With a Small Catalyst.

The clouds at night promised rain.

Last night I became a green inchworm in the dusk
and ate peach juices till I found the pit
the inner sanctum where the white flower used to be.

With or without the dare

I could stare back at the stars all night
I am not afraid but for the chance
I might fall off the earth with its furious spinning.

Let my light hands
these that I raise through thunderheads
be what they were meant for,
shoot furiously through the deafening darkness

wending a way
to a home without a white picket fence
to a home where my eyes grow wide and I say

Yes. This is what I want.

The Space I Get for Myself, O God.

Sometimes there needs to be a space for the silence
of singing voices of strangers in the emptiness of my room,
of incense and candles cradling the air
while I lie half naked on my newly made bed
on yellowed sheets kept in boxes without tops,

open wide for the future and spiders,
open wide to let flames lick at their edges
should a house fire fall upon us (God I hope not)
but for this vacuousness in all its beauty,
in all its loneliness

makes me miss my crib and cradle,
makes me miss the cradling of your warm arms last night
the arms of my mother a decade ago.
It makes me want to hold the old woman I don't know
her name was Kathy, the woman in church who cried over her husband riddled with new-found cancer.

Behind her dark sunglasses the rain came down
wet on the hands of all who gripped her shoulders to steady her
wet on her silky green shoulder pads
already missing the one she loved, the one who was not yet gone
cursing You who took him from her.

If you can do this to us God
burn my house my head my heart, but
how am I supposed to love you if you kill us off
if you let me snap twig branches and burn ants,
let me watch old women cry
if you let me love so strongly
but will eventually take them from me?

Lake Women.

I sat by a lake
with a blanket wrapped around
my shoulders, our ankles

and we gazed open wide
confided, pupils collide together
each yanking the other's heart strings

my trembling cool fingers
broke the nearby twigs
thin like reedy voices

or like an old woman's long hair
snappy, ready to nap,
pulling a quilt over her narrow frame.

All Fall Down.

Of course you'd cry
if it went down with thunder and tumbled all bruised
if strangers drunk didn't care,
no one to run their fingers through your red brown hair

when planes crash
sometimes invisible hands fix the engine
or shake awake the pilot.

Awaken us fools.

But sometimes seats
in their fully upright staunchness
land gracefully in flames into a forest
off the map
off the radar.
In the Atlantic.
In the stratosphere.
In the Appalachians.
Into peace and pieces

of course you'd cry if you couldn't breathe
if your eyes couldn't open to see
some hazy future.
I think I might understand what you see

maybe

Forever it seems

my shoulder has hurt from all this weight
standards of living too high
and I can't keep up with all you kissing couples
flying by on their madrigal chariots
spaniards caressing these foreign girls' locks,
biting each others' ear
(secretly so they think)
because to them the world is fuzzy background.

For me,
the sight of you eminent
all remains a long dark tunnel
with a light at the end
with perhaps stigmata Jesus shining through
all Caucasian and golden and passive
saying, "Blessings, child"
instead of turning the changers' tables on me for how much I swore last week,
for all my dank romantic daydreams.

Never fear,
for I come quickly.
I come home.

The Roadside Tavern.

I write for all
o yes I do
with fiddletons and violins
wahoo the sound resounds
and smithy wicks the lips
so sweet, smooth
my feet can hardly beat a proper time
Nothing can beat it
or cheat me of this.

Our cheeks red from sun
from the life glow good
full of nutrition and soul vitamins.
I feel almost whole
as your fingers run strings
up and down my soul.
The brown beer never bitter here
and always a cozy winter
when my heart thinks of you.
Faces so warm from the sun.

The silk of your hair
looks like theirs.
Will you be like them
when you get old?
And will I be my mother?

My Kind of Crawl.

Brenda and Paul arrived today. We are all safe, together, entertaining one another, impersonating Simon Schama and playing in parks. Wish us pleasant travels as we journey through London and on to Dublin this Saturday morning.

______________

Some things lie deep in the pit of the gut
like lead weights
like anchors to a seagoing ship,
the hour when the night pulls close his cloak around his shoulders.

The day-greasy streets are wiped clean
in the black night air;
in the dark only the glow of windows show.
Look within, people like us live inside.

Addled well with love, pints and familiar face
a path to bed is made
though perhaps not a straight one
till I too pull the cloak of his arms around mine for the night.