What the Muses Leave Behind

“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart...” – rainer maria rilke We want things to be easy- easy as editing lines by pressing a plastic key – there, alignment. Life revels in its struggle - difficult as kin off kilter with growing pains and broken hearths – here, discord. If we could tweak problems by lifting letters, set dilemma precisely in the good next place- simple would be the road to heart’s desire. Maybe patience is the only medicine and when we survive the swirling murmuration of longings as they tumble like starlings on a soggy afternoon, we find that spirals align best with open space and there is no plastic key to lift tendrils of pea vines sunward nor to steer disappointing news away. There is no easy in the orchid’s bloom, and even plastic uses millenniums to arrive. --rm mist 2012

(for Iris and Joe, September 10, 2011) Let’s make it a day for conjecture. When two get hitched at one on nine ten eleven, Ripe scarlet transecting a Shenandoah slope. The sum is not a Fibonacci. I saw a proof on that. When two get hitched at one on nine ten eleven. Venus blesses them with generosity The sum is not a Fibonacci. I saw a proof on that. The beauty of this wedding will feed multitudes. Venus blesses them with generosity, Maybe elephants and the Arctic ice won’t disappear. The beauty of this wedding will feed multitudes. Here, today, two hearts already together, are everything but one. Maybe elephants and the Arctic ice won’t disappear. And being so close to a full harvest moon plus equinox, Here, today two hearts already together, are everything but one. It’s easy to extrapolate that love goes on and on. And being so close to a full harvest moon plus equinox, Ripe scarlet transecting a Shenandoah slope, It’s easy to extrapolate that love goe...

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 ...