What the Muses Leave Behind

As the days shrink around us, it’s even more vital to reach out. We stand surrogate for the sun, its warmth and light on sabbatical. Down on the gray sky pond, ice grows like daggers. Our ducks huddle, unsure about the nature of things aqueous and we are grateful for the snag, lightning-struck two years ago, now warming our fingers. A few post oaks have hung onto their leaves, brittle templates for new foliage.  They rattle as winter keens a soprano song overhead, and we whistle along, leaning into the future so our feet don’t slip from under us, leaning into the space of chill and silence. Good thing we have red hens and brown eggs, and new light reaching for June.

-- for Tracy because my Father lived his soul, love is the whole and more than all - ee cummings He’s a large man, lightened by loss I search for tethers holding him to chair. One is pen, another paper, lots of figures; there’s safety in numbers,  I suppose. Now he’s tapping my shoulder, whispers,  “Watch the humming bird.  It’s in those red flowers.” Maybe bird, maybe beauty rouses his grief, threatens to eclipse him, sinking in quicksand. I am sinking too, when a soft light breaks, the silver lining, his eyes. I see how sorrow finds its lighthouse, so beacons of love will wash the room.

Today color found me first. From a quicksilver of coyote and crow, the baby blue light whispers, it's a good place - splash down, start here. Something wants to be busy as I breathe in ribbons of dawn, listen to rain's heartbeat.  It's a day littered with mustard seeds, launching vast synergies of proper magic - so green, so sturdy.  I fall in love with the thin vines that trellis a west window, teeming with jade hearts and moon flowers,  their alabaster fingers fan into hands like poems. I reciprocate, palm to palm,  until miracles volley between us, ricochet with simple grace. Kismet brings me to this worship place. Today color swells with surges, rings my ankles, begs - wade in, swim the ruddy broth, glissade this liquid skin, pump invisible tides with feathered arms across saffron pollen and pink song.   Here is a rowdy child, all set to play beneath Pendleton blankets and ladder-back chairs. She bangs pots o

Wake up heart! – Judyth Hill Wake up!* Really? It’s been such a night a nd the sheets hum with dreams. You’ve slept too long in the iron bed of yearning,* So sturdy, don’t fuss, it's good for the back. You’ve slept too long, * There you go again - just spoon a minute. The bed clothes are slovenly,* Six hundred count Egyptian cotton never disheveled, try again! Get up and make the bed of a heart,* First, find the heart of a bed, tucked in. The alarm has gone off,* Hickory dickory, push the snooze, put the clock away. What time is it? It is now and you are late!* Never now is always late – go ask Alice.  Ha! I can’t be late for now, you say* Ha! never late is always now. Moons stacked to the sky - climb on, We’ll greet the sun! That’s right!* *from   Wake up heart! By Judyth Hill  

Cough me up into the fresh May air re-purpose me, I'll sprout with the mast, and rise again hunched over but taking shelter in a green heart under a gray girdle.  

Let’s walk  so eyes on the ruby may find a new heart among the mercy of wildflowers and every breath comes home. Make it shit! Let’s walk  so stories can wrap like Navajo blankets around the disappearing wisdom of this broken clan and country. Hug the bitch! Let’s walk  until we sigh soul deep in thunderstorms and snow turning blue with glacial melt leaving Greenland and Peru . I’m fine and you? Let’s walk  and trade one billion people for a mantle thick in kin vegetable, mineral, animal, mother peace skin. Shit bitch, how fine!

The dream wakes, wakes and shuffles down the stairs- pours a cup of Joe. Sugar stirs up a silly tune- sings hey now, my girlfriend's back . Upstairs, smelling the coffee dreamer shakes her head, finds an echo to the walls - my, my, my my girlfriend's back . Dream to dreamer, where’s the cream? Dreamer drifts on wobbly knees, follows the aubade's aroma. Dream to dreamer, let’s rise ready - let’s be ocean and sky. Let’s be aroma, let’s be song, A chrysalis of sweet déjà vu.  Dream to dreamer, let’s quit the queue, let’s be the quest.  Dreamer wants to follow cosmonauts, lifting white arms, smelling of Stoli's; she banks with the morning star, waves as dream shuffles on, sipping java. 

We grow famished with duty, hold a boney line. Do the right thing.  Say the right word. Live the right moment. Here we go, combing days for purpose, an army of sea urchins.  Swooning for octopus, supple and keen this one – could we be that?  Could we trellis darkness with ink trails like the one you climb now, word by word? Can duty sing beauty like catgut on wood? Can it upholster days in both silk and sacking? Make Tuesday a rich brocade. Wednesday, corduroy, Thursday, Friday, Saturday tatted Chantilly lace. Sunday and Monday matted felt. It’s a Gordian puzzle – and how did it happen? A march for Maslow’s dream – our bruises the crown and scepter, climbing, climbing and where would we be? Not Avalon nor Shangri-La, not nirvana nor Eden, crawling to another frontier – a fresh start. Out of sticks and stones and mended bones, we light another fire. And this Kevlar vest, we unbutton it – notion by stoic notion. right view and intention right speech and

Define the word – besotted. They promised next year, the Year of the snake, to be agile and open. They promised to relax, cheek to shoulder, adrift the San Juan . On desert currents, breath weaving breath, they would become an oasis; island of reed and pitch. There! Sage wears fists of turquoise: one for patience, one for hope. The jungle is everywhere and she frets about forgetting this moment. Forgetting is like a fox chasing chickens - dreamers scatter. Cedar chases frontier along granite walls, expects to feel embarrassed; already love has stripped them down.

Someone has to greet Sirius and Saturn has to gape at the motley gang at daybreak,  the gaudy stains of salmon, periwinkle, fuchsia, tangerine. Welcome the wind and rain. Someone has to disturb the morning peace has to trigger a bugle call: rooster, guinea,  the brace of faithful beagles that push  their prattle into the thin air. Begin the daily rabble. Someone has to wake before the calendar and clock,             has to, for a few precious steps, shadow eternity             soon enough NPR and CNN beckon,                             thar she blows, they wail.                          Here we go, I say.