reaching the threshold

it was always difficult for children

dangerous even 

if you know of a place where it isn't

please share it 

we may sway in decision, hover in hope,

curve like prayer,

ache to follow rumors as if they're friends

inviting us to hurry

but we won't know how--or if--we let go

of mourning

our feet full of splinters, tracing love over

fragments of safety

_____

It's the fourth of July. We didn't have plans because we were supposed to be in YS. Also: things don't feel very celebratory anyway--it feels very What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?  This lines up with the memes that say: "Fourth of July has been canceled due to a shortage of independence" or "Frankly I don't think America deserves a birthday party this year." And then the news worsens with reports of mass shootings in Highland Park and Philadelphia and fires in Fort Worth...

almanac of distress

I worship the day as a daily deity
but why don't we just... sub in 
one summer day for another

                  not think of the end of every day 
                  as completion--simply as 
                  some continuum

                                                    it's no surprise I'm trying to run
                                                    from this everyday exercise--
                                                    in my tired cowardice

                 my fear made entirely of words
                 molested by the logic of how

                 it could be worse

                                                  I contain multitudes--count them 
                                                  tally these heartbeats of loss
                                                  total up my to-dos 

in the woods

I've been sleeping with hands gathered

into tight fists

so nothing messy... nothing I have to fight 

enters my dreams

here where trees are leaning on each other

is a new aloneness

so I wait for thoughts of you to grow up in

the dirt of my mind 

Pic: Baker Woods

as I lay me down to sleep

childhood nightmares never go away

the roaring lions and underground hollows 

the things in corners, cupboards, under beds

I force myself to wait until it is morning 

to call out to my parents--on a phone line 

to hear them tell me everything will be okay

In every country a small goddess runs away

refuses worship, says she wants to be normal 

asking: surely, it's better to take than to just give

I see how she forces herself to still in hollows 

as animals stare, scatter, screech in importance 

I see how she wills her silence, says she'll be okay

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

Pic: Scout tells me this poem is bunk and sticks out his tongue.

going somewhere

in the holy fanfare of summer's launch

deer have begun to eat my flowers 

ants--like anxiety--crawl up 

today a rainstorm teaches me new music  

drums up a calmer beat, hushes me

I'm sentimental, yet not expert 

can you tell me to come in, in welcome

I'll hold my eye open for you 

like the maw of a beast

Pic and notes: A family of geese "going somewhere" although I don't know where. Like this poem. Like the current scramble of instability--trying to figure out how Nu can finish the last week of school from the hospital; trying to read between the lines when At calls to say he's fine after being in a car accident but his car will be towed.

at the end of May

dismay

May seemed a forever recovery 

over bits of grass--bits of glass

mayhem

Can it really be June tomorrow?

Will the year make its amends?

maybe

Growing long like summer time

the year fills out in its maturity

mayday

hold my hands as songs get longer 

nothing but excitement--and fear

--maya

the kind lodged between my ribs 

gasping: I care, I care--do you?

____________________________

Pic: Wisteria Square #MSU

Spring farewell

footsteps scatter oracular

one foot then another

grow louder than water

I bless the bees, the blooms

the leaves like hearts

sound, reverberating 

spring is a gamble, my friend

some years fruit, beautiful

others empty and quiet

I see my own fate in these lines

of light, denial, the tunnel 

curving, coming up for air

Pic: Red Cedar River this morning.

even greener

I play the laptop's keyboard like a piano 

and also a drum, beating without pain

for the sunlight spreading thin as butter

for the dream in which no one can die  

[fragment]

Pic: Baker Woods with L

after this ending another ending

after this ending another ending
we only want so little
we're given even less 

after this ending another ending

plans flaking hope

escape again

after this ending find another story

another beginning 

--start again

after this beginning another beginning

another erasure

a do over 

after that ending yet another ending

dawns hide in the night

in the gallop of sleep 

excerpts from panic attacks

my heartbeat is hardening

I'm magnified in my smallness

*

I think this happens to me

I find this happens to everyone

*

the day is full of promise

that breaks over and over again 

*

I'm comfortable (in distance)

I'm complete (completely exhausted)

*

first I try to tame the animal 

burrowing its own trench in my heart

*

next I begin to tell you 

the stories I need you to tell me today

*

deeply rooted

kindness is a common form of love

the drip of its tap like heartbeat

its tempo rowing in place

I can look down at myself 

how I've thought I knew it all-- 

now I fit in whatever comes my way  

sifting the hard cuts with a soft care 

for moments turn meaningless

without my memories

like spring soil I keep

holding on, I hold nothing back 

honestly, all I've taken is inside myself

so here we are

I always misunderstand "a perfect storm" as a good thing

the rain descending as a blessing, lightning as fireworks

the flood muscled and insubstantial as a willful idea 

also time bears no shape whether watched or hourglassed

so tell me how we've spent these years trying to change 

our fate, how we believe we aren't a twist of... faith

we may have forged only paper boats for these times

but then they don't have to come back to tell us

we already know there is no tempest or tide 

maybe like the earth

ask me what makes a good day

as the heart hammers away

nailing today's sum of green

applauding how the light falls

all the way to the ground

exploding into green joy 

I know I too am someone

a body not just an accident 

 pronouns greening like weeds

everywhere like my prepositions

across and between and within

--little words louder than we think

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

Pic: Scout posing (as awkwardly as one of the human kids) by the cherry blossom trees.

there's no sadness in spring

this is how it is some times

the edges so sharp they cut 

through inertia and errands

the days passing like hours

how green aches into limbs 

darkness detailing the edges 

tight with herds of budding 

water cold, crunchy as glass 

I'm the only one here alone 

and I think I spy on myself: 

What will I do next? What

if I make a sudden move?

Pic: Red Cedar River seen from MSU's campus.

the struggle is surreal

this door I'm trying to close quickly

knowing you're trying to come back

touching this emptiness to another

as open and unmeaning as chanting 

it's sadness so cavernous I can hear 

exhalations from your lungs empty

universes of understanding, fleeing

like meaning between our thoughts 

like a sunset stained on the horizon 

speech is clumsy and stumbles trying

to save us. And so we have words/tears 

and they fall--only one feels right as rain 

the bitterness of mustard seeds

"Men!" she says, rolling her eyes

sputters: "Think--even the Buddha causes suffering."

I heed her assembly of outrage

the mustard seeds going off like grenades in the pot

it is true, yes, no one is to blame

yet she's assembled a list of people who are to blame

she speaks for Kisa, the grieving mother

desperately asking the Buddha to revive her dead son

so imagine her chest and eye sockets 

hollowed out with grief, imagine her hollow voice

her feeling stupid at the moment of asking

if he could bring her son back to life... but asking anyway

what's the worst that could happen, right?

what if he were gathered into life? What? it could happen...

And to think of the coldness of his lesson plan

his moment of asking her back--to quest for mustard seeds

from a home unscarred by anyone's death

Where do you keep scars? Can he see or imagine hers?

See her desire colliding with his wisdom

see her as the collateral damage of this one's own theology 

He might say it's nothing personal--it's true 

perhaps exactly what's missing, in his insistence on moving on  

on nights there is thunder, there is rain

I feel this whole world as an angry woman I do not blame

as I lay me down to sleep

it's time for me to be embedded 
into the dark

it's time to kneel at night's altar
quieten thoughts

to swallow answers into silence

and survive 

for I'm too wild for sleep to be

anything pure

in a season of dependence

over here, I'm trying to find the language we lost 
we're the canoe and and I slipped the oars
while asking questions
we're so small

strangeness crawls up my arms, nestles by my ears
little baby bugs overflowing their home 
telling me their stories
about being better

because we cannot know what we do not know

and we're flooded already with memories

we imagine how it will be 

without us 

that canoe thawed free from direction and labor

swept up in the recovery of unknowing

finding new neighbors

in sea and storm

"I get sprung"

The crocuses are here and... Big A is here!! It's also pretty sunshiny out today and students' research work is coming along nicely. (Not my research work, but--you know--one can't have everything.)

Anyway

let's begin once upon a time, with a house

we can fill it with hope and surprise

(we raise our eyes to the sky in greeting

use whatever rains down as anchor)

let's begin far, far, far away with a feast 

we can open mouths wide in laughter

(we press bites and bruises into pretty fruit

after we steal some answers and quiet)

A Gentle Reader

A Gentle Reader

I say a prayer--for books to carry me

imagining ballads sweet at lunchtime

in an inventory of lives, distant loves

and for plain books to cry to at night

how light is soft and rich like a fire

how it smolders at the beginning

how embers fade like falling love 

stranded in the chaos we've made

we think wars are everywhere as usual 

within and without--as we like to say--

see shields surrender, becoming songs

in books that have already cast me out

Pic: Hyacinths, heady with scent, are coming up all over the house in various pots and things I stuck them in. (Here: game table in the tea garden; our outside is still wet and muddy.)