WHAT THE OAK TOLD THE CICADA

Be at home in the heart,

who cares what extends beyond your brittle hide.

Home gives space for light,

lets it feather the soft unformed.

Be at home with the hunger,

who cares that we tremble.

Home makes room for mercy,

lets it cushion the sharpest edge.

When you go

follow warmth,

the ochre,

the golden rod,

each umber and ecru,

the endless green,

the lavender and rust.

These signal our songs

and bring clues for what twines

the plucky hours of July with November.

Be at home for the peace,

join its long name:

Grasshopper

Phoebe

Rosemary

Mother's milk

Alabaster

First light

Gibbous Moon

Waterfall

Morning fog

Lemon balm

Black dog

Red tide

Oak pollen

Boney night

Dandelion

Comments

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off, glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy– full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse, to tithe the land. And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles. Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free. We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.

Covid Journal Entry 14

April 4, 2020 Today’s image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year. We are an international population: seven from the US, six from Vietnam, five from China, four from Morocco, one from the DR and two dogs/three cats. We share four large buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping by during the week to work in their offices. We have had little or no contact with them so far. Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service, UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages. It’s Iowa and the gove...

Tongue

When I was ten, my dad pot-roasted a cow’s tongue. He brought it to the table on a platter, unsliced, open: a chaise lounge, red and velvet, slip of the lip to swallow us whole. The tongue is a door, a bed of confession, zipper to seal the deal. There is a jade plant on my window sill. Its many tongues sip silent molecules: water vapor, nitrogen, cool pool in the Kalahari. Tongue as cave, as conveyor, as flight of brown bats. Tongue holding space between us, gilded and strong with hope and death - a pocket for everything. Last night a snag of locust blew down over chicken wire. Five hens escaped. The snag, a tongue to freedom, to better pickings, a generous ledge. Sometimes a tongue wags, ungenerous, it keens to ten fingers times twenty dangling over a hand-hewn gunnel. There were children in that boat, fleeing with family over turquoise water. Maybe it was the Mediterranean or cold Aegean Sea - a wide tongue to crac...

What the Muses Leave Behind

Search This Blog