Gather together
curls of dignity
fallen to the base of my spine.

Gather together
what hid to make way
for necessary functioning
in a loud place whose
anger drowned out wee whisps of becoming.

Remember the older woman who walked with me in springtime through grasses,
who listened, who said
she'd be there for me if I needed. 
Remember her hand on my braid in the dark
the night we sat around an unlit fire (to keep the land safe 
which had burned).

How true love stands up in every circumstance, untarnished by what, or who, or how, or when.   

I'm making a pocket of dignity here.
A space in which to care for me.
Not against but simply as.
an imprint.
a realness.
a me.

If I want to give away, it begins here. 
​By giving up the chains that have kept my  me-ness bound. 
My gifts arise freely from this place of unabashed dwelling. 

​Yielded from deep quiet,
and fertile forest of my heart:
a gladness.

Like a pale blossom appearing suddenly in the night.
Or a flash of hummingbirds,
ruby, emerald, magenta,
shimmering through pines.

An unexpected ecstasy quickens
then softens me,
leaving me fuller with sweetness.

I don't know what commands the particles
of light, of music, of heat, or pressure,
but there's a way my being is learning
to take That Hand

and be carried
while carrying

to be moved 
while moving

and held
while holding.

A stillness lifts my life,
until I wonder at the silk of the wings,
fine, freshly unfolded at my back.

I know all humans were meant for this.
I know the codes inside me have held this blueprint
since the first cells gelled in my mother's womb,
or even, some might argue, since before.

Yet I am stunned by the miracle.

Dumbfounded with joy.

To be this much more free, in the midst of life,
to be wide inside,
as the river of my days pours through
with ease
amidst foam and froth, 
teeming with fish, otter, heron, osprey,
children laughing in gurgles of mud,
silt, algae, eons of pebbles, 
even boulders, fallen trees,
but clean.
Clean, serene, unstoppable,
necking my way forward
toward the Ocean,
whose salt
I smell here, now,
in the sweat of my hands
as they build, and work, and play.

All I can say is:
Listen carefully for the silent bell,
until one day you hear it ringing in the house where you live,
and the people on your street turn their heads towards it.
​
Listen, and open your mouth, sounding.

Take down the banner in my heart.
Let me be new again,
like snowmelt running down the mountain.

It has been too long since I have heard You
whisper in my ear, Sky Husband.
I've been pretending to know myself.

Touch me.
Turn the clouds orange with Your mouth.
Awe is what kills me
over and over.

Who will I be tomorrow?
Let the sun, wind & rain decide.

​How many times must we go through this?
Let it be like the moon rising,
Your Face undoing me
infintely.

1.

Behind the ten-thousand things,
a nakedness.

Behind every name for "God":
light.

Behind the moon and sun,
behind the space they spin in:
That.

What touches what cannot be touched?
What hears what cannot be heard?
What eternally speaks itself
without uttering a word?

I wake in a rainy dawn,
in a place called "here."
From here I look toward "There"
and am moved to rise,
like hunger
and like ripening fruit.

When That looks out from my eyes,
I become stiller than still,
a dark glass lake, no wind,
empty,
then saturated,
when the moon rises,
with whispers
of myself.


2.  

"And then our singing brought on a different manner of weather.  Then animals long believed gone crept down from trees.  We took new stock of one another.  We wept to be reminded of such color."  ~Tracy Smith


Beyond purple, the flies see.
Beyond music, the wolves hear.
Beyond boundary of perception,
synapses gather qi to fire
our bodies like nebulae 
like paint in water
gathering and spreading,
blossoming in star flowers,
winding our way up the Tree,
like vines, snakes, tongues
of uncoiling phosphorescence.


3.

How many colors are possible when every lens
of every eye
on every surface
of every body
of Her Body
opens?

"Stroke precisely like this," he said,
running his finger gently but firmly
along the meridian line
on my pelvis
where womb channel meets
myocardium.

An ache like the grief of centuries,
and the fire of unborn generations.

A gold seed.


4.

There is a pair of legs beneath this seed,
and ground where foot meets earth.

I stand here, like a left lung in its left cavity.
He stands over there, on the right,
The sky is a little different, a bit darker, a bit thicker.
The flowers have different shapes.

He is remarkably beautiful, over there.

Like lungs of a body bathed in blood,
this rain which has touched a place deep
under the earth
and flown high over the land,
washes over both of us.

Washes and washes.



4.

Behind and within
​the ten thousand things:
a pearl.


~

​

~

Like a bud
brushing its
closed lips
against sunlight,
for the first time in months
he shyly grazes me.

Is it possible to be sun and bud at once?
​
I open to him and he rises
like the moon catching light.
​
How I live for the moment he hangs above,
full and glowing,
and at the right angle I can see
he is not the moon,
but the sun,
dazzling and unguarded,
with a curl of smile,
because he knows it.

~
​

​I have seen her soften
in the middle of an argument.
On her face: the quality of a just-lit candle,
and hope that the wind will quiet so the flame can catch.
I have seen her pause, deep inside herself,
to ask the question that could change the story.

To ask the question that could change the story.

I have seen her invite fresh seed
to land in soil that would give, 
and the way, when the soil stays hard and cracked, she gathers and holds the delicate lick of fire 
with the tenderness and patience of a mother, 
and the dogged determination required 
to tend the question through the night.

​RESPONS(E)-ABILITY. The Ability to Respond. Not the obligation nor the chore nor proof that I belong, nor the illusion that I need to do anything in particular to have the right to be alive, but the ABILITY, because I animate a physical body (which is an extension of "Me") which is WIRED to respond, to RESPOND. To be a part of a conversation, in every moment of every day. What am I saying by how I inhabit this incredible opportunity that seems to have a continuance to it within the lovely container of space and time? Knowing there is no right or wrong way to live my life, beyond judgement or shame or comparison, beyond what "everyone else is doing" or "nobody is doing," beyond "doing" in any particular way, HOW AM I RESPONDING to the WAVE of LIFE of which my separate self is a particle? One moment inspiring the wave with my unique voice, the next moment dissolving into the wave and losing that sound as it takes on the hue of the whole, crystallizing, dissolving, crystallizing, dissolving. I listen, I respond. I listen again, I respond again. Until the listening and the responding become almost simultaneous. The future emerges from the present. This is what's happening now, and now, and now. I surrender to the WAVE and yet my RESPONSE to each moment determines the way I surf, I swim, I dance, I glide, I fly, I slither, I sink, I swirl, I stay a moment, I slide, I skate, I figure-8. I bump up against him, then her, then them. I steer my ship toward that one, so we can glide along together for a while, learning tricks about how to ride the waves that only work with two, or three, or five, or twenty. I let go again, I lose myself in cascades that tumble over steep ravines, or in still pools where i stretch so wide i feel i could go on forever. I am powerless in the best of ways, and powerful beyond measure. RESPONSE-ABLE in the way I am made.

I'm growing accustomed to your eyes
and to the fresh surprise of them.
Accustomed to what is not static, yet remains inside of change.
Accustomed to the flow of the River
as it climbs the stem of the Great Lotus
and nourishes its many tongues.

The flowers in your house seem to bloom
over and over,
each time producing unexpected results,
yet there is something I am growing accustomed to expecting: beauty.

Beauty: the wheel that keeps turning, but differently.
Beauty: the way each moment dies
into the next, offering its corpse as refuge.
Beauty: impermanence
uncoupled from numbness.
Impermanence alive.

Impermanence moves your mouth towards mine, 
landing for a moment in the heave of warm breath, 
then away.
Impermanence guides your hand's soft strokes
against the skin of mine where it rests on the table,
then away to lift the kettle, 
and pour tea.

Inside this dancing dream
there is a swathe of color
I call "me."
She chooses blue, sometimes violet, sometimes green.
She chooses fast, sometimes slow,
sometimes so slow you'd think she'd stopped dancing.
She dances with a dogged determination,
with a sort of permanence
she rides
the moving waves.

Permanent like the mountain 
upon whose face
the seasons lay their myriad kisses.
Like the canyon carved by time,
whose grooves,
the veins of a Great Heart,
faithfully bend and flow toward their purpose,
as their purpose,
carrying waters to feed 
the Mouth of God,
in the forms of trees and grasses,
birds and fishes,
and all the creatures who never hesitate,
who never question 
their right to nurse 
from this holy wellspring,
a straightforward receptivity
you and I ease into 
slowly
as we lean toward the current
between us,
and drink.

Give me the kind of presence
to make false confidence go soft at the knees,
and sink beneath the water.

And a tenderness to thaw false humility,
whose cold hands have stopped my throat
and glazed over my eyes.

Let the alchemy be weighty and buoyant,
showing me where air and sea meet.

Tiger flashes its teeth
and lies down, meekly.

Wavering between soft and strong
and the illusory gap between:
thinning and blending
under your gaze.

Where below meets above,
where my inhale meets your exhale:
grace.