What the Muses Leave Behind

Chopped wood brings soup to boil. Hungry nights bait steel eyed traps. Evening light tugs at velvet shadows. Summer poems travel under woolen wraps. Frosty panes obscure coy pleasures. Sizzling onions infuse a kitchen’s bouquet. Gray days savor old love letters. Rusted fenders feed a salted way. Simple soups honor last summer’s labor Razored winds chap purple lips. Barren snow banks beget spring flowers Arctic nights hang with shimmering slips. Cluttered coat pegs announce new company. Comatose hound runs in his sleep. Sappy boughs pop a fiery chorus. Stealth rodents cruise with nary a peep. Winter barters settle around us, shuffling softly as a saffroned nun. We strike the bargains to inspire that lackadaisical solstice sun.

Getting ready for winter takes most of fall and we're still not willing even by January for skies to split with liquid glass to coat the world greasy in rainbows to bury our hearts neck deep in stiff mud to leave us with one wool sock on a three dog night to crave butterscotch early Sunday morning and the Pig is closed to stoke a fire instead and sip on yellow root tea to settle for first light chickadees and blue.

“From experiences of one kind or another shapes and colors come to me very clearly.” – Georgia O’Keeffe She painted her canvas in my protoplasmic days. Decades later I drifted into its bramble of burnt umber raw sienna mars brown contradicting my assumptions of winter disrobing them with her stark truths so they could recline silhouetted among naked trees. She smudged branching crowns but painted each cottonwood's body with watchmaker precision. She smudged branching crowns, they haloed a deeper alchemy each aerial poke of Populous fremontii melded sky with tree I felt tree tips fray like fabric in the wind drawing breaths of magnetic mists pulling apart ionic swarms swooning for photic kisses each arboreal moment titillating and redefined. I come home from desert and canyon, filled with cottonwoods and tammies. Their halos have blurred my edges; I toddle back blessed with ambivalence, freshly plied by wild water strong light, my tips feathering sand and stars. Her painting has re...

"..to be wild and perfect for a moment.." - Mary Oliver Before words, perfection dwells ubiquitous as spores on the wind, roiling over and into each molecule and moment. This little planet has emerged out of miracles five billion years. Chaos hones its lineage of mud and sun. Before words, every kaleidescoping morsel of matter enters in beauty right here, right now heartbreaking as an autumn morning, cocooned in a worship of mother to freshly born. Perfection is tragedy, perfection is harmony, perfection is lost and found. Before words, balance spans ebb and flow, underpinning what stumbles, what stands. Perfection fills a moment and moves on. Bloodhounding its trail, tongues wag and follow ever vigilant; stretching cheeks and cerebrum reaching, reaching - never quite here.

you teased my i pod like there were no royalties like music runs free hurry bring it in old laundry crowding the line we've lost tomorrow why fiddle fuck a round, you dig our moments best when nothing's promised news slaps my ears - ow!! and tight jeans girdle my breath just feed me kisses tugged your hair uphill forgot to tie it tightly bed heads fly away

Daylight cracks its brittle seam snapping apart a wish bone night. Venus has mounted Jupiter already headed for the barn; water simmers in a cracked kettle, just enough for two. And you, dark man, curled like a leather belt in the back of a dresser drawer, unfurl; I’m curled too, like paperback pages in August; we’ll meld mauve dreams and first light. I study you like a self portrait, you hover pretending to understand the chaos of shoes about the room, they lay like punctuations, a tactile Morse Code. I study these dots and dashes, you haunt my sleepy head; we crawl under apostrophes behind question marks. Your gesticulations play havoc with runway lights as I struggle to lower landing gear. Our best intentions for enhancing this entry, have arrived confused. Even so I’m grateful for awkward aubades, dark coffee and you inside my skin.

Fold the letters E P I C around you, let them be your mithril with room for elbows and air. The hero's quest bugles, already it's late morning. You have slept in. It's pointless to step beyond this frame, or soften steely gazes already snagging the long view. Catch up with your dreams, erstwhile claiming script and masque. Don't be late for rehearsal. If the fox can come to the hunters house with lights blazing like the fourth of July; you'd best listen to her story, watch her pace. In myths of vixen couriers, the moment is the message.

"Whose turn is it to watch for paradise?" - Sarah Provence First shake of daylight lets loose the hounds of dark roast, growling in the grinder. Escorted to the north panes of the bedroom a bright blustery landscape drops by to affirm the hour of rise and shine, shakes her shoulder twice more. She's no ground hog seeking a shadow for six more weeks of sleep. She's waxing gibbous across November with cirrus clouds accreting in penumbra's halo where a shadow's a shadow and a girl has to dream out the wrinkled blueprints for birthing a season. Once seeded, she could blame the warts of her temperament on splotched indigestion from fetid sumac and green persimmons, blame her impatience on the milky chains of water and earth that wouldn't hold up their end of a bargain. Millstones of great lakes, menses, horseshoe crabs, frazzled lunatics tug at their mucilaged tethers, her rise and shine dims; her gifts for epiphany long retired to...

gratitude pools red we return home no mission to accomplish gratitude penetrates orange finally consummating daylight and dream gratitude occupies yellow so gangly arms can wrangle stove loads of oak gratitude spirals green generation upon generation fill four thousand years gratitude bellows blue I am, I am, I am, I am breaks open an afternoon gratitude summits violet loving fingers cradle empty porcelain cups

first pour smooth as a sonnet cuts a rug, lord of the dance last drink toasts its progress toward rainbow's end

don't bury your wildness that rakish salvation from soap and Jane Austin it is neither silk purse nor sow's ear and you can chase it all you like, down stone steps all the way to Mongolia toward worm holes tunneling into a ninth dimension along tracks of spidery shoots tracing runic mementos lost until February; remember how subtly your own reflection fills with cobwebs because still pools dried up last fall remember every beveled lip of crystal between you and this feral kin has bent light so obliquely, shapes shift, and when you look up, the sky is full of beet roots teeming with trichomes they have cornered a herd of little girls striped skirts billowing in undercurrents, blowing east don't bother running, each wilderness waits instead find the nerve to follow ivory laced fissures defining your own fault lines find the nerve to reconcile with Persephone embrace your Palestine, knowing even mealy faced scalawags dance with the rain, and when you finally catch the golden...

One monitor closely the red amoeba smearing the southeast Two heed secret signals that codify absolution from squander Three find justice in a five minute shower Four sing out - victory is assured!

"Happiness exists in action." - Eve Ensler Om Pushne Namaha Salutations to the giver of strength! She rises spring fed, bodhisattva brook with vagina, one of countless cosmic centers on Earth. Opening her mouth she births revolution-strong as good whiskey; her stories turn hearts to wet nurses. Om Ravaye Namaha Salutations to the shining one! She gathers up in her saffron folds lost voices exiled to dark ditches simmers a bruised Juarez, Mogadishu Islamabad, New York in mauve dawn inspires every breaking bud to rejuvenate the ghettos of domestic deserts with cryptobiotic resolve. Om Suryqua Namaha Salutation to she who induces action! A conspiracy of joyful return rallies every precious thing to fly away amassing trust so critical, just around the corner bringing simmer to boil, dawn to daylight ruddy candor to fresh intention, and bold vaginas zigzag together the threadbare, quilting morale with beautiful herringbone stitches Om Hiranya Garbhaya Namaha Salutations to the go...

I wanted to match the magic in a Nordic photologue; it was November and I followed my feet past photo #2, #18, #99 and 100 of a man swaddled in family, surely each birthed from the sweat of a frost giant's armpits, pocked by starvation, now so real each hunger is never sated. Three fates lured me to peer in, nose to nose with a photographer's anguish, his new bride, his naked heart, his penis, her breasts, his dying mother, those brilliant sons, and himself over and over - all was open to me. I followed arms, legs, fingers, ears - neglecting how macabre was the path I trailed, until yellow air brittled my breath and a soft sadness settled in. I lingered longest before the grayscale man swallowing his fist, photo #73 - my belly clenched in collusion, sure to staunch some eminent arrival my fascination welded to his wide eyed stare lured me toward Grendel's cave. The magic I met swelled into rage rancid; was rimmed in skull-piled grief and guile. If Odin's eye had dr...

my breast pocket is full of moons they rise and fly each morning i stand beside you, we touch crowns and two brothers frame a yellow door they rise and fly each morning where heroes surface like cream and two brothers frame a yellow door in moments perfect - almost here where heroes surface like cream there a muddy track churns red in moments perfect - almost here we douse our lamps to save the night there a muddy track churns red i stand beside you, we touch crowns we douse our lamps to save the night my breast pocket is full of moons

right here steamy yams melt sweet butter, thinly pooled with vinegar under dark kale and cornbread

blue whales swim November deftly dance with lightning ocher elms run and duck skin drenched in wonder

He hears the chair talk back day in, day out, hears it groan and gripe like a fishwife on Monday; so he just settles slowly onto the cracked leather pad, still sagging from his uncle's abundance. Joints loose threaten and tease- it's as he's always known them, a little shaky and grimly strong. One day, he thinks, gorilla glue to the rescue; shore up this damn thing. The chair has been an heirloom of intentions, everyone's favorite throne to give 'em hell! It holds more than bottoms and legs, it's collected countless conversations: Murrow's report from Warsaw, the bickering when Cronkite questioned the TET. Now Garrels has exposed her days in Baghdad as Rivera pled for New Orleans. This chair is tired; it creaks because it's full and worn bone thin. The patina along its arms glows mocha, oiled over decades by hands bearing up under the news. It could tell him- what complains usually hangs around - sturdy as the bottom note in a dirge, inflated as the b...

" Where is your water? Know your garden" -Hopi Elders' Prophecy 2000 Last summer we rolled in a polyvinyl puffball - two thousand gallons empty. Today it sits dusted, bathed and bored in the basement - black beauty, Sunday ready for the rain harvester; tomorrow he'll plumb it up to our downspouts. Maybe it's just a cistern to you, but it's our banner of green allegiance - off the grid - onto the web, drinking rain like crawdads; exchanging fluids with new middlemen, with poplars and hawks - Snyder called it joyful interpenetration. Just add water and cracked concretions dissolve - joyful interpenetration burns past pavement, breaks up bricked over Edens, finds the dirt even in us where so much depends on the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain; and tomorrow in our basement, on the tools beside the blue ladder. When our black barrel sprouts its white pipes like hyphae to suck up water from the red roof whenever...

belly be blossom budding billowing sheet on a line patience gone, never more ready please baby come

Caroline sneezed today! News arrived so loud and clear I pulled out my handkerchief just in case, cause we all knew she would never sneeze again. Chapter and verse, that comes with the injury. It's pretty definitive. Never...Some things stop at C5, like sneezing..well behind her Berlin Wall, not even waiting. Gone...They said. I knew it. And this morning, they busted out! Two healthy sneezes, ACHOO ONE, ACHOO TWO escaped over the wall - signaled nerves well below her injury - Zing...and belly muscles suddenly attended. Unpredictable, maddening Never, never Now...I thought I could count on sneezing being gone forever and then it's back from some incredible journey. Unpredictable, head clearing and Now...It's exactly why I can count on sneezing - best when it's unexpected like snow flakes in July, like daffadils in November. Now...and ever since, we're flying over a sneeze. Imagine that.

She's given up on men - it's the green ash down the street she wants to marry. Every autumn when the mantle of leaves blush crimson and tassels drape as epithets along countless shoulders, her knees turn to putty and her hummingbird heart must carry her home. Love is like that - abundantly it handles every handicap. And while her left brain points out the madness of this trans-kingdom infatuation, imploring her to reconsider; its logic leapfrogs over her dreams of this most perfect life: tree and woman endlessly exchanging sighs, feasting on the sun dawn to dusk.

Be as water - transparent in thin air - dispersing like pioneers in Conestoga wagons heading across the Oregon Trail Be as water- latticed in crystal networks - intertwined elbow to elbow, laced sturdy as willow now basket, now lifeboat Be as water - filling empty spaces - courageous enough to surrender and plunge five hundred feet in full song

It was after the seventh sun salute when the flow of plank, cobra, dog lead me to my half moon pose - it's a stork like posture, body forms a T - imagine one leg presses a footprint into the purple foam only millimeters away some hardwood pushing back - and my standing leg has cooperated dutifully for the first five breaths; but it knows it is the moon and the sun at the moment, and just ahead of the sixth breath, it mutinies! sends a shot over the bow with a warning quiver - I've got no mind over matter - no pull to convince it to just stand firm, and what can I do? I surrender my half moon - retreat to the safe harbor of downward facing dog - I'll make peace for that moment and when it believes it has rallied the rest of my limbs to go home, I'm quick with a bribe ginger cookies and mint tea if we can only get six more breaths of half moon once again.

So it does matter this mix of chemicals spewed silent and deadly invisible, check potent, check melting ice caps, check reaking havoc on a planet, check goes away by itself, negatory silver bullets at hand, negatory silver buckshot in the barrel, check should we be worried, check

Every day rises precious - precious as icebergs calving along the Ross Shelf... they're independent now and dwindling. As these flocks scatter like liquid sand, don't forget to count the moments you watched them bob away sapphire and regal. Each Sunday some wiry lad wobbles across taut ropes - slack lining, where balance is cool. Free to take a flying leap on a galloping goose. Free to stretch another line to the moon, stitch up the ozone, resurrect islands, renew Lake Chad. Free to shiver off kilter and believe it's just to our knees we fall...begging for bruised elbows, twisted limbs - something simple to swaddle something small to bathe in orange amber with an iodine swab, better by morning. Keep the choices easy. Each sunny day clouds our memory for rain, brightens this good gooey life; soft and sweet feeds a fat bottom line but it feels pithy to the rock hard resolve of the Nile or the Rhine, swallowing mountains since Methuselah. Soft and sweet melts away in their m...

I keep reminding myself tough times wring out diamond days and that I'm forgetting to welcome calamity to breakfast every Tuesday and I'm shying away from the promises that poverty can't keep about the simple life, and she knows it... remember, remember, remember that only sun and sky honor the rhythms holding this place together... capricious is the rest of creation. and maybe I've noticed enshrined in the coils of a bristlecone lie the secrets to longevity but I won't seek them now... not before I can dream one more time of Pollyanna in delusions of safe and sound... with her tales spun like ultraviolet rays that nourish my freckled hide - and not until I can muster up the bawdy amazon, with quiver full and bow string taut, ready to defend this November night, against darkness that deepens blood belly red - exacting its price to the penny, and come Tuesday daylight dawns purring around my ankles like some calico and breakfast suits us both just fine.

Here goes...my initiation into the blogosphere. My pledge is to write and write and write verse for the next collection. Ahhh, November - it feels ripe with opportunity, spring like... a southern hemisphere thing, feeling vernal so far north of the equator even with the light in retreat. Subtly changes the planet, and might I just be heeding some deeper urge - starting something new at the end of a season... a hair in the pudding, a molecule drawn toward a larger shift - on the magnitude of magnetic poles ... why not, even now?