Rainy Day Thoughts

Pedal your flying machine
over puddles and red boots, rain caps wet
and slick water drops slapping as
you pump your wings and sing
your song of freedom over the clouds
and into the sun.

Song for a Lover

In celebration, communion, reunion of our bodies--
spirits, we come together in the darkness.
Our every breath a wordless prayer, a language
of secrets spun from silken thread, delicate shining strands
of love realized and strung about and betwixt our skins,
Our Skin.

With love we have spun new life from darkness, a seedling
at our feet, setting root beside our tree. As three
we grow together, intertwined and tangled for a lifetime,
eternity.

Steps Across Scotch Tape

The expansive seam between the two drifting people
 is tacked with haste together, a bridge
 like scotch tape across a canyon,
time washes back and away,
 never recorded, now-dissolving.

From here I see the other side, hear the flowing river but cannot cross to retrieve what is lost.

Don't forget to Smell Beneath the Roses

This post was made last summer on my old blog called Dispatches from the Mundane

It was the grass. Not the pleasant feeling grass underfoot tickling between my toes or magnificence rolling green hills in the distance. It wasn't prairie grass swaying in the wind like sea waves--although seeing that can be a somewhat religious experience too. No, it was sharp thick up-pricked blades in clear obstruction of my vision on the manicured lawn of the Sinnissippi rose garden, as I fell into their cushion. Tickled to death by my three-year-old just as the sun was beginning to set, I flopped down, rolling my head to the side and slacked my jaw in mock defeat. When I reopened my eyes after a single moment of stolen rest I saw them-- really saw them: wide, rich, earthly bodies-- each unique--bursting up from the soft ground around where my head crushed down their neighbors. On my cheeks, lips, eyebrows and head I felt their mighty presence while my nose-- already spoiled by roses all around-- took in their luxurious fragrance.
I spent most of this day at a craft fair where some of the best artists in the United States were gathered, displaying their fantastical wares of creativity; I saw things that only appear in dreams, fantastical manifestations of genius minds and yet not one creation there could begin to rival the earth's own ingenuity in decorating herself. Donning billions of intricate individual spears of emerald, each with its own pattern, size, and ability to breath and rejuvenate, the earth moves in splendor, her own hand of wind rustling and smoothing the folds of her extravagant attire. That is to say nothing of the classy way that the she subtly perfumes herself with a finer fragrance than that of any rose in the garden (we know because we have spent a lot of time smelling every single variety this summer) with these soft prickling gems so that the lowliest of creatures-- grubs, beetles and earthworms-- can live in a splendid heaven of scent.
I am not the only one to have found a secret glory in grass. Walt Whitman, for one, understood how complex and elegant can be the world of grass. Rachel Carson too, learned and imagined through watching the grass grow. Sadly, grass gets a bad rap, as it is the yard cover of choice in Suburbia, Everystate, USA. Grass is a trademark component of overly-groomed micromanaged yards, parks, and properties that tie back, cut down, bind up or burn down the natural landscape in favor of some ideal of trimmed green predictable and sterile scape. However, while I can easily agree with many of those sentiments, I feel that as a helpless plant, grass has been overused, misused, and abused by our culture with little to no fault of its own. On the contrary, its overuse, as with so many things in the world, stems from its very pleasant nature, from its beauty, veratility, flexibility, and predictability. Grasses of all kinds are extraordinary plants and even the most mundane of grasses that fill our eyeballs everyday to the brim with their preppy pristine greenness have a quality of magnificence and majesty when examined--or nay, experienced-- up close. Even corporations know it. In a depressing scheme to bottle and sell the awakening glory of a blade of grass, a person can buy a "grass" scented perfume. If big-box brother can see it from the stuffy 27th-floor office in the sky far removed from any grass anywhere, you too should see it clearly every day.
Grass is sweetly scented poetry that any person can enjoy. It is free and abundant. So take the time to calm your ever-bustling feet and stop a minute or two to lower yourself and smell beneath the roses.

Two years of Absense...

Two years have elapsed since I last posted on this blog. Well, that's not entirely true.... I think I may have made some posts sometime last year, later choosing to erase them. So, wonder where I've been? Well, I've been around. I actually started and kept up two other blogs for a while last year but in the end, here I am, back at home where I have returned, like a salmon swimming upstream, to spawn.  But I don't die. I just come home again and again. I hope you enjoy my next outburst of mental offspring!

Home Again

And back to the grind! It's like we learned nothing from our trip; Jeremy and I are both back to going full-speed and never seeing each other, Annika is falling apart at the seams and no one is holding up.

Travelogue

Don't worry folks:grandparents and those visiting this blog for updates on our trip, I'll keep 'em coming too. Here we go

Annika is still cute. She is talking like crazy. She has an amazing imagination, a love for animals, a never-ending store of energy, and sweetness all over!

I got to share some special bonding with her tonight at bedtime. Lately she has taken to snuggling in our bed for a bit if she doesn't fall right asleep when she nurses. Sometimes she falls asleep while we snuggle, sometimes she gets transfered to her bed awake. Anyway, tonight she asked for snuggles so we laid together, just inches between our faces. She would start to drift off and then POP, open her eyes and look again to be sure I was still there. As she began to settle in, she took one side of my head in her little hand and then started softly brushing my hairline and ear so very gently with her other hand so sweetly. Finally, she settled down by worrying my lip-ring in her fingers.