I generally fight silence

But there are days when it wins

Today
I sit
quiet
and I listen

Listen as:

air moves leaf against leaf
Big leaf, small leaf, in-between leaf
Each brush a distinct sound stroke
A multi-tonal
“Hush!”

the flowers
of the neighbours’ jacaranda
fall
Plop, plop, plop
onto our Strelizia’s large leaves
Boundary-erasing purple rain

something scratch-scratches
in the undergrowth
under my window

Has one of the dogs got out?
I almost get up
Stop listening

but no
It’s the Hadeda Ibis
rooting for the ill-fated worm
It’s the rustle of
nature communing with nature
offering itself
consuming itself
A fierce, fearless, closed loop of
provide and eat
eat and provide

And my self-protective humanness feels
like a frail outsideness

a complicated loneliness

Perhaps this
is why
I generally fight silence

The breath stirs.

The blood, that deep, pulsing tide,
Accepts its spirit burden -
Holds it for but a whisper
And then lets it go.

The body receives it next -
Each cell bearing it only for as long
As is needed for transformation:
Breath into energy
Energy released -
Given up to become  
Motion, emotion, expression.
Breath made word made flesh.

It is the heart that unites the blood and the body -
Every rhythmic beat
An accepting and a letting go,
That the blood might flow,
That the breath might be carried,

That the body might dance.

I look like my dad.

My mom looks like Audrey Hepburn,
with a dash of Twiggy thrown in
for good measure,

but I,
I look like my dad.

(My dad, for the sake of clarity,
looks nothing like Audrey Hepburn
or Twiggy.
He’s more the George Clooney type -
which is a great look for George Clooney
and for my dad -
but not
for a girl who wanted to look like
Princess Di,
or Cindy Crawford,
or  Julia Roberts,
or Gisele…)

A woman now,
wiser now,
older now,
I look in the mirror and know that -
all things progressing as they usually do -
a time will come
when the mirror will be the only place
I will see his face.

And I hope,
when that time comes,
I can still remember

how to look at myself through those eyes
that knew I was beautiful long before I even knew my own name:

How to look
like my dad.

A close read
reveals that
I am nothing
but a rough draft
riddled with
misspellings—

a work in progress
watered down by
superfluous adjectives,
non sequiturs, and
smothered verbs.

Love is an editor.

She courts me
with a pocket of
sharpened pencils,
blue and red.

She marks me
up meticulously—
dele, stet
dele, stet.

Decades punctuated
by intermittent edits.

Sunlight slanting
through an hourglass.

Her hair as white
as the final page.

When the end comes,
will she love me enough
to give me another pass?

It's been an age
                   [or is it an eon?
                   or maybe an epoch?]
since we were ****** from our Garden -
                   [and why was it called
                   the tree of the knowledge of
                   good and evil anyway?
                   we only ever tasted evil.]
so long ago now that it’s crossed the
threshold between memory and dream.
                   [was any of it ever real?]

There was never any hope of us turning back,
because that’s the way time drags us -
inexorably forward.
                   [merciless god!]

But I have been watching,
my love,
as we trudge this endless, dry dust:
I have watched suns rise,
and stars rise,
and moons rise,

And I have been thinking,
my darling -

I have been thinking that we must keep walking,
Because it seems to me
this infinite space
Is perhaps a circle,

And the further away we wander,
The closer to home we come.

Do you remember?

Do you remember, I wonder,
What it was like outside?

How we’d stand there,
Our arms around each other,
Our faces pressed against the thick, sound-muffling glass?

Peering in with longing,
Ears straining to pick up something, anything -
Any little clue as to what it was like to be inside.

Inside with them -
The eating, drinking, laughing ones -
The ones bathed in the warm golden light.

Outside it was cold. And it could have been lonely,
But we had each other -
And we huddled together -
And we made our own warmth.

But now, Golden Girl,
You’re inside.
You’re theirs.
You eat, drink, laugh -

You glow.

And once in a while you look up.
And you wave.

It’s wonderful in here, you mouth,
See how wonderful it is?
See how they love me?
How they want me?

I do see.

And I feel the cold.
And the loneliness.
And the lack of your arms around me.

Colder,
Lonelier,
I look for different routes to walk.
Routes that don’t take me past windows.