Thinking of Love
after Jane Kenyon’s Thinking of Flowers

Oh love,
promise to bring me flowers—daffodils
or the whitest daisies
in February
and I will leave them—

leave my husband
and my children,
leave my books
and my Buddhas,
leave my photos,
the evidence of a life
livable without
the one who captures
these truths on film.

They would all disappear,
with my fingers cradling stems
and yellow petals
instead of waiting,
waiting, waiting,
to capture beauty
or happiness—
a bird that flies less
and less frequently
to my hand
to feed.

Every fall
I get down on my knees
in the light of a full moon
to dig the soft heart of earth
near my kitchen door
open one more time
before snow—
to place the crisp bulbs of spring
into a bed, a sleeping death.
This little grave,
these bodies lined up secrets,
helping me make it through the winters,
just like my mother and her sisters
and all the grandmothers before them.
What else sustained them
in the white and wind
prisons of the North,
their male captors hovering
and their coughing, crying children,
wailing like sad sirens
warning them
that their short lives
would soon be cut
like these blossoms
or spring
or the humid breath
of summer.

No love,
don’t make me wait
until May
for the escape into color.
Deliver me now
and it will be you
who will be rewarded
beyond your Earthly imagination.

This desire no longer
contained.

Hunger Moon

Tonight the Hunger Moon rises
frozen white, trimmed with copper,
shining with her longing.
She is drawing the darkness
of her love like an eclipse tonight,
covering her face in that shadow.

Beautiful pearl,
you are crumbling into your own hands,
language lost in the many tongues
spoken in this blackness,
this Tower of Babel,
layer after layer of woman
lost inside herself,
inside the sands
sifting through a stone heart,
warring with itself as time continues
to run out, day after day,
night after night the lone orb,
the last sweet drips of wine
in the bottom of a glorious goblet
once full to brimming with the first sap
of the tree of forgiveness.

Full moon,
Goddess moon,
be the silver coin I will pluck
from the sky
and warm in the palm of my hand
waiting for the sound of travel.
I beg you to find me worthy
of your generosity
that will buy my passage across these firey waters,
to the cold burial grounds of this winter.
My skin is turning the color
of the red earth
and here I will dance on the graves
of my past lives
cutting the ties with all ego—
drink until I’m drunk with the necessary meaning
of all life—
In this feast
I honor your fullness,
pregnant with knowledge,
and lift up my cup
on this night of all possibilities.
My hands are ready
to catch this child
of hope.

Raining in February

I miss you
when the rain
drips cold
and freezes on the windshield
of my black car.
What could be worse
than to be alone in the rain
and the dark of February?
This emptiness my silent companion
when there are fires burning
and tea to share
and the warm, softness
of skin rubbed with oils
protected against the winds
and harshness of winter
by flannel sheets?

I miss you today
more than I thought
a woman of my age
could allow herself--
to feel the ache
in the space where
a heart might have taken up
residence only a few lifetimes
before this one.
How could that longing survive
in this body that has forgotten
how to glow?

Until you,
I was lost in the common
comforts of a busy life.
Hands wrapped around pottery in the morning,
cotton to console
my midday feet in clogs,
and a warm soup on the stove
at the evening of the day.

Now I miss the minerals
of your mouth pressed against the fluid
nature of my breath--
constantly flowing south
toward the ocean
of home.

What I would give
to find an umbrella,
a large quilt,
and the sound of laughter
riding next to me
to a new sanctuary
where we wouldn’t
build walls
to hold out the irresistibility
of the flowers that will come
to bloom
in only a few short months.
We’d stretch our pale skins
naked next to yellow flowers
and greens
and in the sun
allow our faces to relax
without giving up
the treasures we thought we could
only lose in this game.