What the Muses Leave Behind

My feet led me to the woods loop out my back door. The wood thrush serenaded us all under the rich green canopy of oak and hickory and sourwood. Finally I plopped down right down right in the middle of the trail and wrote: 77 that's my number this month, crosses with craned necks - whooping crane month in the middle of the year in the middle of the summer. But moon is new today - a start to something - even in the middle. I am the start of a family, a family begat by Alphonse and Althea - a new lineage of old world spooning with new world as woman spoons with man. So many opportunities to err in the name of bold beginnings - if we get so much wrong, there are so many ways to begin again and again, endless creation- buds bursting open to spray the world with beauty. Step here, not there - new dance; touch this not that - new embrace; think this not that - new dreams; living beyond the lines and within them. Such expansion - big bang! They made this family with lots of daughters ...

We’re diving into deep night again, into a velvet star speckled pocket lusciously cold as a watercress pool, edges laced in frost. We can’t help but fill it with gloomy news of economies kaput, mothers murdered, insurgent storms. All set a perfect stage for this longest night with shadows, shadows everywhere - even the moon eclipses. It’s a firefly called hope, napping in the bottom of Pandora’s golden box that sustains us now. We are preserved for summer – for farmers’market and mayfly hatches and Perseid showers. So today let winter hold our sadness. We’ll feed the fire, sing to children, stir the soup. Tears and worry ride better on the dappled gray fog than on our hearts. When Earth bears everything the January skies can bleed spring again.

Whose turn is it to watch for paradise? - Sarah Ann Winn With first slip of daylight, I let loose hounds of dark roast to a  growling grinder, cracking the quiet of thick frost and apricot overcast.   My black dog stretches in sun salute as we meet a crescent moon. She looks a bit ragged and thin. Winter slows many things, sap and squirrels, but not the brooding of poets and farmers - incessant is their surveillance.  The moon needs a nap, drapes her face with cirrus clouds; tries to overlook the millstones: neap tides, menses, frazzled lunatics – tugging, tugging, tugging. No wonder Selene stumbles narcoleptic spring to fall. No wonder with each waning crescent, her sagacious gifts surrender to rain. She needs a nap. There are blueprints to dream for April,  and a naked winter world expects night escort, November to Spring.   No wonder Diana croons in the vernal chirr of peeper and toad. Even beside groundhogs, she’d ...

-for my sons Give up on everything, and snatch back the meat that matters - this journey only requires skin. You inherit a convoluted path built on generations of dreams, carried all along in the palm of your hand. Free will is destiny when you follow it, luck is the family hound leashed on Ariadne’s thread – The minotaur waits in your belly. If heart lead your feet, best walking is slow – moment brings moment. Your quest, living this labyrinth can feel like trudging shoeless into winter, working naked through June – you’ll make mistakes but say yes, it’s the right answer.

for my nieces enter matrimony Wide eyed how delirious love may start hold Spring in your belly keep summer in your Heart sleep with earth and heaven what fills the space between? your lightning and your thunder or the Satisfying rain? making Mate a Mirror we see what we project the lake looks up into the sky the clouds and sun reflect remember Ariadne who held Tightly to her thread - tethered it to Theseus to help her Keep her head somewhere in the Middle a monster greets his kin you’ve dreamt this Passage countless nights met the ancient one within it’s not the pink and comfy times that give us fullest measure bonds born among Insufferable days – emerge like Sacred Treasure and any woman who’s labored long to have the sweetest child knows deep love comes of Beastly times when hearts ring out so wild - Maybe marriage is a maze indeed a risky venture - so pearls come from irritant and honey fruits from labor With some luck – you find your Self the golden apple from the start there is ...

-for my nieces Given all things marriage amazes - tap root pulls up legend, Apple in its belly - a Minotaur at its heart (google Greek legends – King Minos) coupled with earth and heaven you dance amid Thunder, dodge lightning – rain soaks, kernels swell – what will Grow? (explore I-Ching - hexagram eleven) a convoluted path Rises to meet you feels so familiar – maybe you’ve dreamt it - carried it all along in the Palm of your hand. (meander the maze) already Ariadne – you can Sing out for Theseus - fathers seek Heroes for daughters – even if they’re not around your strong line is more Reliable then cake crumbs (google Greek legends again – Ariadne’s Thread) luck lingers within each fold of a labyrinth when feet follow heart, best walking is slow – in time you understand, moment brings moment. (stroll as one in silence) we wise women savor even Insufferable days - like pepper in soup, and our love blooms deep in Beastly times – wild hearts yowling to the moon. (dust off Lord of the Ri...

"Light can be obscured, but you can't hide gravity," --Dr. Heath Jones. Preoccupied – no, not like a stone, yes, like a river – silent or singing; on thoughts that convey him like Solomon’s great green carpet, he goes. His track is a Silk Road, rippling along a steady dimension where travel is light and payload only pulse and breath, There are days, just past Asimov or Heinlein that drift among Ursa Major and her cub. There are nebulae, he climbs, of brain chatter, accreted like caddisfly cases. There is current that carries him through blustery rhetoric, then breaks into A minor 7th and eddies in with a morning crossword. And there is gravity in memory that tugs his stories back to tighter orbits, dragging tails full of dust, salting old family constellations. He believes in angels, makes sadness the seraph of wind and rain; makes joy the blessed kin of April sunrises and fireflies. Sometimes he broods with the sagging fruit of summer, gathering ballast from pages of Fra...