Redemption

Who taught you how to feel,
to tell the difference from
what is real and what is missing?

And they kept coming, the lessons,
the waves of doubt, the half-light
playing between night and its stars.

The things you believed in, that space
where love grieved, shaping itself
into a body of arrows and knives.

More specifically, the techniques of
being human, effortless as tendrils
of lightening traveling down,

a symbol, a figment, a glowing streak
of destruction or perhaps, just perhaps,
a sign of redemption.

Wild Garden

What beautiful residing pleasure
of unshorn grasses, thick with green
and wild white lilies, surprises sky
rising sleepy, half- night, half-bleeding
throws her clouds like grey confetti
into the one-armed reach of cypress.

A veil of mist, whose purpose to forget
its body, fills itself with light, then dutiful
disperses. A single bird, pauses
like a parting word, takes flight
into its wild and secret world.

The Dark Bones

One face is turned
inward on itself. The sun
two dimensional, its hair on fire,
its spine a golden hunchback.
I raise my hand to block it out,
a darkness addict. I see things,
without light, as if they were alive,
hold the body of night, a mother
holding the dark bones of her child.

Physics of Love

I struggle. What's new?
So does the wind, the sails
that dissolve it.

I am a strong woman, a nail
whose back is beaten by
a fist of steel.

And you are the wooden handle
that holds the metal, the physics
which with accurate aim

confirms my purpose.

O! that I were only a feather
fallen from the shoulder of a bird
whose only fate, ambiguous

as forever.

The House We Live In

This is a coupon
for your confusion. Expires
yesterday. Don't play
the victim, scratching & clawing
your way towards heaven.

Believe me, God is listening.

And silent integrity, unbearable
disclosures of agony, a second skin
or the decency of angels
will not dilute the poisons.

Most certainly, you will find
rest, a precipice to fall from,
sober moments, an untouched love,
a sense of impermanence.

This is the blueprint of heaven
drafted by the unseen architect
who knows the house you've lived in.

A Facet of Sorrow

When did we learn to be
so afraid? Who is weeping
into a pillow that covers
the mouth and nostrils?

Is this the heart
that struggles to dream
or survival instinct?

Practicing loss, we learn
to dream, to love,
to become lasting.

This life is not measured
by sadness alone but by
its precarious imagining.

Eyes Closed

To keep faith: things will,
things must, change. Beyond
the body, darkness is nothing.

Touching the wounds. Is this
proof? What is remembering
without blood?

What language do children use
when they are grieving? It sounds
like wings on air, like listening,

like the white, shiny dreams
of becoming what we will be
without ever knowing.

Hastening

When I say, the light
arches away from its source,
I mean, the soul is relentless.

In my heart, its path
steady, a rudder cutting
through water, unwavering.

These are the properties
of light & soul whose windows
blown open, whatever held

empties out into the world.

To the Anonymous

We lose heart
day upon day
and night slips
through our fingers,

a stone from a dead hand.

Ground catches
rock, stops it
from falling. We are
all pebbles in sand

and when our names are called,

we will not know
who we are.

Of Words

In every book, there are
delicate blooms of orchid,
small, fertile eggs, dark
rainy fields.

Where words are not
words but shiny black
moths trapped in
lace, white webs,

soundlessly stirring.

In the mind, words are
many voices like wind
moving through trees
caught like ink drying

on paper.