If today was the last day of life as we know it,
I would still be choosing to write to you.

Whatever grace, shift, light, is coming,
I would still be choosing to write to you.

In the off chance that these words will touch you,
I would still be choosing to write to you.

If tomorrow is unrecognizable or completely new,
I would still be choosing to write to you.

Knowing that I may never meet you, or even hear your voice,
I would still be choosing to write to each and every one of you.

When the sky does open someday,
and there is only light,
I will know I took this time,
opened my heart up wide,
*I will know I was still choosing
to write my heart to you.

Look outside the kitchen window,
my friend, you and your puppy too,
and you will see it scrumptiously
awaiting you... Reaching out to it,
your fingers will sink into such rich,
creamy sweetness... getting there
first, you can have the whole of it
all for yourself... and let your
puppy lick your fingers!

Very early,
and just
twice.
Raspy, dark,
almost
mechanical.

This bird
is
not
from
around
here.

Fragrance was her forte,
and she wore it well.
Swaying to Fado,
eyes closed to this
unfathomable longing
delivered into song.
She stayed close to you,
scented like the flowers
she was named for,
until your knees
weakened and all
you could say
was,*Yes.
Yes, you are all
I could ever want.
Tonight, or
any other night.
Fragrant,
dancing, loving life
with every exquisite
inclination of your
beautiful, profound mind,
your lovely, ripened body.

Warm as honey in sunlight
soaking into my soul, being
my soul's core whenever
you are here with me.
Voice of sweet melancholia
and ripe, enduring strength,
so tender, and so earthy.
Bravely you began again,
autumn years bringing
seasoned song like no
other to a world in need.
Obrigada, from my heart.

Somewhere between the dream of what it could be
and what it wanted to be, this poem hightailed it
out of town. Down the road it went, careening into
hedgerows, jostling small birds from their resting
time. Running for all it's worth, out to the sea cliffs
then arrested, stock still, before all that immensity.
Chagrined by such a rash attempt at escape, even
blushing a bit, it wondered about strange things:
What would it be like to be a badger? To always be
dressed in all those lovely stripes? To never have bad
wardrobe days?  Or what about an otter, with such
strong muscles, and an utter delight for swimming?
To never really feel the cold? These are the things a
poem can wonder about, when it isn't quite sure, just
right then, in the present moment, how to be a poem.

Juicy persimmon of the color spectrum,
you wait, as paint, for the right brush
to give you an imaginary life.

Live it up! Dance in all your glowing
intensity! Ultramarine now offers you
cooling shade, and a respite from all
that you so vibrantly are.

An infinitely delicate green
gently disguised verbena
leaf, shyly beginning to
undress for a morning
bath in sunlight and pure,
chilly water. Where did she
ever get the idea that she
was too green to celebrate?

I still want to dance for you!
And until I do, I will dance
in the spaces between our
floating, virtual words.

Through translucent eyelids,
the light increases.
Wherever we are, this is so.
Time zones delineate regions
where the light has been,
and where it is heading.
As some stretch slowly in  
morning beds, dusky birds
across the world sound
soft evening songs.
Rambunctious, small boys
outrun their mothers,
somewhere in between.

Plenitude is with us,
in all this abundant life.
We can create an end
to the rampant, senseless
tragedy, to the desperation
looming hard upon so many.
It is what we are here to do.

In this nearly empty
sky, one luminous
weaving of ice
and light
hovers,
above the darkness.

Looking up at you,
my rib cage
tightens, slightly.

In your knowing
eyes, is everything.

Murmurings of words
so long unspoken,
now sent out across
the curved expanse
of our spherical home.
Murmurings of all our
voices and languages,
coalesced into one.
Winging out into open
space, like the nimble
murmurations of birds,
never quite touching,
yet deftly creating
virtual shapes,
markings recognizable
only from a distance.
Do birds' own souls
unfurl and unfold in
these undulations?
Starlings find aerial
corridors, travelling
together swiftly, so
to stay warm. Do we?
These murmurings,
our word-murmurations,  
fly out into the space between us,
swiftly curving back, and then back again,
before dipping low, then nesting deeply,
so very deeply, into sweetest sleep.

The days are getting shorter.
We see it first
in the color of the light.
The moon is waning.
It's time to dream
other dreams.
Or maybe eat a fried egg.

The first thing I remember is breathing under water.
And what do you remember, dear and distant friend?

Lifetimes, braided together like blessed challah bread,
are intertwined, one into the next, sometimes glimpsed.

Living so differently, in music, through earthquakes and
tidal waves, we visit from one time into another,
to learn, to see life through one heart, our one unbounded
mind, the one universal soul that inhabits us all.

I have heard it said that after our ten thousandth lifetime
we can go home to our limitless beginnings.

Are we ready, dear, and distant friend?
Are you? Am I?

First light, and
a chill mist.
Low bird calls.
Small and quiet,
the eldest child
zips her way
out of the tent.

Gathering
wildflowers,
she sips a bit
of mountain
water.
Reaching
up, she  
offers
her flowers
into the
crook of
a plain tree,
bowing down.

I pull my damp,
faded jean's jacket
out of the machine.
Something clatters.
Oh good, a dime.
No. A cherry seed.

Now you're going to tell me
that cherry have pits, right?
But "pit" is such a dismal little word.
And this shiny clean trophy sports
a history of petty thievery,
committed in the local grocery store.

A big yellow cherry with a pink blush.
Just one, chewed boldly. Its hard center
hidden in my pocket.

Adobe and dust,
a place so quiet.
One grandfather
cottonwood,
leaves rustling,
listens with us
for the next train.

Drought has dried
this land beyond
any living person's
memory.
Now, a cooling wind
gathers power.
The sky over the old
mountains darkens.

As the train pulls
out from the antique
station, a single fork
of lightning frames
itself in the small
rear window.

The silvered tracks
put distance
rapidly behind us.

Opening out now
before us, sunlight
on the High Desert.

We turn to see
starched white
cumulous clouds,
absent for months
float by, flat bottoms
casting healing shadows
over the parched land.

In Albuquerque, we
stop for new passengers.
It's days after the 4th of July;
families have been visiting.

Roasted green chilies,
their fragrance so earthy
are brought onboard.

A mother and her 
teenagers sit down
beside me. She smiles,
we talk. This brother
and sister are so good
to each other.

Dinner in the dining car
is an old-fashioned treat.
Big windows and white
cotton table cloths.

I find myself seated
family style, with a
father and son. Some
bicycle race has given
them rare time together.

As night comes on,
the conductor makes
a sleeping time call.
The lights are dimmed.

In the early hours,
walking aisle after
aisle and car to car
I see humanity
asleep in all its
quirky loveliness.

Tanned toddlers,
sprawled almost upside
down. Hair mussed up,
wearing bows meant
for grandparents.

Graying heads,
long accustomed to
leaning into one another,
rest peacefully.

One young man, a poet
with a crown of dreads
stands alone with his
thoughts, looking  
out at the stars.  

Jostled awake now,
I see the The Big Dipper
perfectly placed as a child
would draw it, twinkling
in my smudged window.

A haze of soft pink light
signals this new day.
All of us, coming home.

Human angels, each
here for one another.

We are the ones who feel
almost everything.

Squeezed like sun-warmed
wine grapes, pressed
like fragrant coffee beans,
distilled like kilos of flowers,
may these memories of our lives
become good poems.

It's the perfect,
soothing,
excuse.

Warm, fragrant,
and necessary.

What else
could so
effectively
keep me
from my
writing?

Now,
there's
just mine
to do,
and I'm
out of
excuses.

Lying together in
the calm of night
eyes losing focus,
drifting towards
sleep, there was
always one more
thought to speak,
one more kiss to
give. Black hair
shone like ravens'
wings on silken
pillows. At dawn,
I would lead my
army into battle,
never to return.

Now, you turn
your face to smile
at a new love,
holding a black
umbrella over her
pretty blond head.

When we met,
our souls saw
who we were  
to one another.

But that was then,
my love.

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.