Healer

When I was a child
I knew I was destined
to repair those ripped seams of skin
where the smell of blood
turns black
and eyes cry out
in audible agony.

Boys gathered near me
to watch my skill
in attracting ants
and the shining shells of beetles
on the playground
so that we might
build kingdoms and control destiny
for a little while.

Grateful,
we slowed the space
between the movement of day
into endless night.

Once a newly hatched robin
fell into that place of stillness
and the ants and beetles
disassembled her body,
carried her off to the burial grounds
with elegant ceremony
and prayers
to no one.
Each small and powerful body
released mystery into the air
like the notes
of a song.

“Watch us,” they said in their musical movement.

“Watch here and know
the envy of every healer
as they plunge their spirit
into the cavity of the body
and come out
dripping
with life.”

Helpless

Chase the thought
that control of anything
is in your grasp
and watch reason,
or the shadow of sanity,
disappear.

You can no sooner control
sadness in the fibers of the heart
than you can control the light
that creeps over the hills at dawn
when fog has come to rest
in the grasses
and disappears--
vanishes when touched
by the sun.

There’s no arguing
with the curving ache
in the bones of your fingers
as joints expand
after years of hard labor
and with the holding
of the hands of all your children
as they fall into gentle sleep.

Honey is the helpless product
that buzzing bees
manufacture in their mouths
and that sooths
the wounds we cannot mend
with the essence of clover
or time.

Waging war with the sleeping giants
of death and unusual pain
are battles you will never win—
As skilled as you have become
with the blade of your certainty
and sword,
you will fail and fall
to those forces of gravity
and collide with the absolute truth
of ash blowing silent in the wind.
Instead, make friends
with water and the cleansing joy
of surrendering to your tears.
It is courage enough
to greet the honest face of love
with that much fear.

Empty Cupboard

1.

After years of greedy feasting
without regard to the other guests
at the table he has set

the round belly
of man of the house
is suddenly empty.

There is nothing left
to pick from my bones
and to break the whiteness open
and suck the marrow
in front of my sunken cheeks
and hungry eyes
would be too cruel
even for his unsatisfied appetites
and demands for elegant sauces
and choicest morsels
he could not afford.

Like an angry child
he lowers his fist to the table
chanting
obnoxious pleas
for love.

Old Mother Hubbard
has come to live
in my skin
and stares silently
back at the bloated face
that must learn the lessons
of moderation
and how to fend
for himself.

2.

What I have made of this life
is not mine.
It is the borrowed sugar
of my neighbor.
I cannot serve her
these pies and preserves
made of the fruits
stolen from her trees—
bruised by the fall.

I cannot blame her for leaving
the flesh to ripen
and gather heat and light
of the summer,

and yet, the idea of wasting
a beautiful harvest
was too much for me
to resist.

The bounty offered
a temptation
I gathered
into my finest baskets
to deliver
to a well-appointed kitchen,

ready to prepare
the illusion
of goodness
of the finest kind.

3.

It is time for me to walk away
from the table set for the woman

I am no longer.

These plates and silver
were never mine

and the furnishings
reluctant hand-me-downs
from the ancestors
who slept in single beds.

I am empty
in this unhappy place
and have almost forgotten
the sound of my own
uninhibited laughter
under the weight
of your desire.

Into the traveling pack
of my own light
I have placed
a cup for wine or water,
a knife for cutting cheese and bread,
and a shallow blue bowl
for soup and fresh fruit
on which I will dine gratefully
and in the company of grace.

Rising

The smell of yeast of the soul
rises to my nostrils
in the early hours of morning
as the sheets release the night
into day.

My body
still fertile as the earth
of any woman who bleeds
is awake and searching
for signs of love.

There is no warm body
to reach out to
in this yellow light
but I feel you close
as if you were a hand to hold,
a breath to take in
and then release, lips
to touch together and moisten
with my tongue.

We are dancers
who have learned to move
without ever touching
each other,
the silent magic of magnets
sometimes forced together
like glue
are turned around in us
to opposite polarity
so that we must spin away
toward others who attracted us
without understanding the way atoms
are gathered in clusters
without a mind to sorting
oxygen from carbon
or lead from gold.

We are not love birds
wedded to the nest
where hatchlings
will learn to fly
with our prompting,
and yet we fly
so near each other
the feathers of our wings
often touch
and the wind is our master
in no time or place
when we travel
without heed
to the seasons passing
or the causes of human suffering.

My longing rises up
with the heat of the day
and I smile
knowing spirit
enters me
and fills me
like no other lover
I have ever known.

What is Not Said

Watch closely
as I move my fingers
against the grain of the fabric
that makes up your thoughts.
Those intricately woven threads
are becoming the life line
I return to for comfort again
and again in the memory
of a time when words
were not needed—

where complications of chronology
and space washed ashore
on the white beaches of the mind
with answers stuffed carefully
into the bottles blown thin
in the shape of our hearts—
the messages clearly
calls for help
and salty love.

Knowing all that has been,
how do we extend our hands
to the divinity that lives
within the other
on days like today
when sleep has gone
past our bed,
and pain lives
in the large bones of our legs,
making travel toward peace
seem impossible?

I reach out anyway,
like Eve asking forgiveness
from Adam for handing him the fruit
angels dared not to taste,
and step in
to embrace
the soul’s companion
as if nothing stands in the way
of gathering grace
into my arms.

There are no words necessary
in this sweet rising up
to look you in the eye and finally see
everything that truly matters.
Tracing letters with our tongues
would only diminish the joy
found in silent recognition—
understated in the jazz
that trembles constantly
in the knowing notes written
in the encyclopedia of the body.

What is not said
laughs,
absorbing the language
of longing like liquid gold
condensing around a lifetime
that will never be lost
on words
or with such foolish games
that we mortals
have learned
to walk
within.

Squandering Blue

There is a part of me
that is beyond what is us,
where winter
and Jupiter’s moons
call to the floors of the seas
for waves that rage,
blindsiding sailors
with water and turbulence
until the walls of blue
squander everything.

Release the fury
from my fingers
and flash from the strands
of my electric hair
while I stand alone and naked
in front of you
leaving you gasping for breath
as the colors fade into golden coins
of truth at our feet.

Here, the evolution
of spirit
has grown wings
and lifts up
from the base
of my spine
to the crown
at my temples,
bejeweled with sapphires, and emeralds
and purple amethyst light
that dances around
each of us
like fire.

I am not afraid
of what might be lost
in this union.
I can only let the brilliance
wash through me
in all manner of death
that must bring abundant new life.

Swarm on the Solstice

The hum of summer
lives inside my mouth today
like a swarm of contented bees
drunk on honey,
the hive celebrating
her Queen by busily fanning
the energy of kindness
all around this beautiful center
of sweetness.

As the sun rises to her highest,
the moon picks up speed--
waxing toward fullness,
sharing the brilliance of light
even in the blue of the day.
These round mysteries
can’t help themselves
as they dance together.
Their movements suggest a joy
we might all share in this
remembered awakening.

The ocean breezes have come
to the wings of my skin
from far away on this morning
the same way they have
for a thousand lifetimes
on this first day of summer.
The tendrils near this soft longing
sigh with a breath
that will be taken in again
and gentled toward the core
like a whisper
of all the times I have loved
so fully that I burst open
in golden green and violet light
and I laugh out loud,
vibrating like the hive around me,
as royal as all summers
that take flight to some new home.