Footfalls
Gently, so gently do I touch love
The petal of a flower
With a tendency to curl into protection
Most tenderly I offer a wish, a promise, a longing
Turned into yearning, if I gaze too long upon it.
I am firm. Resolute. I will not disturb this seedling
Except to offer the water of my prayers.
——————————–
Who knows where our perceptions may bring us?
To what tall doors opening
Into adventure or amorous murmurs?
I am familiar with this dance; the steps never leave.
I am not like her; not frail, nor sickly
I am an ocean after you have tended a mountain rill…
There are mysterious depths here, a rush of saline
A holy path to follow to fulfillment
But I see you patting love down as you would a stray kitten
While I am the panther, curled upon plateaus of rock.
When it is time, we shall meet on terms of strength
In skies filled with wind,
We will open wings & fly
Be where you need to be for now
I have our future well in hand.
————————
I am daydreaming about being in love. What is happening here? What am I doing? What stray magic has padded in like a cat, curling its tail around my heart?
So much is going so well, why not? Why deprive myself of a dream when being awake might bring the same thing? why else are we placed in each other’s path, except to love & become the Beloved?
Yet I know nothing; love drives out all knowledge. What went before is erased, a film laid over the past to be rewritten, reworked, resumed at another chord.
Don’t listen to me. It is nothing, this tiny blossom, delicate as a wish…a sturdy mountain flower bright in color against a desert sea of sky.
I will tell none but you & my journal of this. Shh. Like oiling the tin man, this nourishes my heart. Unfolding an origami uncovers all the wrinkles; new patterns display, thoughts of never knowing this again are smoothed away. How does this happen except as a miracle patterned upon the sacred in life?
There is nothing here but a whisper about to become a song…a melody drawing a bow across heartstrings long bundled in silk.
O Lord.
Carol
The Collective of Silence
THE COLLECTIVE OF STILLNESS
There’s not far to go before the land starts insisting
I am alive in every place I stand
The telepathy of clouds
Drawing my face to the sky
The valley bows to my feet
The Rock People watching.
——-
I am listening as hard as I can to the Silence
My ears so still (no cilia vibrating)
No sound save Eternity
Settling in for the long run.
——
Earth whispers to me of immortality
Longing to be a poem
It tells me to take it everywhere
That water-meadow in Wisconsin
Chesapeake Bay largesse
The stone-poems of rock nearby
An unchanging safety
Waiting to claim all flesh
I am immortal as I can be in this moment
The activation of love in a grain of sand.
———
The spare skeleton remains; a lace & calcium poem
Yellow-white teeth resembling long-bone toes
I will be blanched
Gnawed by coyote cubs, dragged, growling, to dens
Sung into sunrise: danced on four legs
——–
Roadside flowers
Visible only en masse
A color smudging the landscape
Wreathing no arches
Serving as Butterfly’s foothold
Nectar in a bitter landscape.
——–
Aging to Perfection…
Mortality / Schmortality
Third person me
She walks with the confidence
Of a big-breasted woman
35 a dim echo as its double approaches
No long gray tresses here,
But short, sharp spikes
For the divine connection.
Thick around her center
Description: Rubenesque
Undefined by Twiggy-standards
A short, Italian fireplug of female
Passions wrapped in brain & heart;
Sharp-tongued, less than tolerant…
Strong hands, a wrinkly smile
Entering her eyes first.
She’s tasted risk & lived on love
Fearless, present; a solid woman
Ready for the next act
The third trimester of
Maiden, mother, crone.
Age Happens
Long after youth has fled the parade
Life lengthens beyond
Childhood
Adolescence
Adulthood
An unerring arrival (never expected)
It takes up residence
In spots, in strangely-shaped vein whorls.
It’s a celebration & a culmination
A triumph & a terror –
Not that it will end poorly,
But that it may not be well-accomplished.
The Divine Miss B
Age is the last factor of life
Positive on the balance sheet
But only after you’ve gotten past
All other negotiations.
At first, it was a nuisance
I asked for laugh wrinkles, but this?
Ridiculous!
The 50’s slipped by
The 60’s kind of danced along
Now, here I stand at 70:
The threshold of being Born Again
Having it finally, my way.
Being able to ignore the life-beast
Or take it to bed,
Suck it dry:
I rise triumphant!
My birthday hides in September
I have tried, am trying, to pay my debts
To be faithful to the oligarchs
Who file their nails at my door
Yawning as they await their monthly checks.
I have a Final Solution for you all…
It might be the best payment I can come up with…
When I am dead, someone scatter my ashes
In front of the banks.
Hooks On Heaven
SET MY HOOKS ON HEAVEN’S RIM
Prayer over prayer, I climb
Searching in wonder for whomever therein dwells
Lords & ladies?
Saints, angels…
Crossing rainbows latticed of beliefs
Buttressed by Faith
This is harder than I thought:
Escaping humanity
While wearing a skinsuit!
GOD’S BEARD
I’ve never lacked fortitude or fortune
Promised God in every encounter
I examine each for divine traces
Sometimes finding only one gray hair.
8 A.M./FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH
The hot, fierce light of New Mexico
Seasoned by overcast
To a blend of blessing-cool
A morning to sit outside
Traffic blowing by in purposeful wind
Life catching its breath
For one more day on Planet Earth
TRUE/FALSE
Who can trust wisdom anymore?
That of the ages is pop-stuff now
Our minds are far beyond the tenets
Deep in personal responsibility
Dig in, my Soul, find the
Traction of grace
Levity of blessing
Spores of holiness…
Follow the perfume of angels a-wing
Orient towards the Divine
It’s the scent of love
Fresh-baked & set
Upon an open windowsill
Of a morning.
CREATION (Two Views)
Father
I wonder if God donned an apron
Then set to shape the World.
Dusted His hands in flour & water
Before patting up the clay…
Could be He set us up along the
Fence ‘round Heaven
Walking down the line
Breathing out
Blowing us into the twice-blessed world.
I like that He clapped us up out of nothing
Cobbled up a world to home us
Blessed it blue & brown
Setting our souls a-wing into space-time.
Mother
Maybe a Mother made us
Searching the rag-bag pile
For scraps in red & yellow,
Tan & black…
Pulling these free &
Settling on a stool to
Fill a whimsy.
How lovingly she worked,
Symmetrical & shapely –
Imagine us, the source of Her delight
As we began our Song of Thanks…
Her affection captured, She
Fell to earnest Creation:
A world for us to dwell upon
Creatures to ride & roar & race
Greens to eat
God! She thought of everything!
Even water to get us clean again,
Brains to continue in personal conceivings,
Hearts to love…
Then up to bed She went
And in the morning, we were gone.
Dreaming Change (Happy 4th of July!)
Have I dreamed this sea-change boiling across America? It’s a kind of Stadium Wave happening across our country as one group stands up, thrashes about, & another sits down.
In Hawaii & other places, land forms & rearranges itself, heaving from unknown depths in an incredible brew of white heat & black rock. Mountains slide sideways & crush nascent dams. The sun seems to fracture its light or appear as a shadow behind itself. Shorebirds land far inland as their photos appear all over media. Bears move onto porches to reside next to the woodpile. Whales beach themselves in unprecedented numbers. I certainly am not dreaming this.
We are threatened with 5G technology, a weapons-grade “helper” which is proven to confuse minds, cause headache, scramble thinking, sadly being installed in schoolyards. No way I might have made that up. What have “the powers” got against us? Why do they hate us so, to spray Round-Up on our fresh foods before releasing these to market, to redesign vegetable cells & redraw gene structures? I don’t want drought resistance laddered into my tomatoes, or insecticides rendered into my smoothie strawberries. I would love for the corn I buy to be corn & not engineered fuel.
I read about MK-Ultra-driven shooters, each with his own therapist/handler to bring out the worst prior to setting him loose in the populace. I don’t want to meet any Montauk boys – or girls for that matter, during the course of my day.
Information bears many prefixes: mis-, dis-, non-…but all I want is the straight story of events, their causes, their outcomes & how they are being addressed. What happened in Las Vegas & why do we hear no more about it? Were the men in black Kevlar at Parkland School unworthy of notice or comment by mainstream media?
I see short-sightedness & stupidity visited upon my neighbors & friends as a form of friendly fire masquerading as guidance. The skies twist in places, braiding clouds to bruise the logical mind. Groundwater disappears overnight, while downpours loosen rocks, in turn eradicating roads.
Whole populations rise from what they perceive as stinging insult, but instead of simple rhetoric, they line up cannons. Today I saw a star-spangled top on a woman while her significant other wore a sage green tee with a black automatic weapon stenciled on it. I actually wondered which was more representative of America at present.
Huge lines of people are on the move elsewhere & then become the butt of argumentative behavior wherever they try to arrive. I’m well aware not everyone is who they seem to be in these groups…no vetting has been enacted, the children with them may not be theirs & the Four Horsemen often ride alongside them, witting or no. But while we may wish them to return to their roots; this is an impossibility since the divide & conquer mentality of politicos has rendered their homelands deplorable. We created the problem we complain no one can solve.
We close borders to them, while our own destabilize, the very land humps & shivers, children disappear, economy spirals into the gray on the dollar bills, downgrading the green. We’re in an interactive system & need to recognize it’s a closed loop – atmosphere, nation-building, health – all connected in an intimate dance of creation & flow.
We have indeed released the Kraken we were assured might be controlled if only this, that, or the other happened. It rides the crest of the sea-change we experience, tentacles lashing out in fury.
The lies need to be refuted & remedied from both sides. The power to exercise global change must first bear some resemblance to what we wish the change to be. We straddle worlds so divided we cannot conceive agreement & attempt to enforce transformation. This clear & present danger to our individual selves & souls must be brought into order. At last glance, the Kraken was gaining, making this difficult indeed. The whole setup never came with an instruction book, tho many agreed upon what they perceived to be one in the Bible. Unfortunately, rules no longer apply & oratory serves no purpose.
Dissolving each boundary that is set, whether personal, political or perceptual, is sorely needed. Certainly, the world itself seems bent upon dissolution. But ours as humans came first. When promised heaven, what can we do with being delivered to hell?
Indeed, the storm is upon us & before its rage, we race for safety. It takes interesting people to live in interesting times, to counter the curse & give birth to amendment so enormous it is soon obvious we took on too much too fast. I don’t know where life’s demarcation occurs between forgiveness & right action, but I walk that thin line of light every day, in every encounter.
We each need to be great again as individuals for the country to be so. We need to curb the absolute power each one of us thought it so easy to handle. We have worn out the rule of law by applying it with force. Let us now try to administer it with love. It can be done. It is so quiet when we stop screaming. Change becomes possible, when love is used as the unerring power source to stoke its engines. Love is the only leash the Kraken will bow its scaly head to, rest its whipping limbs within, close its bulging eyes to rest upon.
Dig up your individuality, dust off all cliché it has rested in. Move your heart to the forefront, stop trying to think through unthinkable times. We must stop the harm out there to stop the harm being visited upon us. Do it now, as it’s unlikely we will ever have the full story!
Give the impossible its due: our hearts are online now, networked, hooked up, tuned in. Put the children in the center of the circle for protection, remove them from harm. With your eyes open to the future, attend to the present. Declare nothing to be unbelievable, even Peace in Our Time.
It Rained All Night
Such a commonplace event, rain. Unless you live in the Chihuahua Desert of New Mexico’s southwest where we’ve had no real rain since February when we had a day of windy-wet weather.
What resulted from a faraway “tropical depression” caused exultation here. A mothering rain fell all night. I woke at 3:30 a.m. to the gentle pulsing flow, swinging my legs from bed & rising with an energy I haven’t felt so far this summer.
I had left the doors & windows open, hoping for a breeze from Turtleback to breathe through & dissipate the built-up heat. To my delight, the chimes slowly named their notes from the yard pole as the rain began. The soothing sound of its fall, the distinctive aromatherapy of a desert releasing heat & sponging in moisture brought me straight downstairs to sit by the door.
The sun is a force of nature here. I joke the heat from the Trinity site (Alamogordo’s first atomic bomb) has revisited us since exiting outside is slowed by a solid wall of heat that stops all progress. I’ve lived here for years-at-a-time twice before, but this third time is exacting quite a struggle to stay cool.
Since I came from Delaware most recently, my memories are of north-facing French doors being sluiced by nor’easters, days & nights of drumroll rain, pouring water, bouncing drops, gusty winds all contributing to zipping up my Maine rain jacket & tying the hood tightly. The rain tossed itself against windows like someone outside was flinging buckets one after the other. Umbrellas were fruitless, turned inside out after two steps.
In T or C this year, the sun is different, intensified into a kind of microwave heat, immediately igniting the skin & clutching the lungs. Sometimes, I want to ask it what I did, it seems a personal affront when temps rush to 107 or 110 of a day.
It’s heavenly to wake to this gentle sound & sit by the screen to inhale moisture. The form & force of recent weather here has been argumentative & I’m so not in the mood.
This steady drizzle is an arpeggio after the crashing cymbal clang of relentless, raw, unnaturally white light. It is grace, softly miraculous, growing my sense of joy in the breaking morning. It’s a prayer answered, one from the people & the land together.
My poor garden fell victim to the unyielding heat. My water bill soared; I brought the containers to the local community garden with a sign saying “Adopt Me’ stapled to each. Many this morning will be offering gratitude that they need not uncoil the hose today & stand outside to relieve the powerful daily thirst of anything green-growing.
An uncomplicated enough phenomenon, this rain. I bow my head & accept heart’s-ease to its simplicity.
Changeling
Every day I am restored by the grace to begin again. Actually, every moment is such. All the large beginnings: leaving husbands, letting go of lives so carefully gathered & nervously lived, turning away from daughters & lovers whose love for me was as real as my love for them…
I am who I am because each relationship began & ended. I am free & unbound & if I had hair, it’d be blowing in the wind of my life now passing by.
I am here to start dreams – though this means my expertise rises from endings. For all passages require one closed door & one that’s opening. Doorways equal transitions (which is why we forget what it was we wanted in the other room as we pass through them.)
Walking from one door to another requires a special energy that gathers as desire rachets down tightly, curling upon itself until the tension binds into a release. All else is wished away. The “New” laps around me like a litter of puppies, soft, round, happy, panting & yipping in eagerness to be experienced.
Even from this, I remove myself at times. I wonder about me. Every month brings a new moon & a full, the bright rebalances the dark. I initiate by becoming an initiate following an initiative.
I have done harm, yes. The landscape is littered with what I probably should have done. But I picked my way carefully through the detritus I’d made of my relationships, through the hash made of my relationships by the others in them. I clawed out of the spoils to that bright new day of welcome opening for me, as though I was the only pure thing it would ever see.
I trust with a full heart. I unfold as though the sun will shine forever. I keep believing, as all the songs say I must do. And when the fear sends me scurrying for the coat pockets to check for lost, linty money, or shaking the piggy bank for funds to finish the month, I live with it. I recover my joy whether there are enough coins to rattle or one single jingle.
In coming this far, I have taken the journey home. There is no arrival for I am always where I am: at home. There is wisdom here, and courage. There is heart-mind, order & determination. “All the time I’ve wasted is given back to me”* I’ve learned it’s okay to draw a blank at first. Sometimes a close encounter with a rhino & subsequent clean-up is the best I can manage. Whatever.
I don’t flicker anymore. I burn. People are singed near me. I have gone Samurai, a world-warrior forged by life’s forgiveness. Each place I have halted, I have gathered more.
If I seem part of a crowd, it’s only because I’ve stood still & the others have caught up. I can wait for them to pass me. Living alone is not my fear. Alone is one letter off of God: All-One. And I am all-in-one now.
I’m accustomed to the unexpected; I accept the occasional maladroit gifts I offer. Things usually come up right though it may be by a longer route.
Dreams always come true (at least mine.) If it isn’t in my life, I haven’t dreamed of it. I have come to view this as choosing, not limiting. Days march past on the calendar like ants, purposeful, fulfilling, each carrying one burden to release at the end of the day as a pearl of sustenance. Every before becomes an after. I sleep in my dreams like silk pajamas.
The unexpected turns into synchronicity.
It’s taken some time, but I believe in me & that is only because I’m a fragment of my own imagination, burning candles kindled at both ends. The light’s better that way, when seeking blessings.
“It happened without a fight
Something is new about me
I feel it with each breath
There’s a majesty about me
A majesty about me…
I feel it in my self
A new heaven a new earth
Is all that I see” *
—————————
*lines from “I’m Changed” composed by Ricky Byars-Beckwith.
I’m Changed sung by Angel Travis
Dancin’ with my shadow
Dancing with my shadow
Down the middle of the street
With my headphones as antennae
And that Pentatonix beat
Tagged by madness, yes, and music
And my shadow twelve foot tall
All the drivers checking mirrors
Other walkers at a crawl
But I just can’t help it, darlin!
Wish that you could hear it too!
Cuz if this beat all grabbed your feet
Your arms would feel it, too…
So, if you see me on the corner
To the left or to the right
I’m just dancin’ with my shadow
N I may be here all night!
Friends No More: A Parting
Disparate Heart
Made of thorns & parry
I thought you better than this
Moved to pity & then Toledo steel
Bladed with desire
Cutting through love
Looking for yourself in the openings
But this you are already too full of!
You understand so little
Stopped short of full tide
Withholding the forward of completion
Gentle heart, will I take you in compassion?
Shall I find you a nest of ordinary love
Wherein to rest? And, then, will you so?
We have parted a year ago
Your proud blade & I
We have discovered many centers
Many sendings.
We yearn to be the ocean
Covering a high-tided beach
Once more…
It Wasn’t A Dream
I moved one small thing
and the world of dust behind it
came to light.
So it is in life:
I peered behind one thought
Into a world of teeth & claws.
How many times to clear this?
As many as it may take, perhaps?
Barrier Reef
Protecting the tender lagoon of love
Tidal & green inside
Brimming with schools of thought
Flashing in a silver unison of silence.
I will no predator among them,
Coral & Carol interchanged
My bones all unseen
And as beautiful.
Briefly Then
I’ll tell you the story of my life:
I Am. That’s about it for now.
Oh, you want details?
I have been advised to not follow advice
I have been told to sing, but practice silence
To run, but now, to sit-stay
To love “in cautious abandon.”
Whom shall I believe?
Who shows me the reality of hard-packed dirt
Advising me to see only stars?
Allow me just a momentary hug
Heart-to-heart,
An angel wrapping wings around a tree.
I have lived so long on so little love
I am beyond existence.
Parallels
I have news for you
These double lines that merge in the distant vision
Don’t merge.
I assure you – it’s a mirage.
For as long as they go together
Somewhere they part
They encounter division
Become singular of purpose
Each no longer the other’s destination
It Is Time
Oh, I have clung to you
Like a child her child’s blanket
It is now to set you down
A dried pen I’ve shaken hard for ink.
I’ve run downhill on our friendship
Now out of fuel, spent completely
Yes, time & past time, months of days
We were to have together
You swept from the calendar
And folded your arms.
Our years are dry as kindling
Our friendship lost in conflagration
A wildfire of no know etiology
One careless match-word
All is now ash.
I’ve poked & prodded with my mind
For reasons for reasonableness
Yet there are none hidden here
None to be had
So let’s say not farewell
but say goodbye.
I brush my hands of loving you
I did all I thought right
While being only wrong.
No Light
Bring on the unlit darkness
the moveless tide
the ink all fades in loveletters anyway.
This burden of relief a wonder.
Once emptiness to fill, now fallow space
This ravished ground
Stupid
It was a turnkey operation
Our being friends
Immediately, I offered entry
Together, we closed the door to others
And tho I wondered where, at times, you went
We found each other at need.
Your many truths were also false
Perhaps mine, only returned?
Your final insult wormed around my edges
Not quite belonging, yet taken in…
The door flung open, invited exit.
I prowled outside, peering in windows
Rattling doorknobs.
I’ve salvaged from the shed,
Made myself a hobo bag I shall not carry long
I leave you to your limping life.
Striding through the white picket fence,
I close & latch the gate.
So Long
This is the last of you
Out of my heart, I say
Your scruff & hind in my hands
One more time
I toss you from the environs of my heart
Your compass after – find me no more!
I clap my hands
And watch you disappear!
llll
