Now

He slams the door behind him.

You think, Good riddance!

When next your heart stops and breath catches,

out comes a gasp, What have I done?

Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes

from complete sense to non-sense,

and it is on that iceberg of moment

(and each drifting ice island following)

when wondering, Is this true?

might most gather you back together in a form

strong enough,

wise enough

to hold all the sensations and feelings

threatening to tear you to pieces

to be with Now,

an actual fullness of Life

for which you have the grandest capacity.

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This day

This day he walks slowly,

approaching in nearly a shuffle.

Handing me a candy- the kind once known as penny-

saying, this aging stuff, not so easy.

I used to think, he shares with a soft shake of his head,

I could stay a perpetual teenager. But not so.

His health, not good,

the poetry, music and culture

having always fed him

no longer enough.

Or so it seems to him, on this day.

Clutching a small handled paper bag, one somehow

always carried,

he steps away, looking emptily into distance

not physically there,

leaving me with a golden,

foil covered chocolate coin never to be eaten

and an appreciation for his difficult facing

of what he long imagined

could be outrun.

Twenty-five years on

Not until the attentive itch

do they exchange glances to mean

It’s Time.

And off we pile into the car, heading deep

into night and whatever flight waiting

with breath, rolling, in the wings.

Winding round and up and up and round

through dark and sensation

into rolled down window sweetness of valley grass and oak,

Stumbling, graceful, grit of dirt road scuffing,

spinning under 2 a.m. sky and flopping across hillsides,

the stars, sharp and grabbable,

become a spiral

spiral

spiral

as alive to be tucked in a pocket,

as hover, massive and in reach, directly overhead,

as rest in mind twenty-five years on.

Ancient and known

What name can be given

to soul hunger for nature,

for bodily starvation of slow rhythms ancient

and known?

Waking, sleeping, sunrise, moonset,

yes

even in the most stricken times we can find ourselves there

part of the ever-larger cosmos,

not pinned tight to trivia and misbehaviors.

But

skin suffers thirst for soil-

this hard concrete place rebounding with noise

can’t feed what does not eat the civilized.

Sit down with me, here,

let’s break sidewalk together,

chip away until earth smiles again at sky-

silent seeds await their patient growth into trees.

The rest

An initiation ritual,

in the dusk-scape of dream,

of shared finery, costume, camaraderie,

and non-blood family

emerging from here, over there,

here, here, there

unexpectedly,

for the me before me,

with a gathering of eager others,

to mark time with life.

Saying no, no but I am not she

not anymore

no–

But as beads pass over head, and colors add up,

layers of feather, bone, cloth

none mine

each display on this body

currently

a light in mind shifts-

not for me

but she

who may pass through, closing

beginning years, finally,

in step with those knowing when it is meant to happen.

Dressed, prepared, without doubts,

I walk the procession.

To celebrate.

To say goodbye.

To welcome all the rest.

Knocking

And when Fear comes knocking?

Or, more likely, bamblarkblasting its way in,

do you invite him to sit down,

notice her nebulous sucking barbed wire darkness,

and surrender yourself to the visit knowing

something important will be learned?

Come, come Fear, welcome,

enter and offer what brings you through town-

you might say

in honor and awe of,

out of respect for the guest with power

to leave you shivering, quivering

and yet more able to walk on

with starlight in your eyes-

have yourself a cup of tea,

You must be tired.

Constellations on the ground

Constellations on the ground,

stars underfoot,

snow falling in dark morning

on upturned face,

waiting hair, open palms.

Greeting a wide universe in winter-

its hush and hibernation beckoning on

hidden animals waiting

waiting

for a silent moment to show themselves

as weather weaves a way.

Her own

At forty

she felt seventy.

Experience’s weight

had sunk posts deep into the landscape of her being.

Ache and limitation, an undertow of fatigue,

confusion at the seeming permanence

of the uninvited, the resisted,

lead this human to take possession, fully-

and for the first time-

of a life unwritten, free of guarantees,

and her own.

Entirely her own.

Her landscape now is a garden,

loved and wanted, with posts that may disappear.

Or not.

With their origins recognized, appreciated,

and their presence finally respected,

perhaps a hammock will be slung between them

in honor of spring’s arrival.

In the saddle

At a beginning,

with the closest solitary prayer being

“I don’t know,”

my hips work to keep the rest of me in the saddle.

Movements in the sky-

valley fog, and clouds weaving high through the hills-

live their nature in waves, currents, and vanishings,

grand teachings of the cycles of continual change.

Sometimes, I wish I knew.

But, unintentionally, artfully, that greatest illusion

has been set on the shelf-

a furry trickster friend

who flashes me a smile, and snaps his tail

at the most wicked, and absurd times.

I don’t know becomes

a delicate, gritty daily worship.

Human walking

Born from uninitiated folk,

as most Westerners are,

creates holes in knowing that let icy winds enter.

Weaving oneself back together requires attention,

a briny commitment, earthly,

sight of an old fist-width rope tying the now to a millennia of then:

the family line.

Mostly invisible shoulders carry

the wobbling essential unformed

human walking known as you.

Start asking questions.