A Hundred Falling Veils

Though the science
of it is too much for me tonight …
photomorphogenesis
and protocholorphyllide a.,
this evening I take
comfort in knowing
that plants grow also
in the dark.

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I shape arguments
in my mouth,
and just before
they come out
I see through
the window

how clear
the rain

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In our every room,
a window.
In the window,
a single lily.
In the lily,
an unfolding.
In the unfolding,
I meet you.

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Wild Rose decides its time
to stop this endless picking away
at her own liver and dance.
She runs out the door
into the rain and barefootly spins,
and my god, the new leaves
on the trees, how they glisten.

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If the boat tipped
in white water,
I learned to hold on
to my paddle.

If my feet slipped
while climbing the wall,
I learned to hang on
to the rope.

I learned to cling
to the covers
when sleeping
with a restless lover.

And lost in the cliffs
as the sun went down
I learned to hold on
to instinct and hope.

All my life, I have learned
to hold on. To cradle
my children when they cry.
To grab the wheel when
the car veers on ice.

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After reading Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening, May 17

Unspeakable things
flutter inside my chest,
black butterfly wings.
It is not until long after
I let them go
I notice
they might be beautiful

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This space between us,
I bless it. Though I have
wanted to hold you tight,

and tighter than that,
though I have pressed
my naked weight into

your nakedness, though
I have wanted to go deeper
than that, to penetrate

into the very core of you
and feel you inside me, too,
though I long to join you

completely, I bless this space.
I bless the fear that enters me
when you leave, wondering

if you will return. I bless the
loneliness that grows in me
like a child that will not be born.

I bless the chill of the lonely bed
that holds the space for your warmth.
And I bless the struggle of reaching

for you—how vulnerable it is
to let the arms open, to open
the hands, to hold them open

wide and wider, though they long
to cradle this very body that
misses you instead. It is

scary to love you this way,
by letting you go again
and again, not just when you

leave, but letting you go
even in the moments
when I’m pressing my lips

into your neck, feeling your
hands splay across my back.
And I’m letting you go

with my blessings, blessing
the space between us
and how it invites a crossing.

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“for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness”
—Galway Kinnell, “St. Francis and the Sow”

Deepest scarlet,
the claret cup

blooms in the desert,
flouting drought, flouting

heat. It does not need
anyone to think it

is beautiful. So simple,
so simple. It blooms.

It blooms because.
It blooms despite.

It blooms and loses
its blooms so soon

and does not grieve the loss.
It opens. It opens regardless.

It opens and blesses
itself with its opening.

This is marvel
enough to send someone

into her own wild desert,
to see what she might do.

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I do not remember the day
I vowed to myself
that I would never be seen.

Was I being kicked by the boys
on the long walk home?
Or caught cheating in math class?

Or lying beneath a man I did
not love? I don’t know where
or when, but there was a day

I chose to wear a skin
inside my skin, something akin
to gloves, so that in every moment,

I could control how I was touched.
For years, I wondered why no one knew me.
And I wondered why I felt so alone.

Oh little girl, oh woman now, oh
years of covering up. Oh loneliness
and secrecy I chose instead of love—

I see me and do not judge myself.
I see me as I am. But there is
this second deadened skin

that’s ready to be shed. And here
is the chill of the late spring snow
as it seeps now through to the bones.

And the cold feels good because I feel it.
And I do not want to hide.
And there is this new way of touching

with my tenderest lips, my most sensitive skin,
inhaling musk, so familiar,
so singular. There is this inviting love in.

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