Holy River,
to see you
flowing
is to see
Brahman,
with eyes
fully open.

Plunging
into your
sacred self
is to be
forever
embraced,
Ma Ganga.

Torrents of
hard karma
came soon
thereafter,
like a curtain
of biting hail.

Searing pain
of surgery,
and doomed
love, nearly
choked me.

In all that
time, and
beyond
conscious
memory,
my body
was carried
upstream
in your
loving arms,
forever
protected
in you,
Ma Ganga.

Coming into the kitchen,
slightly beyond hungry,
tremendous, happy
excitement fills me.

There is still something
left in the house to eat.
Pasta.

Opening the fridge, the little
green army of boxes
smiles back at me.
"We're still here! And so are
the sea salt, and the olive oil,
and the peanut butter!"

Never had peanut butter pasta?
You're missing something!

Once upon a time,
I considered the possibility
that poison could make me well.

The thing is, it worked. But not
without the gods, and friends,
and brothers, who blessed me
with their love, and believed
that I could live.

Now, you see this thick curly hair,
and the way I dance with total abandon,
and you say to yourself: "Does she have
no shame?"
Nope.
She doesn't.

I handed that in one morning, here on
the prairie, and life has been sweeter
ever since. That wild dancing, you see,
is my form of prayer,
my way of saying:
"Thank you, God, for this beautiful life."

Skinny little legs, like the bees
you loved to draw, propelled you
down two flights of old stone stairs.

Banging on your namesake's door,
calling out in a child's Italian:
"Nino, let's go play!"

An enclosed courtyard held us at the center
of modest apartments where our neighbors
hung out laundry, watched us play.

In the early evening light we counted, hid,
and counted again under quiet Roman skies.
It seemed, then, that this was life.

Counting rapidly in that musical language,
searching for a new and better place to hide,
we never imagined that soon, we would
want to hide here, in these memories
that would never leave us.

When an avalanche of tragedy hit us
one year later, we had these soft days
in our father's country to remember.
Hiding, counting,
and hiding again.

No human husband
could ever hold me.

Comforts, gathered,
began to stifle.

While he slept,
I would search.

Somewhere, my
seal's skin
was hidden.

It was just a
matter of time.

In the innermost chamber of the heart,
is a room where the intellect can be quiet and rest.
Here, these two old friends are on equal footing.

Neither struggles for the upper hand.
They have often smiled at each other across
the heavy wooden table placed between them.

Leaning in, they talk about your day.
"Did you feel that moment when we stood
shoulder to shoulder, and she felt it?"

Like some windless river in an ancient city,
where both shores are made of good grey granite,
they feel everything you feel, and gently stand their ground.

Dive down into
the Sea of Words,
flip my mermaid tail    
to the passersby.

Dive down deep
to the bottom
of the sea, the
very deepest depths
of this salty sea.

When I come up
to the surface again,
starfish weave shells
into my auburn hair,
while sirens sing
new words to me.

Vast expanse of
emerald waters,
Sea of Words
you are my home.