November 3

Is it true that time changes?

Not here, but there, not past that imaginary line

but an inch before it.

Waking today brought an altered number

on a clock

yet Sun didn’t hiccup or falter.

Who are we to roll such dice?

Upon opening my eyes today

I’m living out a past pain through new labor.

Which is true–

the old pain, the fresh effort?

November 3 offers lost agonies returned,

a dawning, growing prayer

and broadening recognition of space

expanding into the Grandmotherly arms

of a beckoning,

wrinkled

and rollicking humor.

Woman, shave your head

Got long hair?

Got any hair?

Woman, shave your head.

And collect the assumptions hoisted upon you,

the ones you weren’t quite certain,

but now you know,

have been dragging you down.

Belly scraping the road.

Woman, got long hair?

Shave your head, and learn how confused

perceptions and expectations of you

are.

Where you may have been pretty, attractive,

desired,

suddenly the sight of that is gone

and people, most people, don’t have a clue

how to respond, how to comprehend–

But you were pretty.

You were attractive.

You were desirable.

Watch them turn their eyes away, unable

to look at you.

Hear them,

hating what they see and can’t understand,

say, “You look so…different.”

The least offensive, yet unasked for, comment

they can make.

Woman, got long hair?

Shave your head,

and discover what assumptions shove you low, in place,

a shallow ditch where you have been put.

Some react in adoration,

others with titillation, however briefly,

or with shock envy disbelief disgust.

Woman,

if ever you didn’t fully get it,

not in the tautness of your sinews,

how the appearance of a woman is believed

to belong

to the public,

that it is open invitation to

critique judgement opinion desire and rejection,

stick a personal act of transformation,

like dynamite,

within social view.

Woman,

if you want to know not

what others want you to be

but the stuff you’re made of,

Go,

Shave your head.

Day opens

She lays in bed, sheet lightly covering.

Out the window clouds of rain draw near,

without hurry or menace.

Slow jazz fills the room, no one else close

to breathe the same thick, gentle October morning

in her nest above the street.

Pumpkin pie awaiting baking,

lamb thawing on white tiled counter,

and the low-lit day opens towards everything

she loves.

In the cross-hatch seat

In the cross-hatch seat of the chair

wooden, dusted in time and use,

a cat

curled

and sleeping.

Looking over at her, floor boards below and sun

reaching through a far window,

doubt can not waver the sweetness

of a morning with feline, coffee, a book

and silence rising from the woods outside.

Where lies

If a push,

somewhere a pull.

Where taken,

pray it has been given.

The Western sense of community..

in itself a paradox?

We’re part–everyone–of centuries of history

cycling, tumbling, molasses-thick onward

with nanosecond “advances.”

No mystery that you, and you, and I

can not seem to catch our breath.

Faster is not forward,

as bigger not better, nor more money success.

Where lies the soul stuff making life

Life?

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.

The whole warm night through

A frog in the front garden,

between snow storms,

has much to say:

First, forget the plans-

they were a ruse anyway.

Second, recall sunrise

and the songbirds’ melodious chittering.

Third, fourth, fifth,

forget the numbers,

holding on is holding back.

And then he busts into chorus

the whole warm night through

and a memory of what’s to come

sands a path deep into sleep,

wishing a good slumber

to one and to all~

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.