There's that word
for girls like me:
the ones who
didn't see the point
of princesses.

The active ones who
run and jump and slide
and can't be bothered
to stand around the
playground sidelines,
whispering and trading
in spots of character assassination
or information.

"Tomboys" they call
those girls
and maybe later
"butch" or
"masculine of center."

I notice how
there's never
"feminine of center."

But really,
I've always felt impatient with that word
"Tomboys."

Why should a girl who wore
dangling earrings
but liked the things they label
"boys things"
want a word that suggests she's
something other than what she's not?
An aspirational boy?

A girl who grew up into
a closeted girl
with short hair, no make-up and a love of
jewelry.

Whose first girlfriend post-coming out,
took one look and said "But you're a femme!"

Please, please, understand.
In my heart I am a pirate king,
of the eighteenth-century variety:
big sword, big earrings, big weapons.

On the threshold of middle age,
somewhere on the spectrum of gender,
What word describes me?

Pearl earrings.  They came
in a red box with gold lettering
I unwrapped in the
restaurant parking lot
on a humid evening before
my college graduation
where we milled around,
waiting for our table.

My father's gift.

One year later, in the same place,
I put them on;
my father walked me down the aisle
to marry a good man.
Wrapped in a princess dress.
Towing a six-foot train.

My mother's dream.

They stayed in my jewelry box
for one decade plus five.
Years while I played
hide and seek with depressions
and wondered who that person
in the mirror was.

My straight persona.

When  I think of that now
I remember--
pearls are made of pain.
The substance the oyster makes
to coat the grit, or
whatever makes its way
into the shell.

The process transforming
the ugly, raw, pain
into the lustre of something
priceless.

She walks like a ballet dancer
headed for a fight.
Hands in pockets,
elbows akimbo,
the whole a pair of isosceles triangles
balanced above the rapid
heel/toe heel/toe
rocking grace of her strides.

She knows--
where she goes, who she is
what she wants.

There always was a face
under this mask--
living skin, stifled
under the thick, white layers
immobilized by:

fear

the expectations/exhortations/excoriations

Logic found at the bottom of
empty wine bottles,
the dregs and sludge of sediment.

Hairline cracks, deepening,
flaking, peeling,
tiny pieces, larger chunks,
the slow work of years
until

my fingers ripping, prying, tearing
a sudden rending of it all.

I raise my naked face to the sun,
feel the wind on my cheek.
Take one, long, full breath.

Hello.  It's good to be.

Morning bike ride. Wind
rushes past my face.
Light and shadow play
for space on the pavement.
All things are possible
in this new air.

Life is too short to
sit at wobbly restaurant
tables.  Get up now.

I worry myself,
pushing and punching my anxiety,
seeking some transformation
some alchemy to remove it,
sticking, stuck,
from my fingers.

Instead,  it spreads,
thickens, fat
strands of yeast
linking, tangling,
then rising
in the space I give it.

A question--how to let it rest
so my bread isn't
tough, sour in my mouth
rich but nourishing,
filling/fulfilled?

What balm is there
in being right?
Especially rightness,
righteousness
grounded in bitterness--
are you joining me in my misery?

I do not want
my happiness to come
at the expense of yours--
as if there were some
limited supply of it;
some small cupful--
snatching at the drops
that fall.

If I want compassion+mercy
extended to me
then I **** well better
extend it to others.

And so I go forward,
waving olive branches.

Will you grasp back?

I don't want to walk
in the margins of my life,
but straight through
the middle to the
Heart,  where
all is wild
and sticky
messy/joyful
angry/tranquil

But this is hard--
to stay in the middle,
to hand myself over to
change, a total conflagration
or, I know not what.

I remember then the audacity
of a single step.

When I think of Jonah,
it's not the storm
or the casting out
on shore, redeemed,
I think of.

I think of the
3 days in the
whale's belly--
the watching
the waiting.
Nothing to do
about it.

3 days.
A whale's belly.
A thing I can't
imagine.

Only, I imagine
the anxiety
the fear
the misery.

And, finally,
the light
the shore.
The casting forth.

What got
churned away?
What was left behind
in the process?

It's time now.
Cut back the roses
down to earth.
Cut back the canes
that bore the flowers,
raising brave heads to the sun,
Now, gone to hips
or browned remains.
A fading tangle on scrawny stems.

Cut back the canes,
sturdy but yellowing now at the edges.
See the old scars of past
cuttings, notches in the plant.
The places where growth ended.

Yet, new canes grew anyway,
bursting below, above, around
the stumps and scars,
or pushed, slender,
new from the ground.

Pile the cuttings.
See the brown, the green,
the yellow.
Marvel at the pile of growth.
Look at the plants, now
small. stripped.

Ready for rest.
Waiting for spring.

What happens when the certainties
are ripped from our hands,
and we stand,
clutching remnants, mere scraps,
winding them around our fingers?

As if to make permanent
that which was fleeting,
in spite of the prayers we uttered,
the sacrifices made, in hopes of
some gods propitiated--
so we thought.

The universe tilts,
all certainties end,
and we find ourselves in space,
clutching our remnants,
unsure of what agonies even
a single step, a toe forward,
can mean
when there was all meaning and now
none?

They say that
nature abhors a vacuum,
stillness not in our nature.
Restless, angry, grieving **** sapiens,
drifting across some landscape or other--
does it matter?--
when all around are signposts
back to what we lost?

Plod, plod, plod.
One foot in front of the other,
until we reach another place,
other scraps blowing against our feet;
we pick them up;
weave something else
weave ourselves
back into the fabric of
a place, a space,
our own selves

We talk so much
about letting go--
of each other, things, emotions--
as if somewhere
there is some garbage dump,
some pit
into which we cast
all those things that hurt us
break us
hold us back.

But what if we said
"I set myself free"
and walked away;
even if the walking is a process
and we set ourselves
free
inch by inch
moment by moment?

I tried to be, being,
oh so many things
to/for someone else
not myself.
And still, my heart sang.

I tried to break it, my heart,
to deny this truth,
my truth;
fill/feel myself full and overflowing with lies.
And still, my heart sang.

I tried to ignore it,
to stuff myself into
a narrow little box,
a stranger's life.
And still, my heart sang.

Still my heart sang.
Underneath all the pain,
rage, sorrow.
My heart sang, quietly,
my truth, my self.

My heart now sings
of love, of joy, of possibility.
Openly and truly now.
No fighting, no denying.
My heart now sings.

Morning walk in semi-sun.
Light gilds the last
of the figs, high up
on the branches,
burnishing them the bronze
of new pennies.

At the end of the year,
when all the months'
deeds, lessons, things done,
undone, the words uttered and not,
lie at my feet,
I exhale into light.

I wonder what
this day will bring?

"When you learn
to knit," he said.
"It's not a mistake
you make; it's
the thing that
makes your work
unique.

"Each one,"
he said,
"is a signature."

I think of my
life--with all
its lumps,
tangles, rewoven ends,
dropped stitches.

You are all
my signatures.

Today the fountain where
I sit and dip my feet
is half-shaded.
A month ago, the sun
baked, now
it warms.

I feel the creeping shadow
of autumn
the turn of the year
the descent into the dark.

A time to wait
to rest from blooming;
to let things germinate
beneath the earth.

I gather in my harvest
count the seeds,
store them up.

Cover over the fields.
And wait.

Even though the conversations
were often fraught, too heavy
with all of the unspoken
emotions and accusations,
guilt and grudges,
I still wish
I could pick up the phone.

Even though I had to
watch the time
to make sure that I called
before you went too far
down into
the daily hell
of alcohol,
before ethanol
loosened your tongue
and sent words spinning
off into the white cellular noise,
so you mumbled fragments
that I parsed like fragile papyri,
I still wish I could hear your voice.

Even though I would worry
about what you would be like with my kids,
I still wish you could see them.

Seven time we've done this now, and
I'd still like to know
what you'd think about it all.

Forty-Two:  equidistant
from twenty-two
from sixty-two.

What will happen
in this middle space:
raising kids
and sending off
parents--

Ending careers
and beginning
new ones?

What will I recover?
What will I leave behind?

I'm sitting outside
waiting for the preschool walk
to pass. Pool swim soon.

I ride in the mellow light
at the end of the day,
that flows
to mingle with the
gathering shadows.

And, I wonder, as I pedal:
if the possibilities of morning
have turned to certainties,
then can we embrace
the forgiveness, the healing
of day's end when
we all are enveloped
in the rich, rich light
that lingers, gently,
on the land
and in the faces
that pass me by?

I need a new vocabulary
to describe happiness now.

I didn't expect it,
the need for new words
to say "I love you."

But why not
since it means,
you mean,
how much more
than the sum total
of what was before?

Not to be measured out,
counted and qualified,
but felt along the
fibers of my heart.

I say those words
with a new clarity ,
a depth and humility,
springing up
from my heart

not the mouthings,
vain whispers,
of others' dreams.

Woken up now
I speak happiness
that is mine.

Standing at the car
under a fine drizzle
we traded children's things
back and forth.
Things momentarily housed, unhoused,
then rehoused again.  
A moment, only temporary, of stability.
Some of those last minutes,
some last lifetimes,
some last last fifteen years.

Back in the house,
I was momentarily homesick
for a place that no longer exists
except in photographs
and the living, breathing
bodies of our children
now sleeping in their beds.

We can comfort ourselves
with platitudes; say
"Life is short."
"It can change at any time."
Then the shock of the water,
the pool on opening day,
that phone call, that look
hits us, and we know.
The bruises and the tender spots,
the winces and the tears
that will never quite fade;
the stains that sit until,
familiar, we wouldn't find our way
without them.

Our navigational systems

In the beginning,
the wisdom shared in full knowledge,
by those who sailed before us,
is the lies we tell ourselves
to get through the day,
to get through the next hour,
to get through that minute:
we all know it.

But then the lies become insight
become truth
become wisdom.
And we're passing on the coordinates
to the next mariner, sailing on
the seas of disaster.

Poor souls--
the maps we use we make ourselves.

In this time of change
When I'm spun around
Turned inside out,
wrung and twisted
with all these
old clothes
that don't fit
and show all the holes and tears
that are the product of this life

When I'm waiting for the spin cycle
to wind itself down
I try to remember
Your love is always there.

Your hair is a curtain
and I see your eyes
glimmer behind the strands--
the strands I gather up
and fling around us

so that now it is a tent
enclosing two sets of eyes
that look and see and gaze

enclosing two mouths that
kiss, explore, connect.

enclosing two pairs of hands
that careers, cajole, create.

What is it about air
moving across muscles, tendons, tongues--
a simple miracle--
that fans the flames
I find in your eyes?

The way your hips
nestle into the space between mine
The little sigh you give as
you surrender to sleep.

The way your hand curls
into mine.

The weight and heft of
your plates as I lift
them down from the cupboards.

The mingling of our lives:
I measure it in the momentary,
the ordinary,
the mundane.

The things I hold
closest to my heart.