What the Muses Leave Behind

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

When we are broadsided, by really the most dreadful news, the moments that frighten breath  so it  tangles itself among ribs,  pleads don’t send me go out there, red rain, rip tide! Then we counter like storm dancers,  intrepid       commanding  deep gasps   to release a hijacked diaphragm, push out the coward breath -  feckless guinea hen,  let it be a citizen of elsewhere. And then allow no anxious intruders to hunker down, to take premise that suffering can homestead here – no rank chatter to menace the bright pump-house, to bang about tongue and bellows. Such moments, married to eternity, dance with glaciers, typhoons, black holes. And death has never been a stranger, maybe alchemist, liberator, owl. Even so we live on, and again like bristle cone and cedar.