And He Said. . .

"How do you write them so quickly?"

I stop.
Near the place where
my heart has admired
the view of happiness
and pick these poems
from the field of wild daisies
that grow at the bottom
of my soul.

What Can You Say About a Shoulder?

I've closed the shades
so the neighbors can't see
the way I move
and stretch these days
to open the heart
to a universe longing
for the promise of love.

We all sit on our porches
on hot summer days
fanning flies and the heat
from our faces
remembering a time of youth
where we dripped with the sweat
of our lover and could drink
each drop with our lips
parched with a bottomless hunger
for one more kiss,
one more caress of a shoulder
or the hand brushing the field
of love that surrounds each of us
with so much light.

But what can you say about a shoulder tonight
alone tuning herself with the spinning
top of the universe –
one collar bone connected to the fleshy
white arm of a woman
waiting to understand
the meaning of the rumbling
of the stars in her chest.

Would you embrace her
in the cold of winter,
warm her enough to stop
the constant humming in her head
long enough to hear herself think
from the center of everything
she is coming to know.

All that peace might be possible
if you could sing a song to this corner
of the bony cage near this beaten
heart and learn to wait on the edge of alone
while holding the cool repose
of a shrug or the shaking
ease of laughter
caught at a moment
of forgetting.

Mapping The Mind of a Lover

Turn left at desire
near the corner where beauty used to live
and you will find your way
to her dooryard.
The flowers and fragrant herbs
are abundant here
and a great distraction
to anyone who has ever been denied
a kiss or the embrace of a reluctant suitor.
Who wouldn’t grieve this loss
when daisies burst white,
exploding with scentless centers,
ambushing the hope of summer
with a longing for pure adoration?

She is often lost,
even in her home town,
with the directions written,
exact distances delineated
and landmarks, like smiles and laughter,
noted clearly in bold print.

The truth is
she’d rather use her instincts
when it comes to traveling to most places.
The heart has failed to offer her fog-free visibility
so many times and yet the thrill of the ride
pushed her around the curves of disappointment
and anxiety more often than not.
Injury and accidental detours have all been unexpected
delays she was prepared to endure.
The wrecker is, after all, just around the bend
of the boundary of the next handsome hamlet
or county line of a breathless soul mate.

Patience is the only virtue necessary for a successful traveler
to find her way past the potholes and frost heaves of a lonely winter.
Go slowly, notice the horizon and the glory of a sunrise
and she is certain this snail-speed will surely open her honestly
to a conversation at the local diner or village store
with a man named Forgiveness
about the color of ignorance.

At the end of that day
she’ll make her way back home
where she can peel the layers of sweat
and clinging dirt of the road from her skin
with the showers of insight,
falling like stars on her face and bare breasts,
coolly left in the path
of a passing comet
on this highway
to nowhere.

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?