What the Muses Leave Behind

In finely grained nonchalance, a subtle evolution has split me open. I rise from leathery exuvia, latest chapters lived and sorted. Home, misty morning webbed in lapis lazuli and down, unveils its still life: mater familias, black coffee, first fire - in silence to hold my reverence for half past four. Jupiter has entered Scorpio, melts me together. Love wants to return, every chapter and verse gentled within my fault lined family. Collected - a bitter biography to galvanize me, an old hen to hunker down, wait out the storm, water snakes to wrap my wounds, an itching heart. I’ve built a rugged gravity of warts and tears, it waxes like neap tide - things neglected are still ballast. These tiny shells of forgettable days crunch underfoot - I have sand in my teeth, and fruit heavy in easy reach. Here is a cloud bank of dawn along the horizon - pink and florid.  A universe to unfold me, a new skin.

Come through, there’s a gnat has jiggered across my nose, an aeronautic whirligig – a tiny door. Beware the flying dervish, my friends, gyre and gimble in the wabe. With a Jump and a jive and a heave. “Wilderness is not a luxury…” * This Tao Way, a wild walk – all mimsy were the tumbles-in, all lunatic and pickled, these sapiens in the soup. The tires that squish, the guns that splatter! Beware the galumphing gentry. And what a virtual parody, flattening rain forests into 2D screens.   “Granma said they was dead people walking around.” ** Three times a day, an orangutan stepped from its cage into the limelight, costumed as a clown. Ridiculous the tuxedo to cover his bruises – the cheers to drown his despair. Which is stronger faith or fear? Oh shun, the dunderhead delight chasers. “And we stand somewhere between the mountain and the Ant.” - *** Come through, shame has sullied her shadows, she folds apology into...

France hands its future to the millennials. Statue of Liberty beams across the pond. How to stem the tides of refugees? Heal every home Bury the hatchets Sing with the bees.

                          ~for Joanie     Yes, we know about you, and none of that matters. We know how you keep turning over rocks, opening doors. I have no idea how it works, no idea if the whole world sees us as kin. How could she not? We know we are cut from the same cloth, you and me, an afternoon breeze around the neck, grateful for easy       when it finds us. Even in black and white, we know how to marvel.           EXACTLY Wow!   Yes, and we know how to transform          day to day, give patience to steady becoming. Our generation – once tucked up tightly in an oak gall, encroached the safe verges with indiscretions. We could not help it;           they pushed through our skin, provoked by our grandmothers, ...

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 vigi...

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.

Bring cash and coin, they make money easy at the casino. Jane Fonda could be there, Gary Farmer, Heidi HeitKamp. Spirits in the camp are good, it’s an ultra-stellar colony, Turtle Island, deep dreams of deep ecology. The local currency: breath and backbone. News from the front line: big storm forecast, so are miles and miles of cars. This narrative spirals inward, no second coming, see how the center holds. Morton County’s finest blocked the bridge on the Cannonball. they want to make the river a moat around their fortress, but today she stands with her rabble of heroes. Maybe we have seen nothing like this before; but defense of the seventh generation,  number one promise for a long, long time.