The Fountain & The Feather

THE FOUNTAIN & THE FEATHER

I saw the angel from four blocks away

I hesitated, trembling: I heard him say,

“I know you from among the stars –

You’re one of them, you’re wholly ours.”

But somewhere his voice became a song.

He held out a hand I shakily took

He pulled me in closer, he gave me a look

Not one word aloud, but a music arose

He tugged me forward, I stood on his toes.

We danced together down an empty street

That led to a fountain so cool in the heat.

He trailed his wingtips, I soaked my feet.

No words were needed, nor did we say

Together, invisible to all on the way…

When a kid popped between us, tossing a dime

And grinned at each of us, one at a time.

At sunset we parted. I watched him fade

One feather remained; one only had stayed.

I reached for it slowly, glowing & white –

When a small hand quick-snatched it into the night!

That child again! Not home in his bed?

“It’s just what I wished for!” He hollered & fled.

Carol Borsello

July 1, 2022

July 1, 2022 0

What Mortals!

Each time I return

It is as a Stranger

Earning again through unfamiliar lands

Knowing not the traps & triggers

Of permissible behavior.

But a good grasp of generalities

Keeps me fed.

I came here for the Greatest Adventure of All Time

When time was not real, but a construct in the minds of eager energies

Spinning on what started as an intoxicating play of light & shadow:

Hide n seek: we hid God: Now we seek.

Ah what fools! What mortals we turned out to be!

—-

One Eternal Day

Life stalks me somehow. Even when I shave my head & hide,

I look out to see Life peering in, making sure I live in this kingdom.

Life needs me – yeah that’s what I tell myself, when each path

Leads me right around into the fray;

When each stream by which I meander empties into

An ocean where I’ve stood many times

Watching myself set sail

On the voyage of this

One Eternal Day.

I know now the drama happened

When I wandered into a fractal

Seduced by a happier ending.

I moved through much & into many –

Lifetime by lifetime, like stones across moving water

Each an enactment of what I’d learned in the past.

That’s why they began to stick together…

The rowhomes in my mind,

Each with a ghost in the attic.

The closer I am to sunset

The more I see in the also-familiar darkness.

—

BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION

If you believe in monsters, they’ll devour you

If you do not, are you incautious?

Unconscious?

Incurious?

I believed in monsters more before

Than now.

I was concerned once upon a time for myself

But now I really want to avoid the collateral damage.

Knowing how we’re all connected, & that.

I haven’t run away for years now.

It’s time.

There is no connection.

Every haircut is a rebirth, a do-over.

Then I look in mirrors to say, “Still not you!”

“You’re that Universal Kelly Girl with a new ticket down on Market Street.

Get your gloves on, girl, we leave soon.”

—

There is only a real world when you start divesting from it.

The world clings … a scarf … a stone.

Set these aside; the NWO is right in wording if not intent:

You will own nothing & be happy.

It’s not a threat, they don’t own that.

What happens with birds of the air who own nothing

Yet to whom all is given?

So are we meant to be.

Source tickles us with Light, sudden flashes,

Snapshots well-laden with memory –

An afternoon in a fall of light to camera

That moment the wave became particle

A paint-ball from your pineal to mine, so tenderly awakening

From its dream of light to our Reality.

June 30, 2022 0

Revisiting the Cave

REVISITING THE CAVE

When Climbing Through a Sipapu

You do not question handholds.

You accept rain as your due

For the upcoming world expects

You to be moist with dew

When you emerge into

Your blessing for occupying

The Dry Lands.

dry, as in dust-dry,

bone dry.

Little marrow left, whittled

From warrior into Weapon.

Emerging into a where assuming color

As you look, taking shape as you imagine

Ok, so here’s the visual I Got:

and comes with a Warning:

‘Read it as you will,

lullabye or bullroarer,’

But read it for the sake of God!’

The God Who is alive in you

At times as dry for doctrine as you a drink.

Spirit has a shy approach for

All my Faith’s so strong.

She is as silent as sure

No longer needing Proxy

That divine realignment of self to higher-self

To me is Enlightenment.

It taps one shoulder so both tremble

Give a tiny startle of attention.

Mine bring a smile: What is coming to me?

Or dare I hope – one more heartache leaving?

I breathe & am breathed in return.

HAVE YOU CLEANED YOUR CHAKRAS TODAY?

yeah, me neither

guess my New Age belief system has

only adequately prepared me for anything

happening after that.

I have this boatload of beliefs I’ve

been banging along behind me,

this entire she-bang

of opposing opinions.

What I’m saying is I wouldn’t mind

If a cosmos push wanted to

Connect with my tush …

Here what I’m sayin’?

Like move this all into recycle for me

Someone else’ll use it

I guess I need a pretty good break from my mind

Awhile.

That’s what got me into all this.

Sign by Register: “Remove Ears On Check-in”

We’re laying down a soundtrack now.

Are the quarters prepared?

Best we could, Boss, we checked his blueprints twice.

Why don’t you run me through the main menu, please.

OK, Boss, nothing you haven’t heard before

I’ll be the judge of that, sir.

Ok. Just generalities; gotta keep these things fluid

what with the Free Will factors to circumvent.

We’re already skimming the line on that one.

The usual: school, other kids, family alterations,

Physical, if it’s on the plan.

Prob’ly marriage

Career vs. anything else to have a living

Move in with physical again,

Then go for the end, come on, Boss,

You know the rest.

All right, all right. On your way,

June 4, 2022 0

Apotheosis

PRAYERS OF THE TRAVELER

The priest, the postulant, the penitent

Evoke the random ministrations

Of universe, pointing at my sins & laughing

The Pastor said, “don’t follow your heart lest it lead

To falsity…”

But I’m just not that independent; I need heart to

Shine my way, to filter my thoughts, to bring me

To the altar where I will not kneel, but

Reach instead my arms to God

With my heart outstretched, elastic

Ready for the learning, for the leaning

Ready for the love to flow from me for me

So ready for the love, God, the magnification

Of who I am into who You are

Not boasting, but becoming the outpouring

Of all You have shared with me

That I may express You with my life

With actions, speech & understanding

“Know thyself to know God.”

APOTHEOSIS

I play in halcyon days

Ingesting, digesting

Parsing, praying.

Offsets of accomplishment

The truth of divine mind

Made manifest by my actions.

Even this far along in life

Rich with effort, rife with falling short

The paths of life forever circular

Still, I strive like salmon reborn upstream

After flying against persistence

To be recreated

In Your image.

A PRAYER AT 5:15 a.m.

Wholeness in the world

Begins setting myself to rights

Tugging down my shirt

Polishing old shoes with miles of soul

Searching for the heights of spirit

Falling short, then falling in

The flow catches me,

Asks if I’m ready,

Tosses me towards heaven

Telling me to fly it on my own

In a whisper, constant & sure

The Holy Spirit of effort

Builds ladders to the stars

While I stand aground, looking up.

Knowledge smiles upon me

Wisdom takes me by the hand

Aligns me to Spirit

Over & over again

Never losing patience or

Succumbing to anger’s frustration.

Build for me a heaven, Lord

Just for me? You promised

A Holy Land at the end!

Where I become my own nourishment

Healthy & wholly

In service to God.

Mother Nature brooms the landscape

Shaping with wind so generous to share the dust

On my heels back to earth.

While lifting me into Love.

MY PRAYER AT 1:30 P.M.

Never to have the same moment

To be bored or tired of life

But accepting change

As its axis

While I spin in its regard,

The Father’s child, the mother’s girl,

Gathered up in arms to rest my head

(My heavy head)

Upon your shoulder.

My heart to yours, beating in holy synchrony

Inspired with breath, with mirroring You

With shining eyes & windblown hair

A kid You can be proud of

“Watch me, Lord!

I am doing this all for You.

May 22, 2022 0

No More Mr. Nice Girl.

HOW MANY DREAMS MAKE A SAINT?

(As many as prayers enwrap sin.)

Make me flexible again, Lord,

Bring me to that place of comfort

In this everlasting body.

Let me be but another Beginning

One more Easter; re-admitting the Light

I carry it upon me,

A cape of strong silk

Snapped out to stop the wind & fly.

There is a ray of light with my name on it

Somewhere here – I know it!

Another elusive Start, supported

Unreservedly by universe.

I am best at beginnings…

The one keeping track,

making notches on my stick…

Must be plumb worn-out by now!

Quelle Stupide!

Holding my horses while I’m in the parade is lunacy!

NO MORE MR. NICE GIRL

I look as sappy in the photo as the cottonwood behind me

And when did I ever wear pink in Real Life?

No more!

I don’t even know what I’m missing

Except it’s no longer there.

A sea entered my inner chambers

Hollowed/hallowed as any woman –

Wrought the change you see here

The rebirthing: resistance re-inflating.

What emerges? Who is this new Being?

…she who no longer needs pink?

In the desert, sometimes butterflies turn into dragons.

ANOTHER

I put the mirror low, to see myself coming & going.

First is awareness; teaching myself what to look for

By seeing what others see.

I built a wall I thought a lattice

A work of temporary art that became a template

Situations fill themselves in

Too broad by far: whole emotional categories apply

To a scintilla of evidence!

BOUFFANT

“Becoming the universe” is the soul’s ultimate

Philadelphia Experiment:

Something here

Appears there.

Then very little ever matches up again.

It seems my mind

Wants to dart for every circumstance…

Fear keeps one paw upraised.

I’ve Got A Secret

At first it seems covert:

The Path: The Mystery: The Rest.

But now all that’s trappings…

And I’m on about mileage.

Make haste! Tempus Fugit!

MY INNER TEEN

Knows nothing but what she wants

The little thief dishes guilt like hash

Serves it hot & smelly

Sends it down the line

Souring

The little Righteous Scold

Who only knows rules & rulers, really,

Whose heart compressed them

Into puckered arrows arcing the sky

Putting all to distance.

Her Worlds gone hormonal

Too much knowledge, not near enough Knowing.

Beads, rattles, bells

Remind me where I’m from

Tho dry, I know ceremony counts

In stays broad & elemental

Verily I repeat, “There are not enough women singing.”

Mother Earth needs the voices of her daughters

The rhythms of women walking

That gentle, constant drumming

The light patter of every girl-child

Returns as fish & butterfly

Retracing their paths

To beginnings.

To review the terms

Refine the Vision

Reclaim the prizes left behind.

Cheat

Why only & ever a chip off the old block,

It seems to be I got as much as I ever wanted from that quarry.

This is not yet the time I am to strike flint & create fire.

I stand along a widow’s walk

Near a bridge, feeling equally suspended

When all I ever wanted was to be a rock.

ROLL

May this wind bless our presence

May this rain bring forth our garden

When the One-Way signs point at each other

Often at crossroads,

Don’t take on any more lifetimes

Than you can handle.

Just walk straight through.

Take some time to sit with the cat.

Carol Borsello

April 2022

April 23, 2022 0

Post No Bills

Attach nothing to this life.

this life is nothing in & of itself.

I’ve been doing it for maybe longer than you

all I’ve learned is I no longer want to be a particle

but a wave.

What do the words mean anymore?

I understand when I say them, I’m posting the wrong message

the one that these go for in this time.

I’m not talking them in today’s terms, though.

I gave up the moving forward & am taking a u-turn.

I need to have my today re-couched in yesterday.

And not just any yesterday, but a specific, focused, energetic of a yesterday.

the one where words had definition, & borders amongst themselves, & meanings.

I speak them that way at times.

I’m zooming in on my past, doing a close-up on who I was; with who I Am

aligning the two.

Once I got that, I’ll bring in who I want to be.

Life’s Little Potato Peeler

I like the analogy of being a whittler, of tiny shaves & curls of wood

tickling down to feather at my feet.

i like the idea that there might be a beginner spirit in the wood

waiting to get out, to sit on the shelf

to move among the thrift stores of the world.

I know at times, I do this with my life.

My pen makes a great tool; the sharpest knife ever,

that, & my words.

Each memory I consign to the forest floor

will blow into someone else’s tale.

March 27, 2022 0

Transformational

GRAND CENTRAL LIFE

I see now, it’s become a spiral stair.

That was wide open once, everyone together

Rushing up to meet the golden world.

Aglow with their eagerness.

Yet one by one

They moved by me,

They moved around me

As I wandered off to a side.

I wanted to stand still & watch

The people heading by.

Sometimes I’d be joined in a swirl

Of like-thinkers for a while.

We’d connect in a literal 12-step program;

at 13, parting ways.

Most times, tho, I climbed along

An edge, over there, into where.

Alone

Not by choice,

But growing weary of departures.

That’s where the spiral stair began.

An idea “you’re better alone, at this point.”

That only fits one at a time.

I was unquestioning.

I notice now the tower around me

That when I emerge, I cross bridges.

NEW INFORMATION

My grief is not in my lungs, it’s migrated to my heart,

swollen with sorrows

not even my own.

I am annoyed to have to pay attention.

I am not sickly; my scars are well-earned…

Reminders & I stayed on a good path.

I did well when I remembered to

Search for these with my heart-compass Guide.

She tells me now to let go of it all, to go for the best

Which I can expect since my expectations will fuel nothing less.

I reach again Critical Mass.

EXTRAORDINARY

When it is time for Ritual, I test a chord in my solar plexus

If it says, “Go fill up.”

I leave the dry sand I’ve been shaping

where it is.

I turn towards outside in degrees

longingly, almost fearful from being In.

One word can set you on a path of looking through

The Window at yourself, instead of staring out.

Now you are in the Ritual world

Where shelter is reversed from your norm

Where you are a little less plugged in all the time

Since it’s so much more meaningful to be unplugged.

REMAINDERS

I am sifting, seeking whole pieces

Here there is one, a spotted memory for

My back pocket.

Who cares if it’s not mine?

Life can get curious enough, but can

Never satisfy our Curiosity.

AND WHILE WE’RE AT IT

I have overcome fear for long periods of elation

Especially in traveling the road.

I auto-resumed balance

While here, on land, I am off-footed.

I would know my chart

To see if this streaking comet

Of self-worth & reassurance soon arrives:

To know to stand with my arms wide open

In welcome.

I just found prayer is the remote, pushed the button

To jump-start my transformation.

It is begun.

Now I need take my bearings

For the center of me,

The spirit core, the one who knows

Where they keep the wings.

Angels fly because they can?

What’s to stop me then?

March 5, 2022 0

When Totems Collide

WHEN TOTEMS COLLIDE – 1/29/22

Calendars are fetishes

We wear them for the same reasons

Totems are grounding

Stabilizing

Organizing

Isn’t that the definition of calendars?

Now you wear time on your wrist

How could anything else work?

We hid our power in the creases –

Power now inked upon the skin

“Wearing your heart on your sleeve”

Was less obvious in my day.

Secrecy as currency

Dispensed for display.

UNTITLED – 2/12/22

She lived her life in minutes

While hours thundered by

Sometimes attentive, she slapped flanks to hurry their

Return to pulsing seconds.

We almost galloped ourselves

Until age returned us close enough

To beginnings

To make a study of time worthwhile.

HEART, CAN WE TALK?

I don’t know if you’ll cause my death

Or if I just will dismount one day,

Handing the reins to some alter-self

What I know is I’ve not been Here before.

The world gone kaleidoscope, & calliope,

Altogether widdershins.

When that Spiral only goes two ways –

SO, IF I’M NOT ROCKING SIN, I’M A SAINT?

METRICS

I understand why

That card reader

Said the word, “Posthumous”

When I questioned Fame.

My timing began to stagger the 2^nd time I broke my right arm.

Repetition never bores a universe.

Destined to “repeat it?”

Or did I just replay it

To see if I’d missed much.

CONDENSED

As I was, I folded up even more

Squeezing off fear of death,

Entering that perpendicular

Funicular

It didn’t happen the next day, though

Actually, a decade went by

Before I unpacked it fully.

Sitting as it was, on the suitcase stand in my room.

ONCE UPON A TIME OF EVER-AFTER

We were crowned with living butterflies

Stars winked in eyebrows

Powers transported us with leis

Of lily & frangipani

We rose into that eternal clarity

In full power & reason,

We sailed easily into that divine

So promised.

I’m headed back there now –

Having seen enough here

To know I need to maybe think it out again

Playing “hide & seek in the desert”

Never sequoia, only tumbleweed.

February 12, 2022 0

Sanctuary

If churches had no doors

would the gods come out among the people?

curious to see how that other half lives

having heard so many bizarre tales.

Each of us would know them differently

disbelief never stopped a god…

would the people discover churches

their lean acoustics

the affinity for sound, the hard benches

bouncing it into distortion.

yet even so, the perfect place for anonymous speaking,

for stealth-level sharing.

some might become coffee houses…or libraries

All the prayers, the dreams of hope & glory

— everyday glory that is —

rising up, scenting the fresh air of ideas.

Would the gods visit other churches?

Ringing a familiar steeple bell as calling card

or wander pastures, playgrounds, parklands?

Who among them would you recognize?

Who among us would they know?

February 5, 2022 1

Poems In A Jar

Dedicated to my sister, Teri, who died on her 80^th birthday last January – R.I.P.

THIS LITTLE BAG OF SINS

Keeps me from heaven

You see, it will not cross the sill

My feet are sore from walking

My fingers clenched with Will

I’ve left it by the roadside

Several times, many miles

But it found its way through mirrors

Devious with wiles

This bag of small wrongdoings

Heavier than lead

Weary years of travel

For what?!? These all are dead.

I sat a while longer

Just watching heaven’s lights

A wretch in rags & sandals

A refugee of night

A passing angel called me

I wakened with a start

“I’ve something here to give you.”

Then he handed me my heart

That movement took a lifetime

As he stood, he took my hand

I turned to find Forgiveness

In a pyramid of sand.

~~1/25/22 carol borsello

DINOSAURS WERE A RUSSIAN PLOT

Nah, they just jumped off an asteroid, see?

Or maybe Nibiru

Tough old hides rolling down valleys

Clearing off nature

After glaciers allowed eggs

Bigger was better, they surmised

That they ruled was no surprise

The mystery of their demise

A patchworked web of compromise

Enough for me that they are gone!

Where once they rolled, I make my home.

POEMS ARE SO MUCH FUN!

They climb out one by one

Looking around before coming aboveground

Their bodies well-rounded

Identities impounded

Compounded, surrounded

They shake themselves off

And put on their hats

They walk through the Earth

But yo, I never worry

The kids are all fine

It’s Mom who’s more usually out of her mind.

EACH DAY DECANTED

Of fine spirits

Distilled by masters

Trod upon by maidens with purpled feet

A day rides the border of night

To that same eastern horizon

Then swarms uphill

Touching everything

With fingers trusting life

TOO YOUNG

For a gun

He used his words instead

We prayed

He slayed

His road still made of lead.

January 26, 2022 0