Blues in Bed

Why get up from my dreaming of writing
the blues with strangers at a piano
when they are still all around me
laughing and adding verses like limericks
and lovers making light
of these bodies,
note by note,
between these white sheets
in the heat of an almost summer Sunday?

I turn to see you
looking at my sleepy face
smiling and welcoming me
into your arms
to hold me in the folds of flesh
like a sacred set
of breaths
only two can share
in the unbelievable
silence of knowing
unconditional love.

Hold me in this happy place where time stops
and then races ahead
and swirls around us
making no sense
of the ticking of clocks
or the white space
between the black keys
of days
that have stacked themselves
into years
that became a lifetime
of forgetting.

Pain is nothing
next to your chest
as I wrap my arms
around the thin frame
of the story
after story
that becomes the truth
of you.

Don’t wait to tell me anything.

In this dream of music memory,
the words weave
a gauze and smooth an ointment
that heal these wounds
we somehow have come to share.
Tear bandages of primitive strength
into strips that bind these insults
with another kind of light.

Through the open window of the universe
I can hear you humming
a familiar gospel
the shades of twilight
and indigo.

Sketching a Room Where Love Lives

It is the precise green of spring
in another time of another life
when, on a pad of blank paper,
you make notes about the way shadows
trace the lines on my face
and you presently offer
to sketch of a room
where love lives.

“What would you bring?”
you ask
after settling on two comfortable chairs
and a small table between
meant for tea cups and books
that must be discussed.


“I will bring flowers
fresh cut from my garden
and green plants that will balance the air
and the light that can’t help but stream
through the glass and celebrate the knowing
between us.”

“Let us bring pillows
and soft blankets
for meditation
and napping
near the window seat.”

“Let us fill shelves
with favorite books
and films we must see
while touching
palm to palm.”

Candles and blue glass vessels.
Wicker and wood and metal
objects to hold stones and shells,
petals and papers,
pictures and faces
of things and people
we adore.

There is a coat rack
for leaving the outside world in it’s place,
like removing useful garments against the elements,
and a small rug for shoes near the door.

“Will you bring the flavors of fresh yeasty bread
with crab apple jelly and sweet raspberry jam,
good cheese and grainy crackers, fresh fruit, nuts,
and farmer’s vegetables
to sustain us, Love?”
I say.

”And, of course, there is the matter of my green sweater
and slippers to cover painted toes,
and the mug filled with favorite pens,
and some way to share music.”

“Crystals will catch the sun here
and paint rainbow on the walls.
Soft voices will read poetry
and dictate stories here.”

Silence will not be a weapon here
and words exact tools for understanding
of all matter of things.

“Let us not forget,
in this place of simple beauty,” you say,
“that it is in kindness
where love first resided
and is the place where
we will return again and again
to perfect our design.”

“But most of all,
since you asked,” I reply.
“I will bring this body
that carefully moves
and remembers
the threads that dance
and breathe
in this friendship
of the soul.”

Tools of Prayer

I am deep water.
You are the fire that warms bones.

I am infinity.
You have questions
about the sturdiness of each wall
that surrounds us.

In the night I awake
to the hum of your absent body
and the smell of lavender.

In the painting
tattooed on your skin
dragons wrap themselves with snakes,
spider webs are covered
by the sound of the Buddha
laughing
and I have traced your name
a thousand times,
letter for letter,
on my plain paleness,
understanding the caution
of forever.

One of us is a stone
rolled smooth by the ocean.
The other is the taste of smoke
exhaled and disappearing
after loving.

One of us is a sip of cool wine.
The other the hand placed flat
on the surface of the kitchen table,
convinced of the smooth comfort
of wood.

In the revolving door
of this incarnation,
memory does not serve me
with abundant kharma,
but leaves me guessing.
Thus, my troubled intuition,
my endless kindness for others
and for blue eggs
dropped from the nest.

Have mercy
and explain yourself
and the temperature of the air
that hovers like a ruby-throated warrior
in my dreams.

Amuse me
with the light of candles
in the private room
of anywhere
so that I might burn
with the shame
that has taught me
to fly.

I am the woman
crossing the path
known only to animals;
the soul companion
you forgot you had.

I am the beads in the palm
of your hand as your pray
for enlightenment
and the pull of peace.

Room

1.

In the quiet of my breath
it is possible to return
to the tiny room I created
while my father’s voice
coaxed imagination
to decorate freedom
from the farm in Minnesota
when I was only twelve.

He, with his sailor’s adventure,
opened the riggings
and was the person
who first taught me
to fly across the surface
of the mind toward beauty.

My room was cozy,
tucked into the rafters
of a Swiss chalet
with one window looking east
at mountains and a small lake.

The narrow bed was enough
with a thick quilt and fluffy pillows
to gather around like the gentle clouds
of sleep.

A simple desk
sat under the window
for writing
and the wardrobe
held the simple clothes
made by hand.

In this place of the mind
the sun was always
morning and shining
with the promise of alone.

Happy there.
I am still happy
to meditate my body
into silence
and my thoughts
only whisper,
just out of earshot,
content to not be heard.

2.

I have moved
39 times in 45 years
and can pack a house
in two days with the proper cardboard
and excess newspaper
all reading houses must hold.

From the Philippines to Aberdeen,
from Fargo to Florida,
and then to Minnesota’s Onamia, Milaca,
Willmar, Morris, and St. Paul
before New Hampshire.

I first remember the built-ins
at the top of the stairs
and the pink rooms
with Alice in Wonderland curtains
made by my mother

and the summer we were homeless
and chased by dark rain clouds
and too many tornados to count
on their fingers stuck out of clouds
like God pointing out our rebellious sin.

And now, in the place that has held me longest,
for over ten years, it is not my home,
but someone else’s,
where I have camped,
if only for a little while longer,
under the mirrored glass of stars
and the constant swirl of dancing umbrellas.

3.

I’m coming home
to my body again
after the earthquakes
have flattened my disbelief.
After abandoning the shell
of the sunny farmhouse
that lives in the cave
of my chest.

In the invited dream
my guides have taught me
to open the beautifully
painted doors
into room after empty room
of light.

These spaces are sparse and glow
and have had no need to collect clutter
or the ugly leftovers of history.

These rooms inside me
welcome a soul to sit down,
look around and marvel
at the gestures
of laughter
in a vase of flowers
and the freedom
of lifting a window
off the frame to offer
the movement of air.

Dwelling in the Cave

The cave is among us
and has drawn us in
and roars with the empty
longing of the spaces
between the stars
and the darkest shadows
of every hollow moon.

Reach out your hand
and I might take it
as we walk on the shifting sands
of the beaches nearest the life force
we must drink deeply,
let it soak into our painful bones
and live
eyes set on the presence
of the fragile line
of the horizon.

Back in the darkness
we leave our weapons
empty
and melt into the goodness
of stone
so that we might emerge
into the light,
after each death we suffer,
and break open
like the buds of so many
spring flowers.

Dare to love me
as I am learning to love,
freely without the contract
of time.
The body finds her way
on the path worn
by the purest essence;
the scent of soul,
darkly musky
and damp
from the weeping walls
of the cave
we come home to,

the exhalation
of a lifetime of holding,

the pose of peace
and the harvesting
of the sweetest suffering
of the longing to fly.

Sing

The electric green of new dawn
eclipses my senses;
eyes blinking,
practicing sighs
into the theory
of another day.


Truth be told
I have often observed
this color in the portraits
of all the other women
I have ever been,

and the anniversary
of spring,
the rising up from the land
into the gospel
of the voice
of a single wood thrush,

a winged angel
interpreting
the foreign words
of music,
whispering joy
into the ear of God,

is enough to ignite
the whole universe
I have become
and burn with infinity
traced on the skin
of my inner thigh

and flash at the tips
of the lashes
that will welcome twilight
at the end of the world
with the notes
of an unknown song
flowing freely
from the space
of my open mouth.

The Promise of Earth

Falling snow
mingles with pink petals
of apple blossoms
on these last days
of April.

The instinct
to stick out my tongue
and taste the sweetness
is delighted and hopeful
the peas won’t freeze
and the purple haze of lilac
will awaken just as soon
as the clouds clear
and the full moon
breaks through the dark
like your pronouncement
of love, bold and exact
as redemption.

Forgive me
for loving you back
in this unexpected turn of events.
It is,
like this late snow,
breathtaking and confusing
to see the light of flowers glow
while in the same blurry vision
dreams that winter has arrived
to turn back time.

In the other life
that resides in my shoulders
I wrapped my sorrow around me
like a shawl of prayer
willing my worry to arrive
at the dooryard—
making his unhappy deliveries
day after dark day.

Fear was that stray kitten
who would not be coaxed
from between the truth
of my solid ribs
and who waited
for the white flakes of morning
to melt and find a way to trust
in the silence,

understanding the grasp
at the scruff of the neck
was comfort
and might mean home.

Back at my gray window
I look out at the shaking fingers
of maple leaves,
watch the tight curls of a fern
relax even under the weight
of these cold kisses.

I have become my sister,
Emily Dickenson,
gazing from the inside out,
looking for the words to release
unexplained pain
like an exhalation
of a long held breath
or the startled bird
taking to flight.

From this high place
above the landscape,
let me instead notice
I am not a prisoner
without the keys
to my dark cave of a cell,
but rather
the spaces between the elements
of water and fire

and the air lifting
snow gently
to the promise
of earth.