April Wakes Up

This month of April wriggled her way
out of the shivering dream of the dark and icy
ocean of winter that drifted far too long
away from the shores where the sun
knew how to bring us home.

This bundle of daffodils
and rain on the roof
rocks me, comforted
like a blanket.

Joy here is a fleece jacket
instead of down coat;
bare toes in sandles
and legs sans black tights;
and leaves raked away
from the mole pocked yard
making ready for the first mowing.

Garden gloves are at the ready
near the garage door
with the clippers
and mud boots
are obvious
and necessary footwear.

We must awaken to the red flowering maples
and the green we can only see this last week
of the month where everything is alive
with the buzz and peeping of the world.

A Poem About Green for my Unborn Granddaughter

Tonight
in a circle of women
I have decided to write
a poem to you
about green.

This color
of waving young pines
is my favorite color
especially in early April
in Vermont.

Green dances in sun
near the setting time
and birds are looking
for the night's sheltered places.

Tonight
in a circle of women
I have started to knit
a small blanket
full of wisdom
the color
of the beloved sea.

Beloved,
you will know the sea
like the waters in which you swim
and grow inside your mother's womb.
This wild and peaceful darkness
is all the home you will ever want

until you walk on grass green with spring
and pluck peas from their pods
into your open mouth.

Then green will be everything
that twirls and tumbles
into eventual dust of understanding
and more love than any mossy tomb can hold.

Some night soon
in a circle of love,
enfolded in the soft woolen comfort
stiched with whispered prayers
offered just for you,
you will hear the magic of singing peepers
and the gentle rain pattering on the cool earth
and dream of daffodils and crocus
blooming in the Green Mountains
and the Amma calling you into this life.

Sacrifice

This gentle time 

is plundered again before we get there,

at the jagged edge of falling in,

a romance with the need to produce

some achey harvest,

some crackling voice

leveraged to convince me

of the value of the lineage of threat

that will never bring me comfort.

By design, there is no time to rest.

There is nothing that will slow the wave of rage

that rushes in and sweeps all reasonable thinking

away.  

instead of thrashing around,

I have changed my mind

and will sit

quite still

the breath

moving

like a dance,

in and out 

leaving this one

precious body 

as sacrifice.

Leaving Home

Lately transient thoughts tremble
at the edges of my lips,
just inside my mouth,
like bees ready to swarm,
prickly with the heat

and not as tidy as you might imagine bees to be.
The allure is dreary
with the potential of being stung
and gravity of the world
just heavy with worry and shame.

My eyes shift
from the present moment
to a proxy of real life
somewhere behind the flinty spark
of this day.  It is here, in the moments
before sleep takes me to the dark waters
of rest.

I am breathing fully into these lungs
and shudder before the release,
a few signs that show the way
from gravel between your toes
and the unending larder of words,
one after a line is sweeter
than a signal that it is time to leave home.

New Life

for Clair

Nature has spoken again
like a voice of the angel,
this time to my daughter.

Her new kitchen is warm
with cinnamon and green
with her sweet love's passion;
routines of morning tea
and something barely sweet,
like a moon waxing toward fullness,
round and luminous with awe.

The angel is watching them
become a family,
medicine to all the losses
of champions and innocents.
They are healed as their life grows roots
and the wings of a child.

She commits again,
the servant of children,
and cried when she revealed
the outline of her new life.

The Day Mary Oliver Died

On the day Mary Oliver died
my son sent me a message
with the announcement,
knowing how much I love her words,

so much that Wild Geese holds forth
displayed near the table where we share meals
like a prayer that has blessed our home
year after year since we moved to Vermont.

Today I think Mary
would ask us to enjoy popcorn and bacon
and the musty creak of the birch in the back yard
while the doe and her yearlings munch to the tops
of my raspberry canes in January.

Perhaps a cup of ginger tea will soothe me tomorrow.
Perhaps if the murder of crows
 that visited me last year returns to the white pines near the house,
or the fox and possum that live under the porch stop crying,
or the she-bear topples my bird feeders,
I might remember all the ways
Nature and Spirit are with me on this path
even when Mary has flown away with a simple whirr
from her body.

I drop to my knees,
good enough
and repenting,
praying in gratitude
for this new dead poet.

She is my friend
with each page I turn,
marveling at all the ways
my heart and mind open
to the simple turns
where she always guides me
to God.

After A Thirteen Hour Day

The stillness is harsh and thick
after a long day in the office
blustering around the slippery edges
of balancing priorities.

This is a time skinny with needs
and strikes my panicked mind
with too much to do
and not enough of anything
to make it easy.

There is frostbite on the toes
of my morning meditations
that have often been the hearty relief
for this darkness of rationed breathing.

My teeth chatter
under the covers.
I cannot get the heat to rise
from cold ashes
and the wind
is still howling
for more.