Moonstruck

I never understood
those whose hearts
were so tightly closed
that not one beam of moonlight
would ever find its way inside.

Tonight, on the full moon closest to Easter,
I am struck silent by her beauty
and how she moves these tides
within my salty blood—
daring me to cast out to sea, find the depths
with my hands, and dive
under the waves with no fear of loss.

I am touched in the old ways of madness
that would have me dancing
under this blue-white light
with the seeds of peas in one hand
and the ripe eyes of potatoes in the other—
unconscious of the need to plant
this early longing in the ground—
penetrated with magic
that disappears on the horizon at dawn—
exchanging absolute love
for the security of blindness
brought on by too much.

Abundance is the guard at the gate
where I would escape if only I had the courage
to say the words
goodbye.

In this place of violet desperation
I call your name into the shadows of the woods
near my dooryard and disappear,
as if a shooting star,
alone and into the darkness
of my own small bed
warm near the fire—
cinders swept away
like whispers not meant to be heard,
but instead, felt in the wet fingertips
on the smoothest skin
of a woman’s body.

I scoop you up—
You, just like star dust,
and go quietly
toward the row of seedlings
to bless them
with all that love
the sky can’t help
but rain down on everything
alive with tears
infused with promise.

Learning Chinese

I carve
the words
out of bamboo—
a language I never knew
in the maple or pine
of Lake Itasca
or the small stones stacked
near the Mississippi in Minnesota.

Painting between the lines
of French and Norwegian
I see the lotus
on the tongue of a man
who is learning Chinese
on the side of the road
less taken in New Hampshire
in the white places
of his bones
drying in the spaces between love
and desire.

I touch my lips to his
trying to taste
the garlic
and the calm
of knowing what tomorrow
will offer to her friend
Truth and Hope.

The Land of Lost Things

These early days of spring
I rummage through my bags
far too often looking for lost things—

keys attached to a rubber chicken
and sanity, the cell phone ringing
with children expecting me to pick up,
hair clips to arrange out of control curls
into something suitable for work,
change for the meter,
pens—blue and black. . .
glasses—Granny and Librarian Black,
fruit flavored gum, eye liner, lip stick—Dreamy Pink
business cards with one of my jobs and gold seal, tampons.

Sometimes, in frustration,
I dump the contents
onto the seat of my car
or onto the floor of my office,
shuffling everything into order
by force to avoid a rage
or embarrassment in public
when losing my cool
is unacceptable.

The truth is
I’ve lost it already—
lost the place where my breath and my head
meet for tea and meditation
before they adjourn to the bedroom
to help each other gently undress,
leave their false lives behind,
look each other in the reception of the eye,
and let the memory of the skin
guide their hands
in the calligraphy of love.

Maybe I’ll go fishing instead.
Maybe I’ll drink beer and whiskey shots
under someone else’s boat this April. . .
stay out of the rain and wind
and forget the color of scales
that roasted over an open fire by savages
would fill the gap in my belly
that used to pretend
it was Kharma.

I’m losing my mind again
as I consider what I could give up
for your heart—the one warm
and bloody object
I care about.

I need you
more than ever
to locate the path
from the center of you
to the center of me—
the epicenter that erupts without warning
into tremors of joy and grief
at all we will find in the rubble
of losing everything.

In this land of lost things
I’ll feed you fresh gnocchi with greens
and the bursts of raspberries
that heal everything.
In this place
I am a vagabond
of absolutely nothing
and you are the warmth
of home.

The Heat of Decay

The spider outside my kitchen door
weaves her silver threats again
between the new shoots of green
that pretend to be spring,
a new start,
gathering dew on these delicate strands
of belief in something I can’t see with my eyes
but know in the tremors that arrive
from the earth in my feet
and explore their way,
like voyagers in the stream of my blood
and climb into my bones—
knees and knuckles bruised
with so much struggle to rise—
make the way out of the trees
into a clearing where light and open air
might bring relief from the pain.

If I bend down to where my eyes are level
with the translucent body
and eight legs dancing in the sun,
I can see the craft of fear take shape.

She is a Master--
using her body to survive
even when her work is destroyed
by the wind or inconsiderate trappings
of words like death. She knows what to do
at these endings and is not afraid
to quickly move in,
wrap the unsightly shell of disappointment
into a neat package,
and move on to the necessary
repair and beauty.

How can anyone blame her for trying
to catch the stars when she lives
so close to the heat of decay
in the stitches of her home?

Traveler Finds the Face of a Stranger

I never travel these days.
My life list of places to go
has stalled in Italy, Montreal, or Paris
and I wonder if I will ever get to China or Brazil.
Even New York seems impossible.

I am desperate for a long summer
in a small, sturdy house on the shores of any ocean
where I sweep sand from the stoop,
my bare feet constantly covered with the dust of the sea—
my face freckled with the saltiness of air meant to heal anything.

How could I have known
that the charm of the myth of you
would fade from blue sky
into a prison of endless grey days?
This rain melts away any hope
and puts me to sleep just to deliver me
from the constant tapping of guilt at my window.

On the horizon I imagine a break in the clouds
above the churning waves of this shame.
I escape into the arms of painted skin
and eyes flecked with fire and gold.
Here I will take in every drop of ocean
like laughter and the thirst of sailors lost at sea.

I will travel to that island,
if only for a little while—
a tourist stumbling upon a remote
and beautiful voice up a path,
into the door of welcome
where the table cloth is red,
the forget-me-nots are fresh,
and the bed
is warm
and soft
and kind.

Ritual of the Spirit

Most nights the spirit that lives
in the cathedral cavern of my chest
wanders toward the echoing ritual grounds
following the breath to the bodies and bones
left alone to shine white under the moon
next to marble and cold stone.

She has carefully tethered herself to my heart
with a fine thread of metal stretched thin
with trust and beauty so that she might find her way
back to this place of blood
if tomorrow she must still search for love.

The nights can be dark and so quiet when she slips away
into the stars past the windows of my sad silent chamber.
I have seen her go, dancing toward the dead,
to practice the rituals of love again and again like a child
learning to trace letters into words of poetry,
or anger learning to scream into nothingness,
or like the heart opening like the pupil of the eye will do
to adjust to the lack of light—
letting in the meager offering
as if it were nearly midnight
on the longest day of the year.

She opens her arms to the breathless, the hopeless,
and welcomes them into her bed, warmed by fires that will not die
and each night burn as sacrifice to the most holy
and tender acts of unconditional desire.

In My Mind

In my mind
I see you,
see your face close up,
eyes looking into the place
where love lives.

You see the gifts forgotten there,
put away from greedy children,
and their impatient grasping.

Open the music box at midnight
where tin strips pluck notes of an ancient song
as you turn a tendril of my hair
at the nape of my neck.
Let it drop to the pillow
like a feather
and I will give you
everything.

I will bring armfuls of daisies,
white diamonds and gold
of early summer,
patterns of beauty quilted
in small stitches
of laughter,

and cups overflowing
with the sweetest wine
of surrender.

I can barely contain
the image of you
in my memory
and find it impossible
to draw a line
between the past
imprint of your hand
on the small of my back
and the sound of your voice
that makes my body quake
with joy.

Take this love away
breath by breath,
hour by hour,
as if it is the only gift
I have left to give.