Change

The spider web,
cracked –glass windshield of change
is the inevitable accident
I’ve been waiting for
all this life.

It came striking,
blackening my third eye,
the only eye that really sees
with my heart
without the selfish child
of the mind, negotiating to pretend
just a little longer
that happiness
is just around the corner
if I just wait patiently
for the impossible to arrive.

I’ve waited for years
at one busy intersection
or another
watching the locomotive
of time pass dangerously close.

I’ve felt my body shake,
trembling from the inside out,
and from the outside in
to my empty core of knowing
and I contemplate the ease
with which I could step into the path
of this great movement
and be released into the cold, hard steel
of liberation from all I have suffered.

I could take flight from the burden on a day like today—
a bird with no care, but for the direction of the winds.
I’ve kissed the faces of my children,
blessed them all with the peace of hope, love,
and said goodbye with no tears of longing.

I will not miss the color red.
The salty smell of the ocean
can’t help but follow me into paradise.
The taste of sweet wine lingers at my lips
to be wiped away.

I will throw my head back laughing at the silence
that comes after the darkness of this departure.
Courage will be the only ticket I need
to climb aboard this pure light
that has changed everything.

I only pray
for safe passage
to the next stop
where all the others
who have traveled before me
will meet me,
take me in their arms
and guide me
to my next home.

The Smile of a Stranger

There you are Love
just over my shoulder
ready to reach out and touch
the skin that covers this modest soul
like a tent ragged in the wind and rain
waiting for the sun to break out
and warm us.

On nights like this
it is like you never left me.
You’ve loved me over and over
without ever placing a finger to the curve of my lips
or cupping the flesh of a smooth hip
or tracing the breasts offered to sunsets
where we almost denied ourselves—
You surprise me, delight me
with that sweet understanding
that the body is not necessary for this love
to satisfy the flower essences trapped
inside the pulsing of blood,
starting these tremors in my core
like the Earth suddenly coming to a halt,
breaking to fragments of clay and dust
releasing me from all ignorance and suffering.

I only have to close my eyes,
my Sweetest One,
and find your breath
fanning the embers of eternity
at the nape of my neck.
This small gesture of hope
opens my heart to a sacred text
we both signed our names to
with each lifetime we have found each other.
This truth leaves me filled to overflowing.
The Empress of this heart is never alone
when I only have to call your name
and you answer me in the smile
on the face of every stranger I meet.

Measuring Love

I’ve started
to measure love
slowly
by the standards of a universe
defined by those who know
what they are doing
when they open themselves
from a place so deep inside happiness
and find evidence of nothing
but love.

I breathe
and find love
with each intake
and in the letting go
of everything I’ve ever loved.
My throat catches,
panics like an ocean swimmer
grabbed by the undertow.
I thrash about
attracting attention
on the beach
where no one has come to watch
the sunrise.
I’m lost in this watery place
where the salt can only remind me
of everything I’ve lost.

Someone I love more than this solitary life
once asked me to measure my mass
against a ton of feathers that seemed to be taking me
toward flight and the sky
as I grew these awkward wings
from the seed of my heart
stretching toward the heat of the sun.
I’ve been burned before.
I remember the smell of flesh
and the that longing for release.
I could not measure joy even as Heaven
opened her window to let me climb up
weeping and gasping for some signal
that might remind me of how to return
to the path where I’ve measured my journey
by placing one small foot
in front of the other.

I’ve begun to count on my abused fingers again.
I will scratch my marks on the wall of despair
only after I’ve lost my way
and cannot remember
the names of the stars
where we will all journey someday.
I wish you were here to teach me
the language that measures
the distance between these two souls.

Second Chance

I could go. . .
stop this unending Breath
and the Mind that wants more
from places we all have come to expect.
But Desire and Fear, like brothers,
were waiting to rob me just when I thought
I was giving them the slip
in a moment of ordinary Joy
on my way to visit Grace
next door to her mother,
Peace.

I was wrong again. . .
Wrong to turn my back in this dark place. . .
believing Love would protect me.
What was I thinking?

What was I thinking?

Now that I’m dead,
on my way to Nirvana,
that land of nothingness,
I remember that I want a Second Chance
at a life that resembles
extraordinary
unstoppable
ecstasy
in the small things.

When I return
I want to be reborn
into the arms of a smiling woman
who sooths my skin with lavender
and insists on bouquets of flowers,
preferably daisies, when tulips and bleeding hearts
have gone out of season.
She will sing to me as I play with my toes.
She will dream me into a beautiful child
dancing in the waves of sun and ocean treasures.
My only understanding of tears
will be the salt of laughter
and a heart overflowing
with kindness,
the milk of compassion.

I will find you here, Love,
collecting shells among gifts of the sea,
and will tell you the many ways
I cannot die like this.

You’ve let me down,
letting me hope
I could count
on that myth of rescue,
when all you could do
was toss a few words,
opaque with your own sorrow
and confused longing,
into the undertow of my passing.

I want to give us both a second chance
to grab life by the small of her back
and pull her close
into a slow dance,
swaying in candlelight
with the blessings of the universe,
waiting for kisses alive with light,
that releases us from the poverty
of so much suffering
in settling for nothing,
even when abundance
was placed firmly
into the palms of our hands,
more than enough to pay our way
to lead the galaxy
away from the paths
where we’ve been robbed of joy
a thousand times before.

I will find you there
by placing my hand into the empty canyon
where my heart used to beat—
before you left me to die alone.
This is where Fear and Desire
talked you into
the comfort
of your own
unbreakable
solitude.

What was I thinking
walking alone,
quietly into the dark,
when all I wanted to do
was forgive you
for knowing how
to love me?

To Be Dead

What does it mean to be dead
and reborn as a new star
in the blackest of morning?

The raven has delivered the eulogy
at my feet as a dove
might carry peace.
His black eyes
the heads of shiny pins
that pierce my skin,
bleed me of everything
I knew to be true.

“You are nothing.
You were nothing.
You will be nothing again.”
he caws, loud,
so a not to be mistaken.

But how can I be nothing
when these tears flow warm,
salty into an ocean of grief,
year after year pleading for release
from my suffering?

My father has fallen—
sacrificing himself from a high place
in order that I should not suffer.

My mother prays to her Jesus
in order that I not suffer.

My children grasp at the hem of my worn
and dirty garments begging
that I be forgiven for holding
too much light—
stolen from the moon and Earth’s sun
in order to feed those more hungry
than I am.

But this black bird
has come with his beady eyes,
clutching mine and has cut the tethers
to yet another life of sorrow.
His blade is sharp and swift
and I swirl into the great universe
of empty and cold
where music and the Fates
are not allowed to dance.
The singing of a happy heart
is only a memory,
and for this lack of kindness
I cannot be thankful.

To what new treasure
will I ever be queen again
when even the Angels of Death
fly away from me?
They all fear me now.
I have become this creature
who cannot be sewn into the fabric
of even the patches on the knees of a poor
and exhausted farmer in his dusty fields.

I am
less than
the worms
that will consume
my rotting flesh.

I am less than
any imagined number
and more dreaded than a criminal.

I am not to cross back
to the other side of this life
to be measured
among the living.

The lace of this christening gown
disintegrates in this thin air
and I am naked, cold, and crying
at this prophecy of the eternity
of nothingness.

The Last Day


On the last day of this life as I’ve known it—
each day for a year savored
like the precious elixir it has become—
the white snow falls softly on the face
I’ve turned to the sky in wonder
at what a new dawn might bring.

I blink the drops of melted moisture
off my lashes and they fall to my cheeks,
become icy again dripping from my jaw
into the ringlets of my hair.

My face has become like a mountain,
stone eroded slowly by water and time
until I am no more than a flat place,
a meadow where daisies might spring up
again when the sun warms earth
into another life.

But today I am nothing but possibility,
longing for the warmth of love
that might slip his warm hands
into the place where skin
is now urgent to be released
from the lonely solitude of this day.

I have given up hope for happiness
of that fleshy path of the spirit
and must be content to trace
my own exposed collarbone
at the nape of control.

The breath is my messenger
to the next life—
in and out, slowly,
with gentle compassion
my lover now—
the only companion I can find
as the light dims to blue
and violet healing
of the night.

Tomorrow I will be reborn again,
the chance to take life into my own hands,
a tender seedling
needing tending
attention and absolute kindness
to bring blossoms.

Even if I must start here,
watering the tiny green gift
with my tears and sheltering her
from the winds of uncertainty,
I will do what I must to bring her
to bear fruit,
to offer this sacrifice at the altar of love

This is the only tomorrow I dare dream
into a new morning.

The Darkest Nights

December dark nights
don’t bother me.
I need the balance of them
to wrap themselves
like the black winged bird they are,
feathers like lashes covering my eyes,
letting me fall into
depths of the richest despair,
letting me fall asleep,
focus on blackness
that amounts to less than
the imagination can grasp
in her hungry, outstretched palm.

When the darkness comes,
my breath comes easier
as I dive back into the womb-cave of time.
My hands trace the face of memory here—
etch the symbols someone
might someday understand
to mean something
like absolute kindness.

If I place my hand over the heart
of my child self,
the one who wants to call out
to all of our mothers,
I calm her,
rock her to sleep
in this darkness,
and I let her slumber
next to the warmth
of your enormous love.

In the darkness, we turn
to each other as innocents,
wrap our arms around the other,
and become one light
that will be the spark
that will start another fire
and sustain us until spring.