poem for a hurting robin// 14nov2021

it is hard to leave this eggshell
this lightfilled nest
where you,
only occasionally- rest
a tired head,
a less tired heart
and oh-so-tired body
I want to gather your wings,
your human heavy bones,
your weary smile
want to gather them,
watch over them
Hold them tightly enough
to take away the pain-

But that I can not do
Pain of your heart I can-
sometimes-
kiss away,
But not the sinews and tissues
and cords of muscles-
these human heavy pieces of you.
I am sorry, my love.

All I can do is hover,
guard,
Watch your sleeping form
Hope.
Hope that you wake with a smile a
little less
weary, a little less pained.
one as light as this
Glowing.
Hopeful.
Unfeathered -eggshell of a
humaned, healing-
nest.

 a love poem // september 2021

I think I adore you
more
when it’s raining,
if that’s possible.
Feel like our boat
Is alone in the deepsea
Seadeep, so many ports
our threads held - some time only -
by phone lines and pixels.

Perhaps we do it better
When we don’t breath the same air
But here I am
With my hourly dose of gut-aching laughter
Looking, drinking, looking -
You.
You fill me with such rootbound, giddy
Delight.
Both things -
low notes and high.

you make everything better.

This rainy day.
Steeped in adoring.

 Re-leaf // sept 2021

Sitting amidst a million leaves
(Re-leaf)
Amidst a september newspring leafing
(Re-leaf, Re-leaf)
We were two billion in 1937, four billion in ‘73
(Re-leaf, Re-leaf)
We are a leafspan away from eight
(Re-leaf)
Now. Such sour and sweet grief.
(Re-leaf, Re-leaf)
Thinking about the hurt we do
the hurt we do, knowing
(Re-leaf, Re-leaf)
The hurt we do un-knowing
willing, un-willing
Sitting amidst the leaves
Leaving, leafing
Un-leaving
(Re-leaf, Re-leaf)

Sitting with all the seasons of my grief
Needing to
(Re-leaf, Re-leaf)
growing
Sitting amidst a million, billion stars
Leaves, together, apart
Folding and re-folding parts of the heart
(Re-leaf, Re-leaf)
Relief, relief
Sitting with unknowing.
Re-leaf.

anothercountry. // 4may

a visit to another country
Is as easy/ or impossibly hard/
as stepping out the door this morning,
the smell of wet earth.
transported, traveled, transfixed-
far lands-
low clouds in the highlands,
early mistmorning amidst rainbowed birds,
or this- close,
the sweet pang of desire - overnight rain in our foreverparched desert
each storm, each and everyone,
I greet as new,
surprised, forever yearned,
neverbefore scent,
of water on thirsty dirt.

apricotmap. // 26april

Make me a willow cabin at your gate
Twelfth Night, WS

for andrea, nisa and april in their birthmonth

Make me an apricotmap
So that I may walk out your gate in July, petalparchment in hand
And know where to introduce myself
To the fruitbearing trees
With their orangeglobes of delishdelight
Offered over mudbrick walls
On dryditches, in a triangle of kerbside dirt, peregrinating with scant rain and acequiawater,
seasons upon seasons
bitter winter years, the drought ones, the rare, blossoming spring
(they are immigrants like so much of what blooms here, our late frosts unwelcome)
An apricotmap for a gorging, delightdelish, meandering and movable summerfeast.

We have an uncle, really my mother’s cousin - so more avuncular than not,
Who roams New England backroads and fields in april and may
Searching for forgotten apple trees, white and pink pockets amidst effervescent newspring
Ones that hang low over crumblewalls, at hidden house corners, lone pilgrims by wetditches
Never brought to market, gathered like jewels for a fall and winter sweetbite.
Lost to us with migration and heartache.
He finds them. Cuts a branch. And returns home
To graft the mystery and bring its rare full fruit to his orchard
Saved for us humans (never lost to its birds, grass and ditches)
found like a gift
Unknown for seasons and seasons
Now gathered like jewels

I think sometimes, always smiling, of his fair Frankensteins, with a dozen or two types growing from one tree
And our uncle, sharing mysteries and maps as he wanders through an appleblossom persephonewaltz -
Each tree something old, now new
Something utterly treasured.

the beauty we’ve been granted // march2019

We take up so much more

than our share of planet 

And live in a high dry place 

meant for just 

a few of us,

So very few. 

Rivers that wind like thread 

Crops that fight for rain

And still 

I want to lick this dirt, swallow this sky

Eat the red brown earth

So in love.  

This beauty we’ve been granted

The beauty. This

Wish. Wishes. Wish:

May we know what we have stolen. 

May what was given, be known. 

How brave were we // spring 2019

 

One night, a well of insomnia

not unhappily

Counting your breaths

Our children snivelsnort javelinas,

me glad at your side.

 

my fingers pressed on the Braille of a cheaply done stucco wall.

 

Amidst the slatted half dark,

I startle from half sleep, amazed…

How brave were we

Placing ourselves in the winds

All those places that did not know us.

 

That was another then.

This now is late and also early

I count my breaths

the shapes of my people

count, breath. count, breath.