What the Muses Leave Behind

I’m miffed with my astrologer She chimes month in, month out Start here, start here New day, new intentions, new life I want to believe I want to commence I want to stride forward and my feet stay put. My life is a tar baby   The new moon in Aries, here we go again. Everything is before me: The boiling resolutions, evaporating troubles, it’s a message on a loop the great wheel of planet and stars kaleidoscopic, a forecast in fractals There are water weeds in the cosmic wading pool. My psyche drags me in by the hair. She says, take these gossamer wings of synchronicity and mishap. I put them on and fly lopsided as a battered Luna moth. Things out of place cling to my ankles like bad choices – I mean, lessons. They clutch my conscience – remoras riding a shark. She has advised sizing up the tangent of Saturn and Pluto, says, here is the axis mundi for the pink moon. I’m craving more human mo

Sometimes you must let go, choose to lift your breathy silks, to tumble east through tall grass and knock about pillar and post. Soon enough, you will oblige the bloody sunsets of August, thick and complicated, feeling the perspiration of your sister as you lean in together over the hot stove.

i. A strong medicine crawls within this slow sandy stream. How it settles upon us, sometimes – complacent as a digesting diamondback, then petulant and contrarian as an overtired toddler, fists balled up against the scurry of fall. How is this indolent stream not sucked into service by the mercenary soul of October to December? With its rustle and tug of lists, its countless details, each a suitor flirting for our attention. More fool’s gold for duty. My Anais Nin flings her confetti of milk weed feathers, of mica flecks onto a hot breeze, she is a sister entropy to cicada song, the sugar of river seduction. My reptile brain hungry for a flash of primal spark, hangs on each note. ii. Was a time we lead with a different attitude, lighter and deft, how we jibbed and jived – grass, feather and fur, how we were savage and bloody consumed, blooming green and giving. How invisible the blades that flayed us from skin and essence

You believe in open society, big dreaming and serendipity! You got perspective - a rock cairn with prayer flags. What did it take to pack up home and family, to travel treacherous miles - thousands, to be a stranger in a partisan land? This is the story of your grandmothers, your story too, without the peril. Bold hearts learn to swim with trouble. At 12, your Yankee mother sent you to join the school walk out of Southern Segregation. You were happy to buck the system, happy for new friends. Fraternizing with these kids fattened a fringe - cushioned the mean gibes of local cliches and clans. You linked arms, to carry a fine truth dancing between you: Life is unkind, life is a mission, life is a mercy. Your mother was sixteen when the H-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Did New England air shake with wails that ricocheted across the night from Nippon to Narragansett? The sirens and howls, the hungry ghosts when they nipped the Nipponese. At sixte

for Quala The turquoise sea is a trickster - Its luscious skin, easy on the eyes. Dappled light to lull a confidence - all is well in the world. Soft lapping to lull my ears - overlook the moans of bones that drift down and down out of mind. The trickster uses a southern wind to bait my attention. I watch it pitch up a hem, bellow a spinnaker; press the fluid body to a low chop. I swoon at pilot whales and bottlenoses who follow the blue boats of Moroccan men. They fish with hand lines – drag enormous tuna into their hulls. I am adrift on the picturesque nature of life here, enamored with a deep heritage - people, land and sea. The uplifted limestone filled with fossils, fortified walls, armored casemates share another view. The Gibraltar coastline is a portrait of conquest. Europe has been swallowing Africa for eons. Perhaps the discreet pace of tectonics and a penchant for forgetfulness make it unremarkable.

for Rochelle Start with story – thirty-eight + two  Hung before the rising sun Be precise. Learn every breath of it, tell it one hundred times. Hold the trauma of four, five generations,  Let it build gravity in your belly. Daily   Pray to your ancestors,  Thank them for the legacy that is you. Grow indifferent to racism and unkindness. Dance. Sing. Dance. Sing. Dance. Sing. Dance. Pray with your feet to find Inspiration for the dress:         how it comes together        how the body holds it  The healing that lives among the threads. Here is a story that needs a horse to ride. The dress is the horse; the dancer, the rider. Be patient for the dream that brings the dress to you. Remember what your grandfather said. Ride at dawn, ride at twilight.  Ride at dawn, ride at twilight.  Now gather two black Pendleton blankets – Red and yellow stripes along the edge. Gather two hundred and eighty pennies, a hank of red glass bead