Song of Mourning

I was so young. And you lit a spark.  We fell in love. 

You climbed trees, raced around on your bike, made music, made art.  You were a familiar. A spirit brother who I treasured and clung to.

We started a life together.  My dishes filled up your cabinets. My rocking chair nestled itself into your living room, which then became ours.  We drank tea in our bed under a hideous painting of a ship in a storm.  We wrapped up in each other. We found warmth and made a home with sunlight and orchids and a soundtrack of 311, the RZA, Mark O'Connor and Yo-Yo Ma. 
I wove words together into poems for you and you constructed gifts of the earth for me. 

We got married over rolling hills and the sea, our hearts running over in joy and celebration.  I remember the sloshing of the water pump in the ceiling above our bed in the cottage.  The priest sprinkled oil around us to protect us from the elements of this world. We toasted our union. We lit a candle.

I still have that candle tucked away with our etched flutes. Your grandfather used to say that whenever there was a storm, he and your grandmother would light their candle. Maybe we should have done that.  Maybe we should have said a prayer.

We made a child. You celebrated my body as she grew within and you caught her in your own hands when she emerged into this world. We have raised her together, a shoot sprung from our own seed; she has grown and blossomed under the protection of our strong limbs.

We have traveled the world together.  Lit campfires, talked late, watched the stars move, breathed red dust for days in the desert.

We made plans and dreamed. Forever. For us.

But now you are gone and our dreams are like vapor. Your love has suddenly dispersed on the wind and I’m left standing here shell-shocked, the hearth cold, searching for signs of what we have done where we have been.

There is a place where your body has lain in our bed for over ten years; the mattress remembers what you’ve chosen to forget.

And I cannot stop remembering. You have betrayed me and forsaken our marriage and our life, leaving a gaping hollowness where you used to belong—where we use to fit in together.  You were my best friend and trusted partner until the day you picked up your things and deserted our life.   

I love you—have always and care so much for you.  For what?

My soul is a constant voice wailing the mourning of our lost life, of my dreams, of my damaged heart

I cry out. Only the walls hear me. There is no response.

My Indigo

It's late. I've come
to find the flower which blossoms
like a saint dying upside down.
The rose won't do, nor the iris.
I've come to find the moody one, the shy one,
downcast, grave, and isolated.
Now, blackness gathers in the grass,
and I am on my hands and knees.
What is its name?

Little sister, my indigo,
my secret, vaginal and sweet,
you unfurl yourself shamelessly
toward the ground. You burn. You live
a while in two worlds
at once.
   
Li-Young Lee

(One of my favorite poems and poets)

You aren't real anyway so

I allow you to wander around

the back room of my thoughts, picking through them,

thumbing them over and paying

less-than value because they are dusty

and unused. "At least," 

I say to myself, "they will be appreciated"

even though you aren't real. I sigh

as you walk off with threads

of ideas balls of words tucked up

under your arms, feeling like you got a bargain. 

The door swings.

I go back to work and forget

You were ever (not) here.

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.