I Didn’t Hear It Then

What does it matter
to the longest stretches of time,
measured in light years,
or by the distances
between the planets and stars,
by granite cooling
after melting
in the center of the earth,
or perhaps by the sudden pop
of a sonic boom
as the force of leaving
explodes in the ear.

What if it doesn’t matter
that the silences
and the groping
on the hard surface of stone,
leaving me bruised and thrilled
with uncertainty tucked
into the spaces in my bones,
was all there ever was
of kindness?

Spiritual focus requires one
of two things:

Faith in what one cannot see
or the awareness of the greatest good
living as light and decibels vibrating
within the cells of each living thing.

When I watch your eyes
in the midst of love
in your hands—
When I see you gather
that life like a bouquet
of summer about to burst
into blossom—
I realize all the universe
I never heard
in the other songs
I have learned.

The August robins are gathering
just as they always do
when the light diminishes the way
we see summer and look
discontentedly at green.

And in the dream threads
I extract from the center
of my heart’s truth after sleeping,
the red-breasted ones
whisper the 10000 ways
to fly
before it is too late
to carry
your soul.

While Sinners Gossip

Lately,
as the earth begins to end,
the memory of heaven
has arrived in the order of affection
on the cluttered cupboards
of the neighbor’s rented cottage.

Come to tea at this ghost’s home
and the theology of practicing doubt
will be preached
over savory zucchini cakes
and muffins overflowing
with August.

God has given up drinking
in this kitchen
and has given himself
to the world’s wife
who has learned
what it took to seduce
the winter constellations
by reading notes
in the margins of possibility
and weaving the flowers of existence
into her attractive tendrils
on the length of steamy summer afternoons.

Forever is easy
around this cozy table
and the Almighty is willing
to walk out of Eden
to watch life unfold
in this particular eternity
while the river of truth
and honeyed scones
drop lightly
onto the marbled counters
while his beloved gossips
about the moon.

As I Am

Take me as I am,
the soft, ripe peach
of my left breast
and her nostalgic twin,
hanging bare in anticipation
of the harvest of your fingers,
the fine skin smooth, delicate
but for the downy fuzz of light
that summons your mouth
to the pink of a nipple.

What juicy sweetness you’ll find there
gathering perfume
from the inside
where the hard pit of morning
will be discarded,
dissolved into only the certainty
of this moment of opportunity
for happiness shared
between your lips
and my untouched skin.

Fear of the physical world’s agenda
and the frantic guarding of the body
straining against this fall,
against the gravity we all witness
is an obscenity
that will not enter
this bed chamber.

This sacred space
of the immaculate mind
is the only sensation
that is available
to replicate joy
as it drips
cool and delicious
down your chin
and onto the belly
of all you desire.

Unconditional

At the sharp edge of the waning moon,
cast onto the surface of Silver Lake,
I watch my loneliness
reach out to embrace
the idea of a lover
who might dive in
on the other side of this blackness
and find me sitting here
waiting for all this emptiness
to disappear as easily as drowning.

I have become the moon
who foolishly rises with hope
into the skies looking at all that might be
only to find myself used up,
slowly lost in the sea of stars
until I am unseen,
invisible to the caresses
of truth and gentle love.

I am, after all, unconditional
in my ways,
and always dance
with my hand
held lightly
over the heart
of my partner
in this tango
that weaves the soul tightly
to the causes of flesh
and joy that rises up
like tides
pulled by the forces
of the singing moon.

I am, after all,
hung over from the excesses
of this celebration
I was not invited to.
I am recovering
from the spaces between
birth and the place of all
knowing.

Sitting still
I wait for the next breath
to rescue me from hooting owls
and the deep repetition
of ancient, howling loons
before sleep laps up
onto the empty shore.

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.