What the Muses Leave Behind

Long shadows of winter woods crosshatch the afternoon road. Sun strobing a windshield in strange Morse code, delivers, not so much an invitation, but a summons, the pull of growing light. Hip deep in such a year as this - never what we intended, askew in storm and surge, we walking dreams of grandmothers and fathers, swim with the avalanche of history at our back. Light as love, light as breath, light as legacy. It comes from deep in time, a tiny germ, a song we feared was lost, a turning point, a pivot, a catalyst. The messenger, a code of pulsing light among the trees, quickens us like the voice of multitudes heard as from a distance: Light as love, light as breath, light as legacy. Winter Solstice 2017 Rosalynn and  John Michael

don’t you love it          the way trees              trimmed                                                             under                                                           power lines get right back up                  to reach for the sky the severed limbs heal         how they send out               new wood                                                         how relentless                     spreading                               light pushing its edge invisible bridge                                we say phototropic             this call and response         in supple bends and angles some creep                      in the largo tempo of        oaks and redwood others pick up the pace       andante of              mulberries and pea vines as plants are             people are                    phototropic too       seduced with light            light of love                        swimming sun and stars see how w

My name is Paul Prince , and my mother is an addict.                               I cradled her Addictions              and a trafficked woman   from Ukraine my grandmother took her in                       our home     the sanctuary  shelter  haven of lost causes                                            Trafficked woman and I married       had three kids              and loads of piss and vinegar bickering        I’m an all-day sucker My wife is a liar      her words bloom like barbs under my skin                                                                     we share a welted shirt                                                                          family heirloom I think                         she thinks        she uses for fun            Coney Island without the crowd I think                                  there are devils    who camp in her heart                     who                                               fol

I go to my cushion, I sit with Iran Iraq, all shook up - 7.3, an inconvenient sanction, with catastrophe to break its back. I sit with red scarfed women, quiet as the dead - with their broken city, broken body, broken song. I sit with the ones who always will remember, forgiving my amnesia, preserving us like a peat bog, tar pit. I sit with my faucets of hot water and long showers, my own safe place, a lifetime of golden yolk, delicious. Under the same sky, I sit with ten thousand children toting five-gallon buckets, minding minefields and mortars. I sit with questions poking the soft soles of my feet. when I walk too fast they pop open and swallow me. I sit with dilemma, with a thready song, pretending that my fingers can touch the grief of red scarfed women. I sit in webs of hope, take notice of a pileated messenger, hammering away for the little things that deliver us. And when grace tips me on my head, I am an ocean-dreaming pud

In finely grained nonchalance, a subtle evolution has split me open. I rise from leathery exuvia, latest chapters lived and sorted. Home, misty morning webbed in lapis lazuli and down, unveils its still life: mater familias, black coffee, first fire - in silence to hold my reverence for half past four. Jupiter has entered Scorpio, melts me together. Love wants to return, every chapter and verse gentled within my fault lined family. Collected - a bitter biography to galvanize me, an old hen to hunker down, wait out the storm, water snakes to wrap my wounds, an itching heart. I’ve built a rugged gravity of warts and tears, it waxes like neap tide - things neglected are still ballast. These tiny shells of forgettable days crunch underfoot - I have sand in my teeth, and fruit heavy in easy reach. Here is a cloud bank of dawn along the horizon - pink and florid.  A universe to unfold me, a new skin.

Come through, there’s a gnat has jiggered across my nose, an aeronautic whirligig – a tiny door. Beware the flying dervish, my friends, gyre and gimble in the wabe. With a Jump and a jive and a heave. “Wilderness is not a luxury…” * This Tao Way, a wild walk – all mimsy were the tumbles-in, all lunatic and pickled, these sapiens in the soup. The tires that squish, the guns that splatter! Beware the galumphing gentry. And what a virtual parody, flattening rain forests into 2D screens.   “Granma said they was dead people walking around.” ** Three times a day, an orangutan stepped from its cage into the limelight, costumed as a clown. Ridiculous the tuxedo to cover his bruises – the cheers to drown his despair. Which is stronger faith or fear? Oh shun, the dunderhead delight chasers. “And we stand somewhere between the mountain and the Ant.” - *** Come through, shame has sullied her shadows, she folds apology into paper cr

France hands its future to the millennials. Statue of Liberty beams across the pond. How to stem the tides of refugees? Heal every home Bury the hatchets Sing with the bees.

                          ~for Joanie     Yes, we know about you, and none of that matters. We know how you keep turning over rocks, opening doors. I have no idea how it works, no idea if the whole world sees us as kin. How could she not? We know we are cut from the same cloth, you and me, an afternoon breeze around the neck, grateful for easy       when it finds us. Even in black and white, we know how to marvel.           EXACTLY Wow!   Yes, and we know how to transform          day to day, give patience to steady becoming. Our generation – once tucked up tightly in an oak gall, encroached the safe verges with indiscretions. We could not help it;           they pushed through our skin, provoked by our grandmothers, and we crashed around like toddlers. We know it was necessary to be embarrassed and appalling, the only rungs to climb out of tepid dishwater. Of course, it was impossible to plan or know what or how to enter. Extemporaneous t

The old beech to the sky, Roots to shoots, capillaries make rain. Roland’s axe stood alone, rust along the blade, left behind with the house and the woodpile. The road is open, his legs only now tired. Walking, he’s been walking so long, forgotten where he’s going, gold braids on his shoulders,  melancholy, clueless.  His belly, queasy.    Roots to shoots, capillaries whisper lament - Wherein, what-for, the harbinger, a turtle dove, Maybird sends it to comb the wilds, to be her eyes, her herald. She sent word weeks ago. Wherein, what-for, his diviner, the moon, loves to vex his memory, spin webs, dark penumbras. Each morning, his head rings in wood thrush, anon he fingers frayed epaulets, a strand of her hair. Shoots to roots, Maybird laces a cotton bodice. Within the bones of her corset, rides a secret -- Roland was never hers, she never his. One is shimmer, the other a bell. Wherein, what-for, the vigil, a companion, she shepher