February 2020 – Riding the Light

Dear World of Carol Borsello

Thank you for being here, for continuing to turn in your inimitable & loving way,

The stars shine, imperious & grand. No dogs bark tonight, the breeze is still. Turtleback waits on the moon to reappear so impossibly high above him. All is mysterious night after the unbelievably energetic day.

The plants are happy to be out of Kitty Quarantine. They add to the peace & quiet depth of joy that I feel.

I am a judgmental human, I know. But I am self-contained & of small note in the schema of a world swollen with emotional life.

I feel “zenned” – uncontained. I am important in my little way: people express gratitude that I exist in many ways.

I do not feel sad about letting Fitz go, tho he brought love into the house. Have I once more traded love for convenience to self? It is easy to say life is full of strange disappointments, that it’s hard & lonesome, that our own selves are what we ultimately rely upon. What is lost in that admission is that life also is composed of ineffable joy in the moment surrounded with beauty & knowledge. I am grateful for all it brings me & more so to be able to return that joy in blessing, presence & sharing myself.

Peace is often hard-won at a steep emotional cost. But peace is what I strive for now. My heart is right tho adamantine in expression of what it feels to be “right.” But peace is my striving right now. I’ve never really been an easy person to live with – for myself or others. Yet these others accept me as I am; as I do them.

Thank you, Life, for lessons in love & life in health. My body moves more slowly but feelings overflow boundaries. I find I mourn less…”can’t lose what you never had” is how the cliche goes. Sometimes I do feel I’ve missed so much, yet I live so abundantly in comparison.

Change is always possible…certainly necessary…usually hard-won.

Others express a belief in me & I am happy to be both in community & isolated. Coexistence pays well!

What else, tho, is a human? All imperfect, mercurial, powerful & at times, godlike.

I hope to live to my own measure & to support & allow, to bring forward light from shadow. May my light ever express in divinity of intent.

Amen.

RENEWAL

I slept in tears – Loved against all my sorrows

Held & warmed by Someone who owes me nothing

(But a slap upside my head)

If the mourning is over, let the revels begin!

Let my hands hold secrets to universes

My eyes be kissed

Our tongues entwine

For all my shrilling fears tripping alarms

I will put away now

To let you bring them outside

For the wind to whistle away.

Thank you is never enough in true gratitude

Blessing lays thick with love, balm for the broken heart

I have Much to mend & more to make holy

In the doing of deeds.

My only gifts may be words to bridge the darkness

Yet these I do have & in plenty…

‘Come unto me when

I breathe your name’

Last night too soon, too sad, too uncertain

Too full of truth that first clears the way

For us to part from parting.

I had to dissolve the wounds of dissection

Bring in the soothe of belief

Mop up the bloody departure.

Rediscover with new eyes

You will not disappear or disappoint

I would not be rushed the savor of forgiveness

Of your kisses, the tips of your fingers

Your offer of skin to skin too raw in that moment to accept.

You teach me to learn again

You are the place where yearning may rest awhile

Where “love me” dissolves in the mist of Holy Joy.

It is said the man chooses the woman – but, well,

I did steal that kiss for no reason other than your lips backstage

I did offer my perfumed presence in an unbuttoned shirt you could not refuse

I did fit myself too closely over coffee, cup after cup just so as not to part.

I love your energy, warm & welcome, the season of cold undone.

I love your christening touch, your murmurs which I do not hear

But always understand.

I surrender pretension of holding ground against

Of beating back your small demands:

Only gentle me with a kiss

Only take me with a touch

Let the sun measure our lengths on golden afternoons

Of heart-centered joy, hostaged to love.

Bonfires on a hill as angels overfly

Land not here! We are our own beloved divinity

But later, with the final moan of breath releasing love

Come then to laugh, to stroke our overheated bodies

With wings of balm & glory!

Midnight Maunderings

I never thought myself a leader

Yet I have always been skipping out ahead

Finding the way of the Wayshower.

I venture outside at 3 a.m.

To breathe night-ions

Garnering the darkness

In eager search of distant stars

I fly no flags of bedsheet measure

Only tiny banners of love

Protected on my windowsill

But these I fly proudly

Wings open to the heaviness of air

I am the mouse fascinated by the whiskers of the lion

Unobserved yet always overseen by gentle Divinity

Tweaking my tail, tickling my nose/

I paddled in ponds wearing shoes of adventure

I walked away from lifetimes

While laying no claims

Save those of memory & desire.

As to where this shall take me

I hardly imagine.

My face & my name ahead of me

I still search, scanning horizons

Calling myself forward.

Unready to upstage the world,

I can only upstage myself

One accomplishment at a time.

I test the boundaries of constancy

Questing the North Star of God

I live behind no screens

Of televised content

Content I create my own world.

Where I am a hero on the Hero’s Journey of real life.

I boil carrots in the dark

To better see the day

I wipe my pens on my sleeves

Dotted with ink & drenched

With words about worlds yet undiscovered.

I would bestow my wisdoms

To children I shall never have

Applauding their creativity

Inspired by a tiny phrase.

Until I began these midnight maunderings

These densely-packed thoughts only to

Be experienced in single splendors…

It IS possible to love every tree in the forest

Every wave breaking in similar salty froth

‘pon strangely lit beaches

I watch the world lie down in death

Anticipating only resurrection.

The incense burns

Fierce & hot

Devouring itself

In the grace of alluring scent

I burn to be so!

Never regretting the

Ashen remnant; each

Thought clinging to my nostrils

Breathing in & out.

Blessing all, even the unholy

Especially the unholy

My singular quest to bring

New thought to a mind

Steeped in the familiar.

I cry “Poverty!” while bathed

In the richness of a burgeoning world.

I follow growth in a hunger of appetite

Sentient in the awareness all of it has passed.

My life is a bowl of chocolate strawberries

Sweet upon sweet

Succulent & bursting with juices filling hunger

All is moisture tho more appreciated

In the deserts I choose to live in…

I burst with the treasure of living words

All spoken before me by minds so much greater

Yet what I know is sweet upon sweet

As one by one, I choose my earnest, surprising adventures

I am an oft-told story

With hope of teaching another.

Inimitable, this world at the measure of ten tiny toes

I fight no dragons with my bamboo walking stick

Tho I smell them nearby

Feeling jeweled eyes fixed ‘pon my morsel self.

I pray on, an unlimited artesian well of self

Prevailing over their fiery breath

I pay no attention to mirrors

A rooster’s comb of misrule for a crown

I smile at reflecting shadows

There is nothing left behind but the journey forward.

My past is buried, a scratched-over self I claim not to know

How can I remember a name

Called before I became who I am?

Would it entice me even a moment to become that she?

There are bite-marks all over my past

I’ve chewed it to the bone & beyond

To nourish this future!

2/21/20

My Sister Died On Her Birthday

Which I thought preternaturally tidy. She always was a tidy woman. I wonder what will happen to her things, to those remainders of life left in drawers & desks, to shoes unworn at the end since she zipped about in a “mobility chair.” Another oxymoron.

My daughter was ready to go out to Arizona from Virginia when she heard Aunt Teri was in hospice care. But when she called with flight arrangements, my brother-in-law said, “She passed last night.” And we have heard nothing since.

For all her computer skills, either Teri left no plan, no will, no scrap of “here’s who you contact if” paper. But I’m not one to talk about it since I’ve nothing either except conversations with friends none of whom would know how to contact my kid. Guess I’d best get something in writing.

Hell, I’ve barely enough to live on, let alone save for term insurance. I keep telling people “just toss the body down some abandoned elevator shaft.” And I’ve moved into an apartment built over a former Jiffy Lube with my unit atop the pit – a simplification if I’ve ever heard one. I don’t want to be a burden, I don’t want to cost anyone anything, I don’t want to have my face on a jar next to the restaurant registers with “Help bury this woman!” crayoned atop it. Yet this may still come to pass.

Take this month for example – rent increase, insurance due, deferred car payment impossible tho the bank said I could do that in February. I wonder how people do it…same as me, on a fixed income but a floating tsunami of a bill lurking on the horizon. Yeh, sure, I’ve got $500 somewhere, let me check the sock drawer. I’m counting on Valentine’s Day business to float me up n over like some innertube on the vast swells of a cashiered life.

I’m running for office here in town. The other candidates have 4-5 4 x 8′ signs all over the street corners – vote for me!! I have a $20/week ad I’m running, cleverly changing the lines. I was gifted $166 for my campaign. No epic Trump battles of the wallet bulge here.

So, whatever. I move along, steady as a plough horse crossing the field to the barn. I have food to eat & enough to pay the regular bills. I’ll put the insurance on one of the credit cards, grit my teeth & make payments. Maybe I could send the other card to my daughter & say, just charge it, honey.

Hope St. Peter doesn’t run credit checks. Gives new meaning to that old song, “I owe my soul to the comp’ny sto…”