“I Always Want A Tomorrow”

tho there will come a day when tomorrow comes no more

and all life goes far away in this three dimensional way

of having hands & feet, a mouth to kiss, hair to comb

a life to help others & put things away

all the ordinary events of the day

spent like coins of the Old Realm

to buy dreams in the New.

Do you think I should have refused?

was there a way to do things otherwise?

I came here to do this: to live as I have

alone & halfway water

belonging nowhere but where I am

and that only scantily.

it was a way to pay it off early

any debt I owed, any fault repaired

so I slipped between the bars & the barriers

to awaken here, my eyes wise with birth

soon clouded with living in so small a space

as a body – enlarged now tho it may be…

I complain no more

I tuck myself into a ball & keep rolling

I move because I can & because there is no other way to live.

And in the unexpected, ordinary morning

I catch myself looking up at a ragged sky

edged & egged in blue with the hoarse clouds ballooning

higher than life itself, the fragile bridges to a firm & total God

the creation in which I am as secure as individuality can make me.

I live now after dying to myself in so many spaces

And who I am is all I am, the wild paths fraught with winds

snatching my words & my blinking my eyes.

this is what counts: the here & now of forever

at which I stare, an idiot believing in sanity

not to be had here or now but only imagined.

With No Time to Consider Her Life

she did so anyway, the thoughts slowing her more

tangling her feet & tugging her ears

those old songs of faraway

no closer than before.

the now crowded about her

spilling into the future, disparaging the past

yet still she clung to what have you, to what might have been

as she clings to this now, knowing nothing else.

“I Was Alone, But That’s Not the Same as Being Lonely“

They spoke of families to visit, of grandchildren & sons,

nieces & daughters, of turkeys waiting to be carved

by the man of the house

while all the women know exactly how to use a knife.

a best-kept secret, that of life & death

where-over the women rule, washing the dead,

touching the wounds with aching fingers

mourning is the same as rejoicing

when death chooses another & calls out its hooting cry.

we women shudder & move aside for we are not the targets

we are only life symbolic & whole, uncommonly bested by life or time or tide

until we say “Basta!” Enough! Until we hold up a right hand to stop the tide no man can ever claim

the secrets all live inside of us & even cutting us open will not these reveal

their seclusion is their elation

their joy is that of all of nature resplendent in the sun.