What the Muses Leave Behind

There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. ―   Leonard Cohen Why are we given this long night when the world stands still? If we shadow maples and hickories, our bodies long and reaching, If we make birds the oracles and sky a Holy Grail, Make a family feud into crow antics, let worry lift into clouds of starlings. We might stop dwelling on what holds us down. Trees in their subterranean sleep, dream of finding a sun. Of spraying pink dawn with bright leaves. At midnight we hear deadfall crashing nearby,                                              and know it’s the old falling off. Healing, releasing pain, and what remains is green and vital. Breath and love the magic elixir – Breathe in crystal melodies, breathe out fever; Breathe in sandalwood, breathe out mishap. If we listen to the darkness, beneath roots of winte...

- - for Noah Your report quickly became epic. It began in a big room filled with strangers, how you had no corner for retreat, how the bus arrived for all to climb aboard – strangers with strangers. You had your doubts. They rested beside the dust of last night’s cobweb, you tried not to get entangled. In the part about the camp, you explained how they brought everyone together, how the real journey began, how it could end with a brave new world.  So you all embarked, not sure where you were going. Now you know, every hero has to travel through the swamps first, you waded into each other’s bewildering house. You witnessed, you cried, you identified. Tears brought the car around when a truth stumbled out. You told us the food was lousy and each day was a feast. Wisdom delights most in the fruit plucked from vines rooted in unsavory places. You never went to bed hungry and even added a few concordant inches about the way the world can be. Empathy laid beside its golden ret...

- for lulu On the day you were born, Ell Pond must have brimmed to tickle all the toes of elm and fir, their limbs dripping with dew and finch chatter. Must have tickled you too. I want to hear you giggle like the summer day, you and Ernie dived for haddock, already hooked once and tossed out by fisherman because they loved your laugh. Like the chowder, necessary nurture - like the sea to float a family shore to shore -  see, even life boat. I imagine it could run with the tide, maybe  even run  amok. Love how it splashes everything. How it touches us with a light twinkling like Mars and Jupiter, chasing the moon.  Let's suppose there’s  no need to dive for fish again, when the gift is in the giggle.

(As if Fuin Mac Cumhal and the Salmon of Knowledge had a heroine instead.) Why bury your wild heart? Honor that rakish salvation   from soap and Jane Austin. It’s neither silk purse nor   sow's ear. Why bother with   the quest for a perfect way? Tunnel the worm holes into   ninth dimension tomorrow.   These notions for life, for duty - so quickly they fill with  dust like puddles in August. If you neglect the beveled  lips of agate, framing you   beside feral kin, proud light   bends obliquely from miracle. When you giggle madly as   a pod of girls in skirts blue and billowing - veils swing open. Hold this passage like April holds spring. The earth aches for each seed and feathered   song; desires grubby fingers   to probe the iron laced fissures, they map our fault line. Follow the dark thread home;   nose to wind. Chase every   sanguine urge. Crave   the Gol...

Helen holds hands with thunderheads. It helps when she's weak in the knees, lightning running down abductors, running down bones. Even temple guards succumb to such days, soft as pillows - scarlet velveteen on silk sheets.  Pink cyclamen bells the air, and Helen cut her traces. Bridget dreams the summer wind.  Its susurrate moan rises in waves, swells with tides of sandalwood to chariot the night.  She spins rhapsody around its howl,  dawns a golden jet stream  on spangled festoons of cirrus. Weak knees fly off with yellow wind,  before Bridget stills the night.   Sicily wets her lips with limoncello, quells the rabble of heartache, the clatter of waiting.  She rings goblets like temple bells, makes a sound map for lost days. Her boat of pink sand brims in blood oranges and cyclamen. Lightning festoons the rabble, Sicily finds Helen’s hand....

Let’s whirl across a yellow sky, wind it tight with wonder. Let’s pledge to shelter the soft and sensitive. This devotion is flame ready, rendering promise like blackened fields, seed heads popping in epiphany, ready to incite a murder of crows, heckle of dragons, a fold of tigers. Ready to sound the bell that brings back our breath. Let’s paint the clouds purple, whirl them into billows of prayer. Let’s imagine a summons for gentle rain, for gardens breaking open like my heart; imagine light dancing and dappled under green canopies, and elephant gods swinging every obstacle sunward. It is ecstasy we ferry from shadow, out of a  yellow sky.

I might appear decisive. Ideas resting akimbo, black & white, The passage to an emerald kingdom. Can I give you a sure thing? Some solid ground?  No need - w hat if   Enigma rings this moment, Like sunlight rides a forest? What if edges have already melded,  Like plaid weds flannel threads? We could court vibrations, wind kinships into wavelengths. We lift each other up. I could rise from sandy sediments Breast bare as a sycamore, The one down our gravel drive. She tugs water droplets Out of the aquifer, Rock bound for centuries; Drags them up Gives them a penthouse view, Opens her lips, out they go To float like lost tribes, To congregate as  cloud-bank . She craves the rain. We lift each other up. I could sit like frog, eyes  Poking above a rippled surface, Meditating on digestion. When in violet flash, a horny dagger He never sees coming, Drags him up and out – Tosses h...

- "and in my wild heart what did I most wish to happen to me." - Sappho I. Swing you heavy door behind teeth and tongue Slip into Habibe You song of Veronica Tupelo rose of mad Ecstatic lyric in fifths In lazy samba Gather skirt 'tween fingers and thumb Climb each rung As slick in shadow As in summer fog Rise in adagio II. Shimmer you elegant orchid canopy You sweet capitulation Net this shy cosset Like swallowtail and birdwing Mercy give mercy Quake calm  Under heaps of tight curls Under heavy lids I run for cover as Your eyes find mine Dive for andante  III. Ring you tangerine canyon You seismic syncopation Rock my hips my shoulders Tremble in Richter scale A fluted pulse to slake thirst Like apples and tea And amethyst and filigree And Saturday half past ten Deep deeper I delve a velvet interlude Surge in allegro  IV. Spin you endless of dance and stumble You dark Rati Maa Dispel...

It could be like chocolate milk the way Yoo-hoo soda finds its bubble of heart dance Use the recipe Smooth Easy as pecan pie Forget the sugar Just be good to me   Today there are only buck-thorns To bring the pennies from heaven   Who who who Says now for then For this place on the good red road Around the corner Sticky with coffee spills Wednesday brings Sunday   Maybe five seasons cold Is all you need to see Shiva Loud with light and laughter Maybe the sleep of seven moons Is all the dark one need weep For gardens to break with bounty September   We run with the hounds Of curiosity for the bulls Howling like coyote  Crooning in barred owl Even so   Waves of shiver Kiss 5 AM Awakened between chapters Ground to azurite dust The very gravel of first borns The very sass to climb Gibraltar To gaze back Survey our progress Bring water home   To turn now and open permiss...

-- to our progeny It seems a plausible imperative, (she tells us)  trust yourself  -  ride the intuition. It will wake you at 3 am, mercurial as an infant still in womb time. Unannounced - it can take your breath like the Tower card from Waite Ryder, all those flames and falling bodies. Trust yourself to just exhale. See, winter passes, (she’s rolling now) it's 85 outside - we're between jet streams. Trust yourself – just be naked sometimes – turn up in a favorite dream. lead with your belly, walk with Ursula rising from nap time. She's ravenous, grumpy. (so are we) When we lumber into the stars of summer, we'll suck on bones of worry -a marrow that kicks like sin. (she pauses) Trust yourself - it's in the water, this love dance of fractals, this swirling Troposphere weeping mercy onto deserts of Somalia and Djibouti. Its gift is fresh gumption - lifts wings and ...

Mickey’s Bradford is blooming deep in Central Harlem deep in the place where even weeds are named where precious is knowing who lives here who is fat with fruit and seed who died yesterday who lost the nerve to flower today - precious Mickey’s Bradford is brave and blooming maybe there are no dandelions now sacrificed to salad – see where brave got them monocot clones muscle apart  the concrete pads tethering Mickey’s front door to the pulse of big apple stealth never sleeps somewhere a dogwood winter has wolfed a billion blossoms casualties noted, precious but not in Central Harlem bloom Bradford bloom!

The blood moon needs attention. She bangs the glass panel by panel as she passes through the naked canopy of oak and ash - she's desperate for praise, for veneration, for the long moments of worship like the early days: a world lit only by fire. It's not until she pours those globs of gold into the amber goblets in a south window, that I notice six little lanterns of moonlight,  flush with her fire, ringing like sonorous treasure, like a suspended chord, a perfect 4 th in salty satin harmony with the sky. I devour the scene with my eyes, my ears, my skin, my tongue, my heart - a feast of Indian ragas.   And just as my body shivers in its own light, the showboat glides behind a cloud.  "Shalom, Shalom," she sighs.

What if we go now beyond forest into carnival surely nothing grows lost like they told you all things pass even the great blue skimming the canopy dragging my line of sight with it all things bang for deeper understanding a breeze to toss each breakthrough dog with a bone  they told me  it doesn't have to look any particular way leave palms open to go Where

(from Serrano Peppers by Jane Hirschfield after my uncle was hit headon by a teen texting) Remorse as with smashed hands first there is adrenaline, then just anguish, what urgent message, pressing call, what thief of presence, slothful larceny exacts such unkind toll: the wherewithal to hold a wrench, tie a shoe; plunder rendered to wanton absence; lightning strikes a cherry in bloom, so weeps the wind.

From open windows, sip deep breaths, Count your blessings, no kidding Count them. Croon a mantra of Yes and thank you. Still awake at half past? Make it a monk’s rising, Rock and pray with favorite song or poem; finish that chapter with a cup of peace. Still awake at five? Roll out in goddess stretch or child’s pose, Chant deep desires as pranayama. Still awake at five thirty? Swaddle worry in lavender. Open a beautiful journal, From nib of favorite pen, bleed out a list of ways to laugh. Drink a glass of bubbly.  Burp u p busy mind, and let dawn slumber take you.

This day wants to wear a pink badge and be naked as the faces women post on Facebook honoring women who struggle through a chemo hell that kills their cancer that takes their breasts  that  teased a lover's lust that fed babies that sobbed like the gasp of first light that speaks  to a wobbly body as it emerges battered from the wages of slumber before seven from wonky dreams --- holding bird sculpture -- villages waving with alarm --  timid lovers learning to dance together  while thinking  about fucking --  even the cakes were delicious  without  being eaten -- this day breathes in  second grade  and bad jokes -- making me  blush  for I can feel  it comb  private recesses  behind  my heart --  already  it has found  the secrets  I keep  from myself. Ahimsa,  tender day -- ahimsa, and  bless  this mess of rising.

TADA!! The filmy blue  heaven  tosses  dreams of  hairballs and high wire fences high enough so their menace transfigures into t ight curls  of rose petals or miracle fetaled inside  a stiff chrysalis  coated in  sand - Pick one  before br eathing again - LISTEN There is always soft patter, knocking about the April rain - a pulse that syncopates  from cacophony  to heart beat.  It bounces among spring peepers and the waxing wail of owls,  while rabbits freeze in place screwed down like  jar lids - Pick one without looking - JUMP The ground still sumptuous in melt water wants to hold the fallen in its wormy cradle. Up to our knees  the best thing to do is pray like tendrils beside a strong river  Nile Mekong Ganges Yangtze Danube Orinoco Zambezi Missouri  Irrawaddy Pick one with only your ears- FOLLOW

“A secret about the One who has made us all – nuts” –Hafiz Have you seen her? Not the one foam born, yes, center pole for our family big top rising from the froth of babies born from the cosmic swirl of our clan’s own creation myth, wherein it is told Lilith and Eve took Adam and Lucy teased Ricky and Jane hung out with Tarzan and Amelia courted Alphonse. Our creator is a late bloomer full of holly berries and turmeric crusty with November mud wafting long in moments of frying onions and cedar shavings of vanilla and Chanel. She's breaking hearts now wailing in C# to see if the world is still vulnerable to her charms yowling at Venus instead of the moon stirring dreams like they were typhoons of fractals hatched from the push of blue wings.

with minute focus the sun finds me it's a mirror I can't ignore first snowfall  extols the glory of winter and sunrise explodes into a billion shining moments   bouncing snowy limb to limb I am the trampoline  learning to find resilience in the synergy of 10 am  when radiance is bucking its boundaries erupting with an ode to joy pretending it's just an avalanche surging sunward on tiny feathered engines and if I resort to chasing the jet-streams I'll never learn the art of making my road  authentic  and bringing us home

This life is big, room for everything generations long, incarnations deep. We'll be the echo bouncing between first moment and what's possible. Imagine how remarkable this encounter, my newest granddaughter, Maia with her crystal dreams of me  in the holy mire of 12th century Wales. I am amused, for even in such a boundless home our stuff tends to eddy as clutter close around us, the grand piano, the chiffonier, the waterbed and the bookcases. If I grouse about my stranding on some imagined island,  audaciously feeling hemmed in, it's on me. The epic frontier waits here, just beyond  the edge of convention or the morning mirror. And the March winds are right on time, ready to rise in our bellies, open our hearts,  sweep out the cobwebs, the dead limbs. Blackberry winter, sprawling as New Jersey, wants in.

Start at the edges where it begins  to fold  into frozen pond, run your fingers slowly  between that tiny seam of earth and sky, warm gradually, feel for the ember, it's under thin ice, press it to your palm allow that cool rind of doubt to soften wrap it thrice around your first thought after waking, blow them both a kiss with swish of swallow it can scatter stupid notions about brittle and hope and winter.  there, already this steely mood shifts, pewter sky to morning robe; the rest is duck soup.

"Mirabai says,  my Beloved is a steeped herb, he has cured me for life." Twenty three thousand times today my lungs will collude with my heart to find you. A sandalwood base note, a silk rug  wants to carry us another day  but it grows thin. I drag the air  for passage beyond  this time and place  with a drift of apricot and amber. Like chambered nautilus, I'll curl around the last molecules  of your scent mingled with mine. Look, the ground shimmers in ghost trails, and breath implores its caravan.

Hang my heart in a southeast corner to catch the morning breeze. You mind the wind, strumming its canopy  with a contagious lament. I know love is no private matter, more like  a circus or Sunday parade.  So  let it feel brilliant and raise holy fuss, you know where that can lead.  We'll drift as   this heart bongs on and on,  a metronome echoing rubies.

Nothing fits feet in the wrong shoes face squinched ribs shrunk something grew overnight push! said the radicle

What purrs in the belly opens a way to my heart makes obsession promise to carry me tightly one day at a time promise a hejira soul journey  no maps just follow the stars that rise as earth turns  that billow within finch chatter that shine in my eyes, in yours in dreams of babies with flaxen curls, within the ache of Ariadne.

Listen like flat water  sweet is somber is stillness rest today I dreamed of vining tendrils,  each nested  in a vibration  liquid song like baby's breath outside the morning wears white 

Angel in my back pocket Pokes me like a rare penstemon Crimson rising from ivory To whisper - no answers today Golden twine, next pocket Threads our magnificence Mind each moment The labyrinth pulls us in

They’re selling everything - What good these mottled wings of swallowtail Or elastic reach of a morning sun? Make it fit a pocket or purse beside the loose change or make it gone…. Can’t neatly tuck away forty acre lakes and rose gardens, fit them behind a green sofa – Ka-ching! They’re selling everything… Summer afternoons and the dreams of sleeping babies. Put enough zeros behind a tenner or twenty, heaven finds a new home in Malibu. They’re selling everything…. When it comes time to take a breath of night air, follow the peregrine to the end of the rainbow Uh–oh, they’re wrapped in brown paper, headed south in a panel van. Bull market - they sold everything.