What the Muses Leave Behind

“Stay close, my heart, to the one who knows your ways…” - Rumi I’d break the mold Cast a maple spell on summer, tether tonight’s dream I’d stand inside the dream Tadasana,  mountain to stones in the river, silent under paddle strokes. I’d be diamonds in the smoke, shining out our anthem. I heard it yesterday. Stagecoach Road wore fire pinks along its limestone shoulders I’d be the feathery sedum beside it, delicate Tennessee triskelion ready with all three arms to wrap you up in waterfalls, in high humidity with leviathan heart, whispering a sturdy pledge, like the one of armadillos to fire ants - I will follow you to the end of time.

I sit with Katmandu all shook up - 7.9 with paisley troposphere caressing blue planet. I sit with red scarves on quiet women, with broken bodies confused about roads to healing. I sit with secret holders, how each one wonders, am I safe, am I stuck? I sit with ample water to take long hot showers in a safe place, my own safe place. I know of children who carry water, uphill for evening meals, dodging bullets, ducking shrapnel. I sit with questions that poke the soles of my feet, when I walk too fast they pop. I sit with sorrow, and like woodpecker, sometimes I just bang away at things. I sit with struggle and sing a weedy song,  I want my voice to be rain on tin. I sit like puddle dreaming ocean, like ocean dreaming sky.

Maybe this is the year that packs so much punch we turn elemental, simple start of water, walking across sky, walking with snow, soft groans underfoot - unfolding in white orchids, unfolding with aroma of lentil stew, sometimes stiff like a cold river making  its meander around alabastered maples, sometimes turning glorious into a verb, sometimes turning us into meadow of mud and moss – sometimes into moments subtle as February.  You stand agog with the hunger moon, still fluffed up in pink crystal. I want to skirt night's edge,  listening for the hymn that binds us. listening for the sound of green wood sheep,  bleating to the wide smile of a gray day. Sometimes the day rings deeper than our laments about Monday's forecast and daylight savings time. Sometimes we want to hold the ocean, yes, maybe this is the year.  

This life is big, room for everything generations long, incarnations deep. the echo bouncing between first moment and what's possible. Here’s a puzzle: with so much frontier how does the stuff still hem us in? The grand piano, chiffonier and waterbed, the stacks of magazines. Feeling stranded on a frigate of  clutter in a big wide sea? Oh my friend- it's on us! This life prefers light travel. The snow blows today in extravagant bustle because it grew wings. And behind a morning mirror there are secret sketches, hound and wolf, rib on rib, croon the moon. It's the song of ten thousand  walking out of Africa,  making  invention  the crib mate  of children,  building a world like   Fibber McGee’s closet.  "We gotta clean it out one of these days." This life rings with the dreams of grey whales, of March and Blackberry winter,  waking  and ready to sprawl like New Jersey. ...

There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. ―   Leonard Cohen Why are we given this long night when the world stands still? If we shadow maples and hickories, our bodies long and reaching, If we make birds the oracles and sky a Holy Grail, Make a family feud into crow antics, let worry lift into clouds of starlings. We might stop dwelling on what holds us down. Trees in their subterranean sleep, dream of finding a sun. Of spraying pink dawn with bright leaves. At midnight we hear deadfall crashing nearby,                                              and know it’s the old falling off. Healing, releasing pain, and what remains is green and vital. Breath and love the magic elixir – Breathe in crystal melodies, breathe out fever; Breathe in sandalwood, breathe out mishap. If we listen to the darkness, beneath roots of winte...

- - for Noah Your report quickly became epic. It began in a big room filled with strangers, how you had no corner for retreat, how the bus arrived for all to climb aboard – strangers with strangers. You had your doubts. They rested beside the dust of last night’s cobweb, you tried not to get entangled. In the part about the camp, you explained how they brought everyone together, how the real journey began, how it could end with a brave new world.  So you all embarked, not sure where you were going. Now you know, every hero has to travel through the swamps first, you waded into each other’s bewildering house. You witnessed, you cried, you identified. Tears brought the car around when a truth stumbled out. You told us the food was lousy and each day was a feast. Wisdom delights most in the fruit plucked from vines rooted in unsavory places. You never went to bed hungry and even added a few concordant inches about the way the world can be. Empathy laid beside its golden ret...

- for lulu On the day you were born, Ell Pond must have brimmed to tickle all the toes of elm and fir, their limbs dripping with dew and finch chatter. Must have tickled you too. I want to hear you giggle like the summer day, you and Ernie dived for haddock, already hooked once and tossed out by fisherman because they loved your laugh. Like the chowder, necessary nurture - like the sea to float a family shore to shore -  see, even life boat. I imagine it could run with the tide, maybe  even run  amok. Love how it splashes everything. How it touches us with a light twinkling like Mars and Jupiter, chasing the moon.  Let's suppose there’s  no need to dive for fish again, when the gift is in the giggle.