ON MY HONOR
I will try.
Stand on the moon
and show me a country.
Falling rain is real.
Down by the rivers
it is killing people.
Fire is real.
Show me a country.
Death is real.
All over the landscapes
no borders
and the loneliness is real.
Duty has an unpleasant sound,
not something I would choose.
And God?
Stand on the moon.
rambunctious
Pomeranian
red
With a frisk of rambunctiousness,
a Pomeranian energy,
the March wind like a red-rubber ball
is bouncing away the long cold dark.
OPEN STUDIO POEM #18
aplomb
solid
chrysanthemum
collage
secluded
Under snow, under solid ground,
earth knits a fabric of mycelium,
bulb, the roots of chrysanthemum
and rose. The February landscape
shapes a shifting collage
of branch and cloud,
a splash of of jay-blue.
We stay secluded, painting
our lives with aplomb.
Open Studio Poem #17
disco
lickety-split
splendid
magenta
Fairies shelter behind the disco ball
hung in the portal to the kingdom of odd.
After sunset, they emerge lickety-split,
and all night they dance through the city,
their magenta wings flashing splendid
in the lights of streets, and traffic, and stars.
The other occupants of the Open Studio are out to get me, as you can see. But I know where that disco ball hangs, and I know the fairies, too.
OPEN STUDIO POEM #15
leaves
haven
susurration
possibility
When the days lengthen,
the cold strengthens
but the light too grows strong—
apricity on a frozen day.
Last fall the young oak kept
its leaves. It stood, susurrating
in the shadow of its mother,
collected light feeding the roots.
We live these days
in a haven of possibility.
MATTER: A Pantoum
What gods do is make and let the pieces fall.
Billions of clocks on billions of beaches
turning as our hands move however they
move or our four legs or six or eight.
Billions of eyes in billions of deserts
move through their times or none and
we move our two legs or four or six or eight and
our hearts and chloroplasts, mycelium,
our many eyes or none.
Our structures crystalize, the plates
and hearts and chloroplasts and mycelium
subduct and bump as we rise and fall.
The structure of our crystals, how the plates
and all we do is an echo of clapping hands as we
subduct and bump and rise and fall.
With voices, silences, wavings of branches
we echo with our hands
and twigs and whatever anemones use
for voices: silences? wavings of branches?
We’re all made of one matter.
Twigs and anemones
turn while our hands move however they
move because we’re all the matter
and making matter and falling is what we do.
OPEN STUDIO POEM #13
bobble
bauble
clarity
celebration
POEM FOR THE LAST DAY OF 2020
With smiles and nods, thumbs up
and applauses, with bright baubles
of technologies—our new necessities—
we’ve bobbled through this hardest time.
We have more courage than we knew,
our loves are stronger than we thought.
Now, let us begin a celebration, now,
as we tiptoe toward the clarity of light
at the far side of this dark passageway.
We are beginning to know
how tender we are; beginning
to know how gentle we can be.
With thanks to Wanda, Kathy H, David and Kathy C for their words.
MAGI, GOING HOME Go home another way, it told us in a dream. Another way? What would an angel know about ways? We had to sell the camels and the slaves. Another way meant bad roads, no roads. We were not accustomed to walk, but walk we did till we bought a donkey. It was old and lame. We rode in turns. We were not accustomed to taking turns, nor to buying food ourselves. Now and then we begged, and more than once we slept in stables, in the straw— the only lodgings we could find after we were robbed of everything. But that’s another tale.
CAMP FIRE WOMEN
My friend Julie is a Fire Keeper.
Sometimes all night she watches,
holds the flame at the center
of the world. It is her sacred way.
And mine? To search the forest,
to gather the wood: This for kindling,
this for tinder, this for cleansing,
this for a long and steady burn.
TIGHT ROPE
My ancestors did this, so I can.
I’ve practiced for this all my life—
to be suspended between cliff edges
above a chasm filled with rapids and rocks.
Without a net.
I’ve done the high wire a zillion times.
It makes no difference
whether there’s a chasm or a sawdust floor.
The far edge is in sight.
Breathe.
My thin-slippered feet
move along the cable.
Cloud shadows, a bird shadow.
One foot in front of the other.
Eyes ahead, toward the edge—
where someone is bending
picking at the cable with a little knife
and no one is there to stop him.
Will it hold? Will it hold?
I can not take time to be afraid.
My ancestors did this, so I can.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
One step, one step, one step
