History of the Heart

Falling deeply
into the history of the heart
I find the dark door
of the forbidden city
where I used to live.

Heat rises up
from a hidden place
in this body
as I consider
the way your face
relaxes and your eyes
land gently on my mouth.

You want nothing more
than to touch this place
with your lips
like it was the first time,
like it is the only chance you have
to tell me about the last time
you loved the soul hiding
inside this new body.

Simple gesture.
Pull your chair
close to me, in front of me
so our knees touch,
so you can pull me close
and kiss me sweetly.

The keys clatter
in my silent hands
as I disappear
like ashes scattered
into the open prairie
after the wildfire
cleansed the earth.

I am breathless
and glowing like a full moon night
illuminating the trees
as if it were midday.

The river sparkles
on the edge of this constant longing
for a time when there will be no secrets,
straw turned to gold by one right touch
that becomes the feast of flesh
and you will find me dancing
in the center of my life.

Until that day of celebration
I’ll slumber underground
like the face of a yellow daffodil
waiting for the voice of spring
to call out her greeting,
sweeping the steps of sin
and all signs of that other death.

A Poem on the Evening Train to Milano

Outline the darkness of a city
on the evening train to Milano
with brushes of night
before we travel into the nothingness
of another half moon.

Lines cross this sky with electricity
and information that could explain so many things,
but we have slowed
and we must stop in Reggio Emilia
and wait for some travelers to depart
and others who will join us on the ride.

If only I could speak
the language of these people
perhaps they would understand
what I have done
and what I must do
to shed my skin
and make my way
to a another place
I’ll call my home.

The clock shows how quickly
a life must leave us—
one cell, one second at a time—

before we know it the train arrives and passes on
to another destination with nothing more
than love exchanged between us.

The truth is,
I am not the woman
I was when you met me
nor are you the man
I wanted to make love to last night.
I am not the woman
you will glance up from your book
to smile at absently.
I will never be that good wife again.

These strangers in this strange and beautiful place
see me so deeply under their sleeping eyes,
lulled by the rocking of the train over the tracks
through the invisible countryside.
I take comfort in knowing
it is in the not knowing
that I will find a reflection of myself
in this window streaming with rain
and the cleansing that comes
with a long journey to the west.

Pointing North

The day I started to go crazy
I thought an earthquake
was starting in my feet
and trembled her way into my mouth
like bees and electricity.

Soon after I thought I was sprouting wings
with feathers that sparkled and grew stronger
as I saw the light turn purple
when I closed my eyes.

When I was a girl
I admired the danger
and strong beauty of tigers
as they moved in the jungle
of my mind. The mask that hides courage
has turned strength into ugly plastic
that cannot possibly be loved
by any imagination
but of those who are dead.

Now I sit with bandages on my wounds
and bleed all emotion into the flood
of my former self.

I can only travel these lonely,
back roads of despair in silence.
If I stop to look at the gold coins of nature
gathering at my ankles
I am sure the statue of dust I am becoming
will disappear with the next breath
of cold November wind.

The ghosts of lovers and their mothers
will try to collect the tiny pieces that were me
to explain the sacred abandon of space
as if I were a fallen star.
It will not matter.

I am lost
no matter
which way I turn
and it does not help
to admit
that the compass
disguised as a heart,
was shattered
when I took possession
of this body—
before I even knew
how to point
north.

Paint Pink Feathers

Paint pink feathers across the blue sky in October
and soften the blow of all this leaving.

If I go now
it will only reflect my sorrow
at losses of everything I thought was true.

The stars are not here yet to comfort me
and the moon has retreated into her darkness
and is nothing to me now.

Be soft.
Be gentle as the bodies
that fall all around me
like ghosts of my other lives.

Cradle me like a mother
holding her son
soothing his cries
for something more.

This light is beyond my understanding
like a dream and I must find an escape--
the rejection of the body of evidence
has left me alone in the friendship
of so much silence.

These feathers of the night fade.
Black and white replace the delicate shades
of compassion and I have no choice but to breathe
my last breaths like I am begging for a forgiveness
I never knew I needed to find.

If I can only wake up and welcome the mother
who is following me too closely
asking me to pray for you over my left shoulder,
I may find the way
to redemption.

Memoir

I hadn't expected your arrival at my door,
the rain still fresh in my hair
and a puddle left soaking into the hem of my skirt

but there you stood
dark and quiet
as the child of this day
expecting the urgent universe
to unfold.

Your mouth found me ready
to loosen the tight binding
wrapped red and circling
the forbidden places
and forgotten corridors
of this house.

I did not turn you away
but instead traced the shadows
on your arm and did what any woman would
when offered the silence of pleasure.

We Live in Bodies

When I send the air and salt
from the inner journey to my true self
on postcards to the universe

I will first unravel the blue salvages
of my name and return to the center of the circle
where I was nothing.

With my black pen
I will write to her
of the constant longing for light
and the eclipses that bent joy to the earth
in conversations with starlight
on my skin.

Of romance
I will take the time
in the small spaces
to be clear
that living in abundant kindness
is what I wanted—
like poems that can’t help
but capture beauty in one word
placed precisely next to others
in a line of love.

And what of these mortal bodies can I offer
but that they are meant to hold the spirit
like a basket of grace to be shared
with God on the faces
and in the arms of other travelers
looking to find their way home.

This is
after all
where we must live
and patience will not turn us
into the darkness or cold.

Into The Fields

We won’t go there today
into the fields
where the grasses and flowers of summer are brown
and escaping the light and the impermanence of green.
We won’t go to the places where dragonflies hover
and dart into the sky with purpose.

No,
today we hide
near the fire,
burrow into each other
like the two small and wild birds we are,
come home to nest, before the winds
start howling again and we are lost
from each others’ song.

Your feathers glisten
next to the faded seasons I carry.
I close my eyes only when I must rest
and when I stretch my neck to smooth my cheek
against the layers of softness you offer this longing.

When the sun returns,
or perhaps under the bright waning moon,
we will fly together again over the spaces
where you first found me
balancing on a stem of burdock
and considering the possibilities of flight.