

how we lost them to love and--fate  

How we used to see them 

now and then in waning memories / 

when tagged in other people's new stories.

I hug care's sharp blade

through tongue and thoughts

histories, our hearts; hear it whistle

where they're not, no return

Why? Asking did the virus happen--

Are they ghosts? Are they ghosting?

First School Day

I mean to write of pomegranates 

and roses in fairytales, how even

the pierce of your stare is a star.

You my child, have been puppies, tigers,

bees, snakes, and a praying mantis. You

say, today's animal: "sickly Victorian boy."

So pearlescent with scattered energy

stay stationed in understories of care 

and humming to the surface, beyond

yes--the press of your face on my shoulder

but holding fast like the ink-paint-print-stain 

koans growing on your arms for years. 

On a day that refuses to end

My evenings are survivors

carrying--valiant as ants--

relics of their fallen friends.

They see me turn muddy, as I 

drink me (60% water, baby)

You'd think I am called grief.

I'm keeping an eye out for you  

yearning for you for when you 

are already inside (my head) 

Snare

I can start pushing the sticks and stones away from my bones

when I pull the sorries out of you another after an other 

like a magician's set of knotty scarves

Hey! There's so much time, there's time till the end of time

Let's hope you get there still improvising your innocence

fucker, the deadline went yesterday

Maya

It was in Chennai that grandmother first died, many years ago
so it's surprising she is here today, her words pleating
back and forth with mine

Wanting ghee-fried bakery bread topped with three sugars
Walking slow slow as though ready to change 
her destination at any time

Then lullabies are on the radio; she sings to her five babies 

(and the infant son who came and went

so quick after my mother).

In her lap, my toddler mother had tried to console her, said: 

"Don’t cry mama, or see--all your face powder  

will wash away

and oh, everyone will know your skin is as black as Kali's."

A hand on the cheek is tender, yet cousin to a slap,

darkened heads fold into armpits like birds.

Skies blur red as if we break open every night--they're lost 

in other stories, arguments--I'll listen for a while, 

before I can open my eyes.

One-Way: 8/∞

It seems days move only one-way

away/anyway 

My shadow is mingled with flowers

ohhh whore/for hours

It will be difficult to go home after

now/noon/no

I have caught madness and sunshine 

in the air/in my hair

And all my machines are dying--even paper 

even pen/pain

Small feelings

Small feelings

A Different Season

Perhaps I asked the wrong question 

of this place

at such a time

Imagining what we've become

at that time

in this place

Discovering us borderless 

I open to shelter

--maybe laughter?

Like a wave in our spacious sky 

--I who cannot swim

see my shadow float

Parataxic

#MSU Radiology Gardens

Bright, they flow in at our voices
showing brilliant as hard candy

Through their flicker of doorway
our pour of elastic questions

How much might be washed away
before we are here again

Here if we're drowning, are we
reached by arms? By voices? 

I'm awake in the dream

praying silently, receiving silence
these are drugs, my thoughts drag
reciting pretty pretty pretty atrocities

something about zombie limbs
climbing, blooming
gift-wrapped in colorful skin

*

he surprised me when
he said his daughter
was an angel

I was really surprised she
wasn't as dead as
I imagined her

*

I'm dying to ask everyone
how is a six-year-old an angel?
what has been done to her?

1/2 2020 Sonnet

Fond of sun,
my children and I
our thoughts tail us--
or are afterthoughts--
quiet and still as stones
our bones are sinking, singing
their fantasy of thanks to the earth.

Lulled by sun,
my children and I
are adrift on a river of
unhurried afternoons straining
only with birdsong, brilliance, buzz.
We'd say we are quite, quite ruined for the past
why--even the ghosts who call shine bright with future.

Standing

Summer--like snow before--
remakes my world into
an unknowable
loving

In the vines' arch embrace
Leaves bloom, pat me
as I pass in lashes
of love

It seems you dream of
us in the wake of
these whispers--
hearing

Voices that are right, ready:
Justice is late in coming
but protest is already
here.

The Low Road

Big A is cheating the puppies at play in this picture; I want the record to show that 😊. Also, despite a full day, it felt quite low. But also, I've been remembering Marge Piercy's poem, and plan to share it with the family tomorrow at dinner.

(In other news, birthday parties for KB and SS and a fougasse bake-along with PM and posse.)

Pandemic, Spring

Across a tawny field that will be green
next week, a stand of maples, waving,
trunks spaced six feet or more apart
as if they’d heard the governor’s order.

As if they, too, were keeping distance,
while in the earth an interplay of fine
roots and tiny fungi relays messages,
shares sustenance, keeps in touch.

From here, their lacy crowns look bare,
spreading as they reach out toward a sky
delicately blue as a robin’s egg. Yet there
a thousand thousand leaf buds hold tight

ready to unfurl in jubilation. Till then
the trees hang on, deep-rooted, keeping
their distance, holding each other close.

Linda Mills Woolsey 3/27/2020

Today (in the pandemic)

MSU Perennial Gardens

I had become a book
that then became a bird
when I perched in this birch,
tumbling kisses into our earth

Almost

I am worried for my friend
whose young sister has passed away
and tomorrow is coming

and my friend is coming back
and I'm venting to Big A about how
death doesn't make any sense.

And I'm sitting by his feet in a darkened room
in the middle of the morning, because he's trying
to sleep before he works the E.R. tonight.

And he's stroking my ankles, telling me
that "everybody dies, every body dies--you
know we're walking with ghosts."

My skin prickles surprise, I want to hear it
again until it turns out what he had said was--
"you know that's how it goes..."

The Beauty

I am two years ten months old,

beloved first-born: am told my face 

is open as windows, my smiles gems

of happiness, when baby sister is born.

I remember being taken to visit

Amma and the wrinkly new baby 

too in the hospital, in the morning, right 

before I have to go to Mrs. Pinto's "school."

And I remember the chill of nerves

the clunky thump of suspense, feeling 

so sneaking clever when--patting her tenderly, 

I tell my parents: "Baby sister--Chelli Paapa--

is so, so beautiful; I don't want to go to school."

My ploy creeps on, it has lived many lives

it has floated past memory's borders, 

the recall slowly fading.

When I retell it now, on this whole other continent, 

my own kids chortle, roll their eyes, call me 

"playa." My face is a window, is a mirror, 

my face is a door that lets the lie in.

 But my parents have told this story for decades,
in a haze of earnestness, claimed 'blessings
--love or beauty or children, or the hazy
necessity of whatever comes next.  

dreamed a dream

Our moon is too long ago
is very nearly gone

did it fall like plump fruit
into the water? Will it rise?

I am still so afraid, my voice
tears pulled from the well

All "good morning" and "what
seems to be the matter."

Loving as a kind (of) argument

All our hellos call
to each other

and now our smiles
are missiles

silence is the
scent

touch--the rocket
we make

translating "I"
as "you too"

come, come, come
let's go

Earshot

my mind--more a revolving door

lets me in, lets me out

every question, any song brings 

anger, then I'm sad 

there's no sun, and all light is 

gentle. Alright--absent

I want, I want so much and yet--

take nothing... I take hold