Resolute
stood the mountain laurel
on the little hill.
Steadfast
held her leaves of green
to the noble sun.
And came along the little Bee
curious and bold.
His whispered words
of Trembling pulses
Yielded forth the prize.

some of those vital statistics are undeniable

i may be five eleven and a half
but i generally round the number down
(my son exaggerates me into the six foot range)

my eyes are brown
and my hair

but someone who craves my voice
may tell you that they never notice
either

age changes, not year by year
but moment by moment

wisdom sometimes measures me a hundred or more
and joy may number me a child
with shining eyes

i can accomplish temporary feats
of domestic talent
sew a quilt to keep you warm
bake a cake to keep you fed

but my voice accomplishes phenomena
that defy description

i make miracles
sometimes
when folks aren't looking

nothing as tall as a skyscraper
something less tangible
and ordinary
as light or healing

my size may be slight
i may be timid
or bold
depending on the weather

storms wither
clouds focus

i had a vision
for where this was going
when i started
maybe someday
I'll get there

You may find me barefoot
With my hair stuck up
In a mess on
The back of my head.

You may find me
Covered in dirt
And sweat
And other grossness.

You won't ever
Find me startled.

You can't sneak up on
A woman like me.

Coy, little butterfly
with the fragile wing
teach me your Secret.

So that one day
when I have
grace enough to fly

and Wonder
wraps me in gentle
breezes

I will float Free.

sins of the past
however wrongly accused
should be forgiven--
let go; burnt offerings to falcon gods
sad ashes that float on the same winds
as yesterday's mis-spent dreams

am I then my father's daughter
blind and mute and imperfect?
unable to express the nervous tragedy
of days that follow after days

perhaps one morning my children
will offer these dry bones
on that same stone altar

perhaps I will be forgiven too

i've been wanting to say
i love you

all three words, one after another, each word pronounced distinctly
it's been so long unsaid
i might start to spill over a little

spewing i love you's

to the cat and the neighbor's dog and the little old lady behind me in the grocery store

folks might start to look at me strange

maybe i better save them all up
one heart's treasure trove
for brighter days

there’s something about the way
I can’t quite match my stride
to yours—

I reach and reach

but can never quite

keep up

it’s not that my legs aren’t long enough,
it’s not that I don’t want to match my step
to yours

do you reckon my Robert Frost
was ever a match for your Plato?
or my Dickinson
to your Cicero ?

the stars still shine in your smile
and if I find myself a little behind
I hope you’ll take me by the hand
and pull me close.

the yellow brick broad
i travelled
started with finding my voice
(it had flown away on a Kansas tornado).

Somewhere along the way
I hoped I would stand taller
-- be more honest
but, you know, the munchkins
they always get really nervous.
they worry about the semblance
of sanity

and the wicked witches
and their flying monkeys
are forever concerned
that all their black histories
will be laid raw and bare

and i am not blameless

i have learned that i can be
painfully honest in poetry.
kind folks congratulate me
on my imagination
because they can't imagine my reality

and i have to wonder

about the depth and breadth
of my sincerity
when i hide in plain sight

laying my heart bare
to strangers
is not brave

and i have miles to go

before i can go home again

I know what you're thinking
and I am sorry.
I can't explain.
I don't have words enough for it . . .
I want to be honest.
Bare all to you,
it's just
there's so much weight
bearing on me today.
Too many voices
whispering in my ear,
wanting too many things.
I may avoid your gaze now
but later
the skies will clear again

I remember you
your whispered half-questions
resembling the thoughts I almost had
on another cloudy day.
Your honest words filled me,
tempted  me into flights of
unexplored consciousness
and step by step I ventured
farther from my own locked doors.
I wandered out alone
into bright, dead-of-day streets
full of my own possibilities
seized by my own fallibilities.
Some days I will meet the gaze
of the demons that haunt this world
but on others
when my self-fed fears are too much
I may need you to walk beside me.
Take my hand.
Your words are my strength.
Your strength is my hope.
My hope is your redemption.
We will save one another.

anna has been carrying around
the dog-eared Robert Frost lately
she wants to read poetry with me

and sometimes we read bedtime poems
and sometimes i put her off til a little later
because there's always time for frost

but this morning
when we were waiting for the school bus
i thought to distract her

and had her looking at the tree in the field across the road
and how the branches laced through the blue black sky
and stars shone through the cracks like tree ornaments

and i had her taste the deliciousness of cold air in a new year
i told her that was poetry

and she said
that i should put it in my next
book of poetry

and i wondered if we shouldn't write it together

The hills lay raw and bare.
Unbound ******* heaving
in the gray mist of early morning.
I wish I were the hills
and this car you're driving
was a strong, slow hand
snaking around my own loosed curves.
I want to be crossed by your
barest elemental energies--
moved by passion’s own embrace.
I want to stretch and reach the sky
and stretch and touch the dirt
and feel each resonant-twinge in between.
I want to be filled with the light
and the heat of a new day--
just as the valley
after the fog is burned away.
I want to feel the vibrations of thunder
deep in the middle of me
rumbling of something resembling change
again and again and again
until the light is extinguished.
Then I will breathe deep and slow
******* heaving raw and bare
in the gray mist of a hill-night

i've known a summer storm
come sudden
out of blue clouds

i've rushed for cover
and prayed
against
bolts of lightning
that walked too near

i've watched the skies
waiting
for the winds that might come close
and devour
me

i've known a tempest
that rages in a heart
and wails so loud
that sunlight can't
shine through

There is no shelter
from the storm
no rest

seasons rage
and the storm wears me thin

there must be
rest

I am a plain brown bird
singing off-kilter
through the darkness.
I wonder at your tribute
as it wafts upward
on these cold nights.
Those words make me stronger
than I am.
My heart flutters
at the starshine heat.
May be
I will fly

maybe you’ve whispered I’m sorry to a scarlet sky,
maybe you’ve lamented prodigal sons and wandering daughters,
why shouldn’t I apologize to the wide, wonderful world
for all the things I cannot change?

I blame the weather when I get to this place,

those who are lost to us don’t need me to be more personal;

those who have mastered the little lessons and gone on
don’t mind my foolish ways.

just because I want to  pluck myself out of this life
and chisel you out of that one;
my childish heart would still play house with you.

I would follow that smile wherever it leads me.

I suppose I'll whisper another I'm sorry to the wide world
just because I can.

i don't hear the voices
on the other side of the line yet

as a dispatch operator in training
i only see the calls in queue
mostly waiting for ems squads
to come and check all the vitals

sometimes they radio back
waiting for patient decision

sometimes i hear patient refused
treatment
against medical advice

there are trips to the hospital
and symptoms
and problems

sometimes a bright spot
little girl rescued from the flooded creek
patient has been delivered code 12
no emergency

there is a language
all our own

like we are trying to keep
the rest of the world
out of the conversation

codes and signals
that only we know

one day soon
the voices will be mine

and my voice will be delivered
to the sick and afflicted

maybe my voice will carry
them back to safety

they tell me
i saved a life
once

it felt like surgery
self-inflicted

the incision widened
day-by-day

my reluctant hand
reached in

i cut my heart out
to save a soul

and here i sit

grieving

all the pretty

lives lost

can I sit with you?
not too close
just over here a little
I want to see what you see
I'll only rest my eyes on yours a moment
before I look back to the horizon
tell me
some private history that amuses you
let me hear the bravado in your voice
as I imagine great adventure
lean closer
so that your hand nearly brushes mine
as you paint pictures in the air
your wry smile
wreaks havoc with my heart

always one to go back
to the basic building blocks

with words

and life

and all

i have been learning
to spin wool
into yarn

first with a drop spindle
the way ancestors
have made thread
for thousands of years

then on a borrowed wheel

waiting sometimes
not so patiently
to be able to have
a spinning wheel of my very own

santa must have thought
i was a good girl this year

or that maybe
i had lost enough
and maybe there should be a plus
in the equation somewhere

the machine and i
are still in the
getting to know each other stage

we move in fits and spurts
the wheel stops moving
sometimes
and goes backwards
grabbing my yarn

but i am learning patience
and one day soon
we will be old friends

i have about three
memories from my childhood
more or less

my brain vault
is a bottomless black hole
of good and bad
that never seems to yield
anything

but once in a while
i remember
a chubby boy in a brown coat
with beautiful blue eyes
on the second grade school bus

he moved away soon after

i met him again
as a teenager
and he was a thin
adonis model
with long blonde hair

so maybe i have
four memories
more or less

maybe i should
write it down
before i lose it

i am stuck
in a groundhog day hell
of sleeping and working

i accomplish a bare minimum of the grown up people things
i wipe out the bathtub and sweep a floor
every day

and i do some dishes and laundry once a week

but
i am aching to accomplish something more

every flat surface is filled with stuff and dust
and everything needs to be cleaned out

i need to paint a room
patch holes in the walls
make something pretty

create something new

finish the sewing projects

clean out the piles

use the hand spun yarn to make a shawl

if you find my motivation
i will just be over here
somewhere
between asleep and awake

There's a poem coming

Something about mountains
And voice

Conversations
Are waiting

Maybe something
About being trapped long years
And finally
Seeing a light
At the end of the tunnel

There is definitely
A poem coming

Maybe we will write it
Together

On days when
I'm neither here nor there
Adrift in a sea of senseless noise
Battered by waves of unrecognizable emotion,
Floating, just floating.
On days when I have
That faraway look
When you call my name,
Just know, you may have to call again
before I come back to you

I see your hands
two funny, white birds
pecking and pausing
-quirky language-
exempt from the word.
There is a cunning eloquence
-instinctive-
in that voiceless ramble
where thoughts
need no translation

i want to
walk through
your voice

i dare not
ask

i can not
dial
your number

but i long to wade through words
hear you laugh
one more time

i am missing
your arms
but i would

gladly settle
for the warmth of your voice

lay me down
the book you haven't
quite finished ******* through

run rough fingers
over bindings that cover
smiling secrets

whisper my name
to embracing darkness

wonder aloud
how the story ends

then wrap me in
strong arms
and hold me close

the smiling creator
takes his light in his hands
and whispering something
of lovely summer
places tiny seeds in pots
and hovers close
anticipating the joys
of imperceptible growth

i read a book yesterday
cover to cover in just
a few hours

the first book
i have been able
to finish
in over a year

i cried a little
when i was done
for the character
and her family
for me

i recognized something
in her
and now my head
is reeling

trying to make sense of damage
and repair
and the language
of it all

It's something about
dreams I can't remember
when my mind rambles on
running through hidden rhythms
looking for something greener.
It's something about
meeting you there in the mists,
in-between natural conversation
and forgotten memories.
Having known you
and lost you and found you,
I still grieve those vacant hours
always harder before the rain comes.
It's something about
the way you hold my hand--
I'm sure of it--even if,
I can't remember how it felt

Like the ember
smouldering
unseen in the ashes,
my heart will someday
flame passionately.
One breath--
is all I need
to change this
seeming-charred soul
into a
furious
fire

your words
ran away with me
this morning

maybe it was the fog
creeping in through open windows
til I surrendered

maybe my imagination
was seized strongest
by the first words I met on waking

maybe I dreamed you
only to wake and hear you whisper
*stay close

Time to pick up
all the shattered pieces.

Cement the colored
fragments of memory
and voice

with hope
and something new
that resembles
confidence.

A new day shines--

I will emerge
brilliant
as the sun.

do you know
how lonely it is
being a mountain
to yourself?

the sun rises
to melt the dew
off the wild roses

but there is no one
to see

the sun sets
and the darkness
covers
an ancient heart

-freezes-

and still your feet
are rooted
where they stand

     forever

          eternal

the first time i met him
after sixteen absent years
was at the Pinnacles.

it was a good place he said -
i walked into his arms
and time melted away.

maybe too much time

when we climbed to the top
he talked to a stranger
and i sat on a rock
soaking up the November sun.
i heard drums in the distance
they wrapped me up in a memory

the next time
i hiked with my daughters
i got dizzy
felt like i was falling
my heart in my throat.
when the feeling cleared
my daughters had hold of me
asking if i was okay.

a few years later
invited to a journey workshop
i fell off the cliff again
in my shower this time.
i held onto the wall
so i wouldn't be lost to gravity.

and later that day
in the workshop
i saw the whole grisly scene
my warrior husband
lying on the ground
broken baskets and busted pots
my tribe demolished
the enemy advancing

it all became clear
i felt the fear
of being taken
and i jumped

I never asked you to write me love poems.

You are a philosopher
and I am a poet.
I’m fairly certain that poets shouldn’t walk together
someone ought to keep their feet on the ground.
  

We think in different languages you and I.
You speak in the stoic's tongue
and I converse in butterflies and chicory root.
Your ideas are concrete and stone
and mine are dandelion seed and cloud stuff.

You are ******* me sometimes.
The words you don't say.
The tone your voice takes
when your feelings are raw -- slices deep.

Do you know what you do to me
even when I don't say it?
Because I guess my silence
says something in the end.
I'm not sure the child in me has words for it.
Sometimes I just have nothing to say,

I want to be still.
I want to listen to the rumble of your voice,
I want to sun myself in your silence.
There aren't words for that
and so I don't say anything at all.

I am a poet. Some days.
Some days I am an old woman.
And some others I am a little girl.
But I always long to sit at your philosopher's knee
and listen to your thoughts.

My poet heart trembles as I bare myself to you.
I never asked you to write me poetry.
Your smile says everything.

you always know
don't you?

you sense my cycle
you feel it in the deepest
part of your maleness

even when we don't talk
even when you haven't
touched me in months
and years

my blood sets
your soul on fire
still

you always know

i know it too

You aren't the same man
any more.

Your mirror lies

if the reflection you see
hasn't changed.

The weight of hard years
lifts from your shoulders
day by day

and ordinary
miracles are still worked
by extraordinary hearts.

Light shines
so often
from unexpected sources.

I am amazed
at the transformation

I am still waiting
for another shoe
to fall

Because loving you
was always too
easy

And the sun still lingers
where you
smile

I have no gift for you.
My hands are empty.

These hands
that would build a mountain
for you
rock by rock.

That would climb
that mountain
to carry you a smile
    an embrace
        a reticent bloom.

My heart is full for you.
I have always been
    yours.

for weeks and months after
john passed from this world
i told anyone who would listen
that my words ran away when he did

but that wasn't really true,
was it?

wandering back through my poetry
from beginning to end
i notice that inspired
tends always
to come from conversation

my poems all have faces
and voices
and i had closed those gates
long before john flew away

the one i loved
felt that inspiration shared
was a betrayal

he didn't want to share
my passion

and even after
he went away
i kept those gates closed

it is time to see
if i can still fly

I can't sleep.  
I can't remember.  
There are so many moments lost.
And I understand
that a lot of those memories
were blocked to protect me.

But I can't remember
the first time you kissed me.
Where was it?
What were we doing?  

I remember the day
that you thought about it but waited.

It couldn't hurt to give
that memory back
if you have it.

*and of course
there was no answer