My Mother's Breast

Sadly, this medicine will not heal me.
Brave as I might be, liberation comes from the surrender.

I am bereft at the twilight of another battle
and my breast is no longer round and full as it was when I offered it
to all of my babies,

but instead I am left with a concave pocket
into which radiation and chemicals flow.

I put up my fists
and will not flinch
as they remove the damage.

These cells will go into hiding
in my lungs or liver.

In thirty years or so, open up the chest full of the serpents
and let them take this body while I depart into nothing.

No Ending

My belly is full
like a woman big with child.
Birth knows no ending.

Sanctuary House

On Sunset Lake Road
Love is spoken fluently.

God lives in this house.

What Can't Be Explained

God
Pain
Anger
Fear
Disappointment
Hunger
Love
Prayer
Distraction
Silence
Calm
Joy
Loneliness
Kindness
Desire
Change
Ego
Beauty
Death
Life
Birth
Green
Breath
Empty
Open
Loss

The Sky Empties Herself

The sky pleaded all day to start the weather event.

In January, that can mean anything here.

Farmers talk about it.

Strangers fill spaces with talk about it.

Children long for abundant, beveled edges to transform sputtering
into a beehive of flakes and flurry white as anger.

And we who work worry about the walks and drives
that fill a bushel basket full of fear,
just to arrive at the lopsided teetering lives

bludgeoned by obligation and benefits, not a true reward.

Tonight the sky empties herself willingly,
with ice and forceful snows,
until we manage to sleep in the silence
of not knowing anything, but how to simply surrender.

Shaping Dough

My often pristine kitchen
shimmers tonight with the simple dust of flour
so that I might try, step by step,
to capture a whiff of France
in a new recipe for baguettes.

I have built a fortress of love
around skinny loaves
so crusty, with perfect hollows for butter,
that I risk my own curvaceous fears
to shape this dough into a thing of beauty.

Now, near midnight, I am a crane at the edge of the estuary
waiting for the moment of golden perfection
to snatch the hot bread out of the oven
and deposit it to cool.

In the morning, my boy will slather this experiment
with apricot jam and ask me when I can bake like this again.
I will hide my hands in my apron pocket around the magic proportions
listed on parchment
like I have earned a new diploma.