What the Muses Leave Behind

Come October mountain flanks sing with the high ambers of summer, and blush deep as old love. Brimming with color empty leaves can fall. To cross the forest floor, we crunch out a raucous trail throwing echoes to the heart of the world, and on crisp mornings when giant elk surrender we survive another winter. Around and around life folds into death and comes back again. Like a cat eyed marble rolled between fingers and thumb the season invites us in to a fat woman's ball - our grand tarantella of harvest and flight tangled with rainbows swallowed by heaven soon, breakfast of dreams.

Remember this moment - yes, the one in this breath, pregnant as a peach orchard with your hopes and fears. Remember this taste on your tongue, so expectant; savor the tang of robust family, every part proud. Pregnant as a peach orchard with your hopes and fears, we know we are the blessed ones. Savor the tang of robust family, every part proud. Remember this tremble in your heart. We know we are the blessed ones, this moment spins old notions into new thread. Remember this tremble in your heart, surrender to it like sweet butter on warm bread. This moment spins old notions into new thread. Give worry a roost to rest - its stillness, our peace, surrender to it like sweet butter on warm bread. Your refuge is here in our laughter and tears. Give worry a roost to rest - its stillness, our peace. Remember this taste on your tongues, so expectant; your refuge is here in our laughter and tears, Remember this moment - yes, the one in this breath. --rm mist 2009

"There is a number hidden in every act of life...numbers screaming to tell us something." - Paul from 21 Grams If it were only a matter of numbers - five hundred and seventy seven minus one hundred and fifty, leaving four hundred with a little margin for error - would that be enough to stave off that one deva who divines calamity, calls it a sacred door? Intrepidly blue as the Arabian Sea, my worries drift on crimson petals, each envious of the nautilus chambers, beautiful raft of Fibonacci numbers - one, two three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty one. But still the world cracks open, flooding us in a feast of breezes filled with squirrel chatter, who don’t care if we’re counting. If it were only a matter of numbers would it be enough to divide a year into seasons, days, and hours, littering walls and tables with the couriers of our imperious fourth dimension? The mist that curls my book's cover is an ample almanac. And even if our whirl-a-gig minds press for meticulous rh...

Last August as barometers fell and skies spun their pewter webs, we dreamed of rain.  Watching thirsty Sourwoods  blush Before the light shifted, we presses that buxom summer to fill our shelves with bottles stacked high in bread and butter pickles, spicy salsa and home brew.  Those dog days courted fat winds out of Alabama, teased us to seventh heaven and hid downpours in fox grapes and persimmons.  That year we looked up, sought safe haven in a farmer's almanac, and days sailed toward summer's end within the graceful orbit of Earth. We prayed like refugees for any clever idea to reunite land and sky.  Patience sweltered in us between line dried sheets. We believed sun-dogs were omens; that we could pull them apart like wishbones and find water. Instead our oracles hid in flowers. still tucked up in the dry soil among the warts of a mother bulb. Come April, they swelled open right on time - each lusciously wet and brilli...

Poplar pond is brimming up and over countless toes of trees that bask nude in the steely sun of a solstice sky walking with a black dog in the lavender twilight we savor the moment watch Venus and Jupiter cavort always westward heralds of another day another chance to count our blessings in a new world so fresh and full

It must be the fat curves in 2008 that inspire this belly of harvest that hangs like whole notes along a musical staff that rivals ADM and Monsanto that invites me to fill the cracked jug that seeps empty, fills and seeps again while moments blow away from us turning the rose dawn into lavender moon, March into September.

Best swaddle our babies in veery song suspended on a breeze. Light meets day in its bud, gently uncoil each hour. They expect warm milk and kisses, we savor their sweet perfume. Find children as fresh earth, as body of amber clay. Layer on layer, by moments etched, we mold them home. Best swaddle our babies with apricot sunrises that open into May. The feast is not in the kettle when elbows dimple the cloth; only picnics of stories so satisfy like desert rain. They expect dragons swarming the castle, we savor paper cranes. Decades unfold a family like an aspen clone claims its slope - pushed open with birth and marriage, deepened in woe. Best swaddle our babies in butterflies laced in lucky saffron. Waking hours hold the key to Darwin explorations; we’ll set their brilliant minds free, feathering daydreams with angels. They expect to track a creek forever, we savor safe returns. Raising children pours like sand for a painting, every grain counts; they’re not ours, they belong to the w...