A Hundred Falling Veils

Today my son lay
his small body down
at the edge of the sea

in an effort to stay
the rising tide. We
had dug such a hole

in the sand, and now
thin waves were breaking
down our low dam,

filling our hole
and erasing our labor.
No! He shouted, No!

and threw himself into
the water, convinced
he affected the flow. Mom!

he said, it’s working!
But then the water
came in from the sides.

And furious with the tide
he beat at the waves
with his open hands

shouting No! No! No!
I had the feeling
his flailing was more

for show than a welling
of crude emotion. But
I held out my arms

to comfort him anyway.
I, too, have tried
to hold back the ocean.

Read Full Post »

I didn’t really want
to walk into the ocean.
Though the breeze was warm.

Though the water was clear.
Being dry felt, well, so dry.
And I liked it, feeling dry.

“You can’t be baptized
if you don’t get in the water,”
said Rumi, and he rushed

past me from behind, leaping,
launching himself into the waves.
Then he turned toward shore to splash me.

“But the water’s so … wet,”
I said, with a wince.
And he splashed me again.

And he splashed me again.
And I did not did not like it.
I scowled and used my foot to splash

Rumi back, but he already
was wholly glittering wet.
He just laughed and motioned

for me to come deeper in.
I didn’t want to go, so I can’t quite
explain quite why I did, except

there was somehow a larger part of me
already at play in the waves with him,
and it pulled in the smaller,

resistant part until all of my limbs
were diamonding in the sun. The ocean
smoothed me with lavish salts

and brought jellyfish to bloom
at my side. Rumi, he had
long since melted into the waves.

His breath was the ocean’s breath.
The white gulls creeeched and keeled
overhead, and for a moment I felt

such compassion for that fussy one
who was tying up her wind-licked hair,
hoping to keep at least that part dry.

Read Full Post »

But Mommy,
it won’t come true
says the boy
as he steps on the limestone star
I wished on.

Read Full Post »

We die everyday,
many small deaths—
our cells, our thoughts,

our certainties. We
die and we die and
we live through our

dying long enough,
sometimes, to recall
how we almost died,

but instead were spared
by the falling rock—though
it could be by wave, fire,

screech of brakes, or
avalanche—only
to wake up the next

morning and start dying
some more. Here we are,
dying, even now, one

small death at a time—
and despite (or because of?)
all this shedding, this loss,

we are so much more
nakedly yes
alive.

Read Full Post »

Are you willing to listen with the ears of your heart to the other voices of yourself speaking?
—prayer learned in my women’s circle

I am listening
with the ears
of my eyes,
with the ears
of my ears,
with the ears
of my spleen
and the ears
of my pineal
gland tucked
between the
hemispheres
of my brain.
I am listening
to the trees,
to currents of mud,
to the nighthawk’s
white stripes, to
the park’s sullen metal,
and to clouds as they
shift, I am listening,
I am listening
and lifting my
heart, not to
be fixed, not
to be filled, but
to better hear.

Read Full Post »

… your urge toward consciousness and my urge toward consciousness are both expressions of the same energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process with the Big Bang–and is driving us toward our own evolutionary enlightenment right now. Why? So that the universe can become more conscious through us.
–Alan Cohen, “Eros, Buddha & the Spectrum of Love”

Don’t you want to evolve?
he said, and I do, I think
as I look at my two long legs

that know how to run
to the river bank where
the young girl’s fallen in,

and my two opposable
thumbs that pick peaches
from trees and raise

them to my dried up lips.
I think of my lungs that gulp
cold morning air and infuse it

into my warm blood, and my
too solid heart that even
now learns what else

it can do besides stubbornly beat—
how to open wider, wider
than that, to let everything

in, not to hold it the way
the thumbs came to do,
not to analyze it as

that blooming white mass
of a lobe has learned,
but to praise the world just as it is.

Read Full Post »

Light weaves through
the bottom leaves
of the peach trees
and the world is changed
from what it was.
What was it before?
Darker, for sure. And
moving toward the hem
of one more miracle,
if light is a miracle,
which surely it is.

*

Earlier this morning
I walked into an earlier
slant of the same miracle
as I made my way
through the peaches
to the garden to turn
on the sprinkler heads.
As the light washed
my bare legs there
were no thoughts of
not good enough.
Only a pleasure
in feeling the glow,
not yet warm.

*

The peaches, today
they are ripe, after
months of growing
from bud to blossom
to green to the full
round blush of peach.
Tomorrow will be too
late, they’ll be too ripe
for picking. It is today.
It is today.

*

What in us must
be reaped today,
is there something
at the edge of ripeness
profound with its own
sweetness, something
that will be lost
if we do not
come to it now?

*

I have walked into
the house, to my corner,
to the cushion in the shadow
where I close my eyes and
breathe until my body
is mine and not mine
anymore. There
are no peaches, here,
no water, no answers
no light. It is dark
and getting darker
and miraculous,
if dark is a miracle,
which surely it is.

Read Full Post »

Daylight licked me into shape
I must have been asleep for days.
—Katie Melua, “Just Like Heaven”

How did I miss them,
the first brandywine tomatoes,
hiding in the underleaves,
their skin so red,
my tongue so very, very ready?

Read Full Post »

Defensiveness walks into the room
wearing a burlap dress. She likes
to be uncomfortable. She wants you

to know it is, too. She wears a mask
on her face. It looks just like her face.
Defensiveness carries her arms

in front of her, folded like a wall.
She is tall. She wears gloves. She
has lined her dress with lead.

It is hard to believe I didn’t
notice her before, standing as she
does right between us. She is, of course,

quiet. Even with those heavy boots.
She enters unannounced. But
I notice her now, and sometimes

nod her way. She pretends
not to see. I even tell her she’s welcome
to be here, steel shield and all.

She pretends not to hear.
But she’s started to sit in the corner
instead of standing in the center

and I’ve noticed how the room
seems to let in more light.

Read Full Post »

It is simple, the making of the bread.
Rye flour. Water. Starter. Salt.
It is simple, the what to do.

Feed the starter. Make the dough.
Wait. Wait. It will rise. It will bubble.
You will do other things like sleep,

like read books to your children,
write poems, weed. After eighteen hours,
turn it onto a board and press

the soft dough flat. Fold it in thirds
and then in half. Cover. And wait.
Shape it into a round with a hole

in the center. Cover. Go clean the fish tank.
Go swim. Go water the mint.
Preheat the oven to 450

degrees, preheat the clay cooker,
and wait. Transfer the dough
to the hot, hot oven and rearrange

the spice rack. The scent, it will reach you
as you polish the mirror and
watch the crows across the tracks

and race to the yard to catch the rainbow.
And then, when it’s bronzed and
the crust is hard, you remove it

to a cooling rack and wait. Until
the loaf cools enough to slice
and butter is spread across the dark face

and your body becomes the bread
through a series of linked miracles
commonly known as waiting.

Read Full Post »

Stillness surrounds the runner
as she bends down to tie the blue laces.
And as the runner closes the screen door

with a bang, stillness is beneath the sound.
It envelops the empty railroad track
that stretches beside the woman. It contains

the tch tch tch of her feet as they
scuff the loose gravel of the country road.
Stillness surrounds the green tractor

that passes her. Stillness is still. It holds
space for the lizard that darts. It is inside
and all around the runner as she moves past

the neighbor’s drive, the long row
of mailboxes, the mile after mile
of dirt and weed and puddles drying up.

Stillness watches the runner’s thoughts
as they pass like a sit com across
the scrim of her mind. It watches

the stream of wonder, anger, relief,
sorrow and defensiveness as it
courses through her and is gone.

And on the runner’s way home,
stillness is there. And the runner,
though moving yet through the cliffs

and tamarisk, is also increasingly
aware of how everything falls away—
her breath, the rocks, the thoughts, the sounds—

and once or twice, perhaps she glimpses
what is all around, what she can’t run past,
through the cracks in everything she knows,

and how the less she holds, the less
she grasps, the more still, the more
still she feels, she sees, the more still.

Read Full Post »

I have wanted to be more.
To be the rain in your desert.
To keep my car cleaner.

To grow wings. And every door
I opened, I imagined I could open
it wider. I have wanted to be

not just the sunrise, but a better
sunrise. Not just a woman,
but a better woman. Not just

a song but the whole symphony.
To open the door has not been enough.
I have wanted to take the door off

its hinges, to take down the walls, too.
See what a reaching mind can do?
It will tear down the whole house

just to let in a breeze. I have wanted
to be any flower even slightly
more in bloom than my own petaled want.

To be vast. To be vaster than that.
To be true. “Oh friend,” says Rumi,
from behind the sunrise,

“you are not yet too old,
it is not yet too late for you
to swim in your own sea,

to emerge from the depths
of yourself and refuse to find refuge
outside your own heart.”

I try to impress him, to show him
I’m listening by leaning toward him so hard
I fall down on my ear. “My dear,”

he says, with a tender laugh,
“you look so sweet as you stretch
toward my voice as a sunflower

bends toward the sun.” And I
raise myself up from the floor
to ask him, please, to tell me more,

but already he is gone.

Read Full Post »