Quietudes

I walk alongside a running stream

Never still

Of one volition – continuous light.

I want to be the uncontainable force

Moved by Youniverse into the places I fit best

I want that me: she awaits

Of two minds about it all

Such is the fate of the Libra…

Handed off to Saturn return & the incoming

Tsunami of Love.

=====

Something shifts in my balance as I sleep

Mornings are early with “let’s get to it”

Married to “am I living this?”

=====

NOTE TO SELF

Don’t  you go living tomorrow today

And especially that tendency to drag up the past for another sniff!

Never give up the present for anything other than what it is

No matter how ….

           Oh! Something shiny!

=====

PRAY IN YOUR SPARE TIME

Not in the grave, tho grave it may be

Not to the deaf tho none really hear

Pray in the between of words

Said/unsaid

In the sore potential

Kinetic/active

======

QUINTESSENCE OF SILENCE

The clock stops ticking

The hum retreats

Whatever is believed in gets tidied up & put away

Light a few candles

Hum the holy hymns

While some dream, some drown

QUIETUDE OF SILENCE

Underwater

Where fish are still

I listen, hearing nothing

~ Listen harder

Stratospheric

Where clouds amass rain

I hear humming:

Rain by morning

My breath fits perfectly

Into my lungs.

0

The Dream Sequence

THE January birthdays are no more

My sisters gone, my brother too, before his time.

My mother’s chores forever un-done

My dad a cipher in the family photo.

The aunts all dead, the uncles no longer slipping

This wide-eyed girl a dollar for ice cream.

I still know so little of Life

The circle becoming spiral

Down & down I go.

Mornings rekindle, afternoons fleet

The dark lasts forever

When I dream myself awake

In its deepest center,

Finally free of expectations,

Debt & doubt,

And guilty foreknowledge.

=====

The morning is a deal from the Gambler’s deck

A constant shuffling sound, the slap of cards to play.

I think back at the cat

Lounging on the corner of the bed

In her sloe-eyed silent blink

=====

Where has the when gone?

When I grow up

When I fall in love

Nightfall is a doorway of stars

The price of its freedom paid

With the fee of simply closing my eyes.

=====

Who knew even books would float off my little island of life

To other shores?

I pull my hands from storybook heroes

To fold them in my lap.

Simply staring down the night

Distilling into dreams

As antidote to the push n pull of living out loud.

In the logic of the impossible

I am it all:  beginning, middle, ending

Surrendered into breath.

=====

The mom & pop of selfing

Now unimportant.

I owe nothing, being no one

Anymore.

=====

Dreams brush up against me in a way other bodies never will

An intimacy unmatched with humans

Here is a language spoken that I understand

No matter its accent or words.

I coalesce into Carol on Friday night

Convinced all will change by tomorrow.

=====

A cat named Drift rides a horse named Moon

Through a night of satin & coal.

I’m known for my words, not the dreams of my sleep

Nor the rotund shape of my soul

All the nonsense of life

Washed up by tide to my door

Bringing light at its end:

From sacrum to sternum

A human once more.

0

Closures & Cooking

I’m not sure “Etc.” is a good closing for a letter, but it should be. I’m gearing up to teach a writing class & tho I won’t be including the seven  parts of a letter, but how to gather your topic into sentences, paragraphs & chapters… So this has made me sensitive to such topics.

Woke from my nap feeling hungry, so enjoyed a bagel with ghee for my non-nutritious dinner. Sometimes ya just gotta – but probably not every night. I used to cook. There was a time when I prepared enough for a football team every night with a super-social first husband & a dishwasher in the apartment. Over years of meal prep incentive dwindling, I am inclined to bread & a cup of coffee at this point. I remember the days of roasts, vegetables, pasta in its various manifestations… I remember Sara Lee cakes for dessert.

A more pleasant memory, it would seem than reality at this time of life. My nutritional intake meter is pretty close to a “none” on any metric scale. Crackers & avocado, check. Peanut butter, check. Pot roast with carrots, potatoes, pearl onions & a side veg, no check.

Food itself has changed. That which I once remember being tasty & satisfying doesn’t cut the mustard when your sense of taste is at about 34% of normal. The nicotine patches are helping, but sometimes instead of flavor or smell, I get odd reactions: the coffee tastes like it has lemon in it, or the food being cooked runs me out of the kitchen with the smell.

I now have two boxes of couscous – which I have not eaten voluntarily ever, – two boxes of rice, two cans of chili beans, 3 chicken tenders (frozen) & a bucket of salad which will likely wind up in soup before the trash, tho that’s not a given, given my current state of gustatory non-electives & a strong failure-to-cook routine running.

What happened here? I need to get Nancy Drew on this one. Maybe I could pay her off in corn muffins (87 cents for the Jiffy boxes at current on-sale market rates.)

Oh, and the alligator? The Linger Lodge serves alligator bites as an appetizer, maybe I …

0

Rosemary Remembrance

Abandoned as an old religion,

The devil has my elbow, whispering innocences required

To enter heaven.

I move to the center of the wall I must climb over to exit

Escape is fluid & still evolutionary.

=======

DRUMS

Get UP! Get OUT!

The drums are starting again

All illusions of freedom become illusory

When anthems fill the air

When men choose their spears

Over women who want to dance.

The affronted ancestors rise up, chanting

Eerie voices staccato for conquest,

Plucking at the carts we

Break our backs to pull, babies tucked along the sides,

Rise UP! Get you gone

There is no remedy here for the wars

Brewing in the forests,

Stick to the paths, avoid the demons

Plucking at possessions.

Only one narrow corridor of escape

From the village, already flaming behind.

=======

Regrets rise like bubbles in a glass of tears.

I had enough of you before,

Let alone you invade me now

Begone from my beaten breast

In breaths expelled with sounds of tearing!

=======

I no longer believe the sacred, I do not look

For God anymore, or mothers, or husbands.

All the aggrieved virgin saints in ragged, raped glory

Flank me now, escort me

Since erasing sin

Is worthwhile for the holy.

=======

Being done with liars

I purvey the truth

While stuffing aces up my sleeves…

In a world victimized, weaponized,

I cannot choose the window or the door

I freeze between the kitchen & the bed

While darkness dims the lights of any yes.

It slides across a no like water across a road

Drowning out any maybe –

And cognitive dissonance reigns like truth

Rescheduled for a better time.

=======

You have become a contagious denial

Front & center, a denial in a matter of thinking

Shivering before me now

No longer golden, nor free, but

A bitter gourd of regret. A lost soul turning, turning.

I cannot scrape you off of me, no fingernails gain hold,

The black remains:

Your future marked with bloody handprints

The rivals of a 12-year-old’s heart in biting, feckless lies.

=======

Hail the Grail of my guilt

Shared unevenly

This life will suit no more

I don old shoes

And take to the roads

To meet a pilgrimage of ghosts.

=======

The angels themselves

Put feathers in my pockets

Wrapping me in wings of rosemary remembrance.

They stroke my wrists & kiss my forehead

Passing through my heart now clean,

Rise up, O wondrous one, believe in no one

But yourself, the all of Creation

The One they speak of in whispers

Pointing long fingers away from the paths

Over fields of grandeur

Under clouds of glory,

Move away from the serially unholy

Choosing one above the other

And burying the rest.

1

Ayahuasca by Starbucks

I recently gathered my anticipations into one container & it reinforced my understanding about that ancient adage on not putting all eggs into one basket. Big time!

I have been on Shamanic Journeys. These were meditative, quiet events, filled with deep breathing & visions, with tiny wispy thoughts – almost inklings – things to understand or study, do & say. They were a bit magical, like unicorns walking delicately through my imaginary meadow.

I signed up for one such Journey with a couple of minstrels advertised by a church. They were excellent entertainers & that should have been my first clue. Like, Buddha didn’t come out in a hat & cane, skirting his robes about, twirling a top hat.

I settled onto a hard floor with a thin yoga mat below & a good neck pillow. The gal explained for a longish time what to expect while my mind drifted outside into the beautiful Sarasota Garden Club setting; the foliage in balanced array, delightful bloom, the breeze teasing greens into a dance, birds flitting & probably singing out there in the overcasting afternoon. She finally shut up & her husband began to play guitar.

He was still plugged into his amp so the music hit like a flash mob of chords & words & really good lyrics. I flinched as the floor instantly became harder & more brittle. I closed my eyes to the landscape & tried very hard to follow the wife who was loudly (also on mic) directing me to head “down, down, down.” Um, it’s Florida. One cannot go too far down without hitting much mud & the occasional reptile.

Indeed, the first spirit helper up – described in incandescent detail – was Serpent. And while, yes, Serpent is wise, she’s not cuddly or reassuring to meet first up in the swamp (not much forest beng accessible here). She hardly got to flicker a forked tongue at me before we were off to another place. Husband hit a few more power chords, got settled into the chorus & began to rhymically breathe. Well, if you can call breathing blowing into the mic at four second intervals supposedly leading our breath. Was Serpent to accompany me? Can I have another Totem, please? Reliability over wisdom seeming the wisest choice…

Husband lit into the guitar. His rhythm induced a charging breath; it is difficult to go into meditation when one is breathing in/out/in/out/in/out loudly & forcefully. It rather mimics a storm coming in & the immediate response of my body was shelter! Get off the floor & under a chair or something! That would have worked under other circumstances, but I was supposed to be “sinking into the floor” instead. Alas, I stayed quite atop the surface, not even nestling into the neck pillow. I was tensed & heading into adrenaline rush as we ran, not walked, towards the woods, Serpent forgotten mid-hiss, wisdom unheard. There were places to be! There were visions to be had! There was breath to be force-marched out of the lungs!

“Find someplace dark & intimate,” she suggested at the top of the speaker’s range. You are heading into a hole you see on the forest floor! You are over the hole & it is Time To Enter Within! 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP!

Jump? On these legs? With these hips? How about ‘float’? Ok, are you at the bottom of the hole? What do you see? Notice everything! What do you hear? Is there anything in the cave with you? [Hold on, lady, there was Serpent here a minute ago, is that the rustling I hear?] My eyes were still adjusting to the imaginary dark as we leaped in: 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP!

Ok, earth element dismissed, we headed for the next which was air. See those clouds? 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP! Now wait just a damn minute here – but in retrospect, that was all we got in between the elements. What do you see? Notice everything! What do you hear? Is there anything on the cloud with you?

Husband kept strumming, singing over her voice, suggesting all kinds of nature stuff to experience…feel the breeze on your skin, etc. Blowing into the mic every 4.5 seconds with nary an idea about taking oxygen in.

Feeling a bit ridiculous, I opened my eyes to see if anyone else was (dare I say it) falling for this. It was like marching off to Africa in full bombast & camo gear, canteens clanking. Off that cloud pronto – 5 4 3 2 1 JUMP!

I was feeling peckish at this point. I sat up to make sure I could get to the exit if I needed to without disturbing too many bodies. People were shifting on their yoga mats, eyes darting under closed lids. Too vulnerable, I thought, a bit embarrassed. I rearranged myself & laid back down.

We approached a body of water & I braced for entry as he sang about frolicking with dolphins. What do you see? Notice everything! What do you hear? Is there anything in the water with you? Wait, didn’t you just tell me I was in a dolphin pod? Yes! There are dolphins here. Did I bring my bathing suit? Is it my “God I’m so fat in this” white one or the slimming but utterly faded-from-the-sun black? Is the water cold? Who knows, we’re marching up the beach blowing, blowing. Off to the desert, hurrah, hurrah.

I am finished with this. I scrabble to my feet, now quite glad of the closed eyes cuz rising from the floor is no longer graceful or elegant anymore for me. I tiptoe to a chair, slip on my shoes, silently roll up the mat, grab my carryall, sling my purse onto my shoulder & turn away from the gathering to see my roommate beating feet out the silently closing door.

The walk back to my car was silent, meditative. The sound of sliding the credit card back into its wallet sleeve, the crunch of the solid door, the sip of cold chai left in the cupholder, the dingdingding of ignition & a quick drive home wondering what just happened here.

Check your intentions at the door. Chuck your visions into the Butterfly Garden. Pull your expectations of finding Totem browsing in a sunny meadow waiting to commune, cold-nosed & delighting.

What’s for dinner? Oh, salad. More greenery? Reached for the popcorn instead.

0

Flubbered

 Jan. 2026  Rent  Car  Food  Dining  Grooming  Household  Misc.  Spending  Clothes  Utilities   INCOME      

Life is where you find it. My life is in words but sometimes my words are not where I left them. There’s this thing called “One Drive” on my computer & it resides somewhere in the atmosphere, I’m told – the ‘cloud’. I’d rather have it in a kitchen drawer where I can get to it.

Specifically, I keep a spreadsheet of expenses. It’s more decorative than all else as I don’t really follow how much I’ve spent on food or gas or getting breakfast at Millie’s. I just log in the receipts in case I ever want to check these. However, I’m quite compulsive on this data entry so I keep up with it. Now that it’s January, I want a summary of what went where in 2025. Guess where it went? Into the cloud.

So I pulled up the old/old one ending with June & just copied off the headers. Why didn’t June go into the stupid cloud? I don’t need the one that ends in June & perhaps that is why. I started one for 2026 & put it on the desktop. I see a year ahead of filling up the desktop like I sneer at others for doing. “Why don’t you put these into files?” I ask with a slight curl to my lip.

I can’t stand when universe catches up to me – like my Mom not having a sense of smell & making me smell hamburger thru my entire childhood just as I was getting to Chapter 5 of some Black Stallion book. “Carol!” she’d call in that Command Voice which only mothers possess & maybe 4-star generals, I’m not sure, never having served.

My heart would seize. I would slam the book shut, (losing my place) & dash into the kitchen, certain I’d left something on fire. “Smell this for me?” she’d demand, holding out a brown-paper-wrapped package of bloody meat. I wanted to just back away, but would dutifully take a sniff & say, “I don’t smell anything, Mom.” She’d whip the package into the sink to rinse the meat & I was dismissed with the gesture. That is, until she realized I must have been doing something like reading in my room as the Voice would again snag me mid-stride, “Why are  you in the house anyway Go outside & play!? You have the whole beach, go play!”

Beach? The beach is empty except for the cold wind sweeping across it, tugging the trash out of the wire baskets. The sky is gray as a prisoner’s underwear. The boardwalk is shivering, the railing forming a rime of ice. “Mooooommmmm” would rise the whine within; the one never spoken aloud. Trudging to my bedroom to put on my Keds, I’d grab a jacket & mumble down the cellar stairs to wrest my bike from the wall as tho it was all the bike’s fault I had a mom who believed one could never get enough Fresh Air. I’d head to the playground & dispiritedly climb on the cold swing, grabbing the clanking chains & launch. Then I’d think about why I allowed her to upset me so much I even forgot my book! Reading can be done on a winter beach & can even be entertaining if the story’s good enough.

Well, all that to say that I do not have a sense of smell anymore thanks to Government Covid & I buy chicken tenders to cook right away when I get home. With onions.

What was I on about? Oh yeah, people not filing their stuff ‘correctly.’ My righteousness about that topic.

So, I called up my spreadsheet & the computer said, effectively, you can’t get there from here. What it really said was “make sure you have access to One Drive & try again.” How did it get to One Drive anyway? Who moved my cheese? And, like the nasty blue screen of death I never understood, I’m flubbered. I can’t recreate six months of recycled receipts. I have no idea what I spent except about a third of it went for something besides hamburger & the rest for rent & the car lease.

2026. Rent / car / household / miscellaneous / entertainment / clothes / grooming. 

Sigh.     

1

Time Bunches Up Again

Just when it seems Saturday (a break in routine) is available, I check two calendars to find out it’s only Thursday! Who said it can only be Thursday? Thursday is not the new Friday even! But Friday can feel an awful lot like Saturday, depending…

I got this image of a clock sputtering, rushing forward at times, every CGI of a clock spinning & then an equal & opposite image of time holding back, hands spread across the clock, not permitting the second hand to progress.

Must be Now.

0

A Year Has Gone By

A YEAR HAS GONE BY

I have given it away

Day by day, doing for self & others

Defining my life by many standards

Discovering myself in words & wishes

Living on music & cheese

& too much sugar

& not enough greens.

A  year of lists & surface planning

Having run plumb out of “life goals”

Comfortable in the Wait Room

Watching the door.

I did not learn Russian

Or take apart a motorboat engine.

I reorganized my bookcase ten thousand times

And finally emptied the nagging under-bed box into the Goodwill bin,

Surrendering old wires & a handheld calculator

Resurrecting tablets & AAA journey maps of the US of A.

A year of letting Life happen, not taking

Real charge in any meaningful way

Of small satisfactions & rearrangements & digging thru the present

As tho it is my past

Which was layered & complex & textured & vivid with days

I paid attention to.

That Great American Novel served piecemeal in blog entries

Perhaps read by others.

I tried theatre & volunteering & these held magic awhile.

I picked things up & put them down someplace else.

I did life in small bites, chewing thoughtfully.

A year of unnoticeable difference

Exploring, aging, serving in small ways

To discover what no longer served me.

There’s coming a time for More Than This

This what-I-have, not what-I-had, nor what-I-will.

Now comes the present of the Future

Finding the more in refining structures & redefining desires

I have every hope of arrival

Once I select a Destination.

Christmas Eve 2025

3

Christmas Three

If I could sing, my voice would have a bluegrass hiccup on the high notes

If I were slim, I would never wear a bra.

If I were young, I would choose again when it came to being old.
———————

After beginnings, I sometimes falter

Perhaps that’s how I got here.

———————

I write poems on the backs of my diet menus

In careless disregard … as I munch chocolate mint cookies in bed.

I have decided to live as if I decided to be the way I am,

Notwithstanding suggestions surrounding choices.

To be happy is to be healthy enough.

———————-

Living my way is only fair

My wings are an inside job, my life is littered with feathers

And comfortable shoes for my friends to deride.

I burn incense under fire alarms with a stick nearby to poke the screech.

————————

HILLSBORO

In Betty’s yard, yellow flowers grow on the tips of leafy stems.

There’s an unfinished fence to contain these, & dirt-clumped ground

To probe bare feet.

A frayed clothesline holds wood-sprung clips

In turn, holding nothing at all.

An unconscious solidarity, my face becomes

A clock, following their petals east to west

The sky only a feeling on rainy days.

My head grows heavy, filling with seeds

Once fallen, I will feed the world,

Calling birds to the runes of tree roots gnarling the boundaries.

Of Betty’s  yard.

————————-

The ocean is always nearer than a thought of tides,

Turning on its edges to re-enter itself,

Ridged, wrinkled, silken, gray-white with pickling salt.

———————-

I want to live in a lighthouse

Lining the circular walls with books

I can drift my fingers upon, pulling one to read

On my journey towards the Light,

While at the base, the sea slithers & hovers & booms

Hissing among the rocks, scribing on sand.

————————–

I hear a drum

Or is it fireworks at midnight?

Faraway-faint.

I flick the blinds to see

Raccoons loping by in doglike packs

Masked with the aplomb of true bandits

Did they plant the explosives?

——————–

Florida has much to say if you speak Jungle

Huge Adam & Eve leaves quiver on trees

Atop roots of black mold grimy as sin.

So green, so wild, a lunch of little flavor if you favor a sky

Munching mountains, that sierra symphony.

Florida has alligators & anhingas swimming

The same waters

Blue herons stalk while

Pelicans dive among floater-boat gulls

———————–

(Too bad I cannot eat my words

Ideas like Italian ices, cooled & lemony

Sweet & sudden on the tongue,

Freezing the brain.)

I’m a writer, I tell you

Just tamped & tamed by earning since

I cannot devour syllables.

I prize them loose & pack them down in soil

Where they breathe into roots & water,

Like bread that rises with morning to nourish.

Some words yellow as butter or smelly cheese,

Tart as root vegetables, soft like ripe tomatoes

A salad is a poem

Leafy & crunch-spined

A lean diet crafted in layers

Gilded in dressing, evasive to gather, hard to chew

Seeded & spiced to flavor with adverbs & minute spicy grains

Sparkled & healthy & cleaning to the system.

Buon Appetit!

1

Talking to Myself

I think I talked to myself constantly as a child, discussing the weather, listing my possessions, reading aloud to hear the story, too. I recall it being a reassuring commentary, full of exclamation points. It was sometimes a litany of guilts to bring to Confession. (No life lives without sin, the Church assured me frequently.) I rehearsed what I’d say to my Mom when I was late getting home. I muttered impressions of innocent passers-by. I used curse words under my breath upon those who stepped in front of my bicycle just as I was getting up to a good speed. I implored saints, angels, God & Mary to help relieve whatever powerlessness currently being experienced…

When sent to my room, I breathed imprecations at life’s unfairness.

Fortunately, now a so-called adult – ahem – senior citizen, I consider aloud all the reasons why I left my shopping list at home while searching the food aisles.

Sometimes people stare sidelong at me when I whisper an emphatic “Yes!” upon recalling an item. But I hear them reading the cereal names out loud while pushing their carts up ahead.

I’m sure I’m on tape everywhere, mouth moving, reciting something or other or laughing at an internal joke.

My morning coffee brings on a lively discussion of the day with the steam rising from the cup. I find nomenclature a great source of satisfaction: enjoying the bright weedy wildflowers out loud as I walk, croaking back to crows, commenting on shapes of clouds. I ask my feet to be careful walking over cattle guards (which mildly freak me out to walk across.) I greet the stone angels as I pass the cemetery.

Oh, Lord. If you’re going to send the guys in white coats, make sure they’re packing a size Large net, ok?

My roommate laughs when she hears me talking to the kitchen appliances.

I talk back to the hungry cat, tell the howler next door to “just shut up, will ya?” I sound out my life under cottonwoods while above, the turkey vultures spread their papery wings for takeoff.

Attempts to curb this enthusiasm seem doomed to end unsuccessfully. I’m recorded on every government listening post with some ongoing life commentary. I know the trolls with their headphones are yawning when they hear the tapes. It doesn’t get much more ordinary than me, after all.

Last Friday, I was home from the gym an hour early for my Yoga class, forgetting the schedule had shifted. When I arrived back home, walking in the door announcing, “I’m home!” to my roomie, I heard her talking away to herself in the shower: “Ow! It’s cold! It’s really cold. OMG, the weather’s changing so fast…”

I rest my case, ladies & gentlemen.

1

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