Sleep

This epidemic,
this wandering sleepless
from day to day like robots
animated by abandoned souls,
is not what the Creator meant for us.

Soon the birds,
who are angels
disguised as creatures
made by God,
will fly to each nightless window
and make a nest for all the suffering.

There is hope in this fantasy
where the secluded prairies of our exhausted selves
will come to rest in the love of something bigger
than the screens of fear that pull us away
from communion that happens
when we close our eyes
and pray for the wonderland
of sleep,
erase the boards of our minds
and start out new
in the morn.

Begging for Repentance

This baptism of August heat
sticks to my skin like God whistling in the garden,
the parent who already knows
you've done something dreadfully wrong.

At this point, I would take ashes of the oak fire,
crush them on my forehead, 
call the shadows to come in the early afternoon
when I could wrap a shawl around my shoulders,
put on another sweater and a pair of socks
to escape this misery.

Sleep decays before I put my head on the pillow
and growls like an angry cat
and the deep ache of an aging shoulder
when three a.m. stares me in the face
while I wait for the sun to heat up the sky
melting all hope for relief.

Even the hum of the fan
brings me to the edge of madness
after so many storms
of not wanting to touch anything;
anyone.

The prayer forgets
the meaning of repentance
when all you can see is damnation. 

Sometimes

Sometimes the fields across Sunset Lake Road
are filled with fireflies, frog songs, and crickets.

Sometime the sky is brilliant with the moon and crows
gathering to remind us of love,
mottled and traced with death,
but, love nonetheless.

Sometimes the cracked leather of time
is grooved with decay
and rubs away the solid ground we stand on
when the unwelcome guest arrives,
preparing, as always,
to sweep the house bare of everything beautiful;
getting ready for some new sorrow.

Sometimes, as closely as I read the charts,
the night sky becomes filled with flashing
and thunder, heavy with doubt
and I am lost in the swirling tenderness.

Sometimes, like tonight
I turn and  turn
hoping to decipher something
deep in the dunes
of one quiet moment
just before sleep.

The Day After I Die

Now that my father is gone from all suffering
and sleeps in the roots of the Norway pine
on the land that he loved,
I have started to imagine the questions
my children will have

the day after I die.

Imagine the secret life in the gardens

and stormy hours of a guilty mind,

dark and flashing in the night sky with fear,

 

all the disappointments

creaking around in the attic

of my home,

and dust we call the body,

they will never know.  

There is a black and broken trunk in the basement

and a few boxes of letters in the eaves

that might help them understand,

an album, a few photos, and journals

with the names of strangers, poems,

and lovers they never knew.

The day after I die

they will start to tell the real stories

of the ways I loved them,

sang them to sleep,

 

and failed them

with my disappointments

and misguided men, 

made the rafters of their hearts

heave with heat and the motion

of a living homestead 

that they will come back to

when they have no place else to go.

Leading the Blind

As the sun forgets to shine for another dark day in America
I have decided I might like to close my eyes,
start to walk barefoot
or naked so that I might stumble
on some chirp of a cardinal,
red and joyful

no compass in sight,
more blind than the bad guys and the broken
who would shove splinters under my nails
if they really knew me
and the venom that grows
within each rudderless day
under the rule of constant
glorious fear.

What would happen
if I closed my eyes slowly,
as if in prayer,
let my olfactory take the lead,
surrender to the God of love
and local gardens?

If I ate the fruit
could I block out the swirling madness
of the nation who forgot themselves
in the telling of a story of apples and freedom
that was never true?
This Bible collects dust
and slowly tears us all until
we have forgotten the way home.

I have forgotten how many steps
between the rooms of love

and hate.  The aisle is a tightrope
cluttered with the detritus
of forgotten promises,

something that might have once
been sacred, honest,

even if you hold it
in front of a blind man
asking for more.

Christopher Columbus' Mother

How can a mother prepare
for all the voyages
that the moon will take her on
when she splits her belly in two;
reaching to the ends of the heaven
for so much love?

Flat as the Earth is,
the heart hooks herself
to the west winds
and sails to some unknown place
with her son
who knows nothing
about the sea;
the womb of all creation
defying logic for swelling waves
that constantly heave and roll.

There is no map
for the place you will travel now.

This chaos of leaving
is nothing like the sleepless nights
with a boy who cried for your breast.
You were alone then
as your body ached
to heal,
abandoned and lost,
no land on the horizon,
no stars to guide you.

The rocks were so near
you could taste the iron
and feel the grit of loss
on your tongue.

When the explorer leaves you this time
with a warning that he may never come back
from the fires and flood,
you grieve in all the ways
mothers do.

All we can manage is to pray
and watch the edge of horizon
for some simple sign
that we have done enough
to bring them home
when their journey toward nothing
is done.