I don’t have faith.  
I just know that I belong to my Savior Jesus.  I met her once when I was 11, at her humble single wide in a cramped trailer park and she made candied walnuts on a hotplate.  I didn’t find out until years later that she paid for my scholarship.  She had passed on by then; I wish I could have thanked her.

He arrived at Juvenile Hall at 7:00 pm looking like Mrs. Santa Claus, to take me into her home for a year.  I made some sarcastic teenage comment about the stupid country music on her car radio, and she tolerated it with a smile; saying ‘its not stupid, its simple.’ She showed me what a caring family looks like and didn’t kick me out for being a smart-***; gave me chores and a curfew to show me I belonged.

When I had no family or boyfriend in my life, I lived in a maternity home until my baby would be adopted.  Jesus was the stranger in the hushed hospital room holding my hand, after the medics couldn’t find the heartbeat in the ambulance, which was confirmed on the maternity floor, and I was taken to another floor so my crying wouldn’t upset the other mothers.  The room was small and dark and alone, and the clock on the wall took an eternity to move two minutes, for the entire night that I was in labor, the longest night in my life.   I didn’t remember someone holding my hand; I was so drugged for pain.  She showed me her arms two days later, so bruised because she didn’t leave me.

Jesus was the woman from Planned Parenthood on the other end of the phone, listening to me when I called the Women’s Clinic asking how I could find a doctor.  ‘ I just moved here, and I work at a minimum wage job, and I lost my baby a month ago, but how do I get a post-partum exam when I don’t have a doctor, or any money, or insurance?’  I was very matter of fact about it, I mean this was my circumstance and what to do?  She arranged a birth control exam because the state would pay for that, by a doctor who would give me the post-partum.  She also referred me to a support group.  I had been alone but she found me people who understood and could sympathize and help me accept grief.   I look back on that now; there were no sign-carrying Christians or Churches arranging the adoption who helped me, she was the only one who cared.

Ethereal and Base a harmony so diametric a solid.
Wisdom's forgiveness lands to the unyielding new,
white spray on black lava, merging
elemental minerals in salt water.
Life the mediator, yearns for compromise
algea harvests sunlight at the hard shore, grows into plants
fish munch coral creating sand washing up, a tree's foothold creating soil...  
can rock become Earth any other way?

Mother's beauty, an unknowable generous smile
and confident grace from the sun.
Ages
sitting wrinkled and depleted to her waist,
beauty transforms
into unknowable generous laughter alighting graciously from wise eyes,
like a flock of Heaven's doves so close to home
stirred by her running children: daughter and son.
All the while all the yearning is unrequited.

For her children, Beauty is vertigo,
painful reality rooted to the shore.
Eyes long for the horizon, Vision Country
between sky holding its breath and water measuring out patience,
The heart spills out futile on the crystalline sea,
but Sadness, belonging to clear water,
lightly buoys lonely Ecstasy,
Completes the voyage.

The Vision pairs selfless love with unmet desire,
opposites' harmony the firmament,
but the sound breaks from tension and the echoes fade,
and the senses footing gives way;
vertigo with dove's wings tied shut.
Descending minuscule between dissipation
falling through molecules of bliss,
and diffusing atoms of despair,
to the last remaining positive and negative
and the tension's silver thin wire between.

It cuts tied wings free,
slingshots the dove's soul back up,
at the last second, the tension's iridescent thread tangles loosely on her foot.
She hurtles back up through the scales of size:
Microns, amoeba, minnows, birds, primates, people,
over trees, looking down at cities, mountains, yet higher
borderless nations, green and sand continents,
and again all the crystalline blue seas.
The silver filament draws taut, holds the dove's ascent,
wings slowing in awe as she views Mother Gaea
her intensely brilliant sphere accompanied by vivid tiny stars.
in a cold cold soundless night...
Grandmother teaching her children to fly;
Beauty's yearning realized complete.

my bed became a sanctuary of nothingness.   But I fear emptiness.  Its close.  A paralysis of indecision permeates like frigid winter through drafty walls.  I decide to sleep in.  

Occasionally turning to see the clock- minutes, hours pile up like ***** dishes.

During broad daylight, the distant noise of a cessna impedes into my room, defining a vast separation.  One, maybe two people up there have an interesting life, an important destination.  Listening to their flight gives me something to do.  When they are gone, I have nothing left but a fingerprint stained glass of water.

By late afternoon, the lost day vaguely disturbs like seeing one shoe on a highway.  
Either painful or a waste, nothing good about it.  

Finally light dims.  A broken clock is right twice in a day, but since I'm the one who stopped, the clock catches up with my uselessness in bed.
The period on the sentence that I have, truly, accomplished nothing.  

Darkness justifies my nap.  A relief as I can finally end the day with some sleep.

I dream of being infinite, traversing the universe a narrow beam of light.  You pass me by a little faster, but turn around so we can create time together, to become here.

I dream of when we camped by a river's waterfall.  Half awake my eyes can see the tent filled with soft green light.  No light source but bright enough to see by, everything in the tent and you sleeping peacefully. Logic corrects me, says it a New Moon and I shouldn't be able to see anything.  My eyes agree and slowly darken, blind to the color of love's aura that I can still feel.

I wake.  Pour one bowl of cereal instead of two, remembering when you looked up from breakfast and said, "let’s ride our bikes across the country," just like that.  And just like that we did, halfway anyway.  1500 miles was just the beginning.  I love the places you take me.

I call you up.  "Let's not call them dealbreakers, ok?"

In Ohio I order a pizza.  The menu says one of the items I can put on it is Mango.  That's curious.
I buy a Hawaiian mango at the new Supercenter Grocery Store, and the check-out girl asks
what's this? and I say it's a mango.  She says, no it's not, that's a mango, and points to the green pepper.

In Hawaii, I work at a farm, and pick some Lilikoi. A customer asks my co-worker if we have any passionfruit, and she says no. They ask me if lilikoi is like passionfruit and I say its dakine, but she's a visitor and doesn't understand, so I say, it's the same thing.

There's a Hawaiian family with a fruit stand; I like to trade the extra lilikoi for their really good mangos they grow, but the Hawaiian word is Manako.  Since they know I always want manako, I ask dakine?  They were out, so instead he asked you want some Apples?  I thought he meant those little red pears they call Mountain Apples and looked perplexed when I couldn't see any, so he picked up a clump of miniature bananas.  *Oh, yes I love Apple-bananas.

Someone gave me a round metal button with a picture of Ghandi spinning thread.  He says the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.  This is true.  Finding the depth of life, what love looks like, was the most substantial, amazing gift my daughters gave me.

Even before each was born, I found myself tying my heart to each life, their future.  Before, I had always revolved around me and my survival, what was best for me. Now even what I ate and drank affected someone else directly.  Babies born so vulnerable they needed everything I am and needed the best I tried to be, with them first.  Their needs decided when or if I slept, when or if I left the house, where or if I would go.  But in return we both merged into the same clock, the same life for a few years, and I could see the world through brand new eyes.

A Preening Ego, fluffed from a career's fleeting recognition, is told to sit down for awhile.
Timorous Self-Esteem, a façade validated by producing the world's tokens, is put away awhile.
Resentful Self-preservation's ******* up importance, first in line grasping time, is ignored awhile.
Gratification never satisfied by a quick rush from the temporary is told to wait awhile.
Self-centered Goals, a calendar filled because empty is worthless, is taken down awhile.

The Grand Illusion is cleared away.

They grow so fast, I treasure their company.  The afternoon sun shines warmly through the living room window, skims over the top of the couch, reveals some lazy dust floating peacefully in the quiet house, and lights up my 9 month old daughter's baby fine brunette hair.  She has been studying a tiny colorful empty double sided box, the same size as her tiny palms, for 20 minutes. Little fingers working the top, figuring this all out;  I am so impressed with her attention span; this moment is so much more important than a schedule.   My younger daughter was born with brilliant blond curly hair, and tomboy laughter; so laid back nothing phases her.  She is a toddler, standing in front of the toy jeep driven by her older sister, who sits knowing she has all the power right now.  The younger is daring and knows she stands with all the power right now.  I hope they both remember they always do.  When they were in school, Iwas pleased getting notes from the teacher, telling me one is talking in class, or the other can't sit still, interrupting, because I knew they are happy.

Both of my daughters walk around with my heart in their hands and all I can do is pray for their well-being.

And that so happens to be the point of it all.

I've learned you're good at poker, but you're no player,
this, the second time I've seen you;  sizing you up, I like you.
Competent, aware, smart, unassuming. You're fit, tanned; obvious you take care of yourself.
Don't spend too long in these smoky sunless rooms fishing for money,
sitting for hours with pale coughing gamblers and their deceptively friendly banter.

There is only one other woman, her arm inked with a script tattoo Bad Jamie
One guy asks just how bad are you?
She replies, I'm so bad I drink milk straight from the carton, and the table chuckles.
But all joking aside, you're the chip leader and I'm only interested in you.
I raised from the Big Blind, I'm serious with pocket Aces, and everyone else folded.  
You on the little blind stayed in; you could have anything, with a practically free ante.  
I don't know why you've stayed even this long;
something tells me you want to see what I have.
  
The flop comes and the table tries to contain a collective gasp, three 8 s roll out.  
All the potential of infinity between us,
and I'm holding Wild Bill Hickock's dead man's hand, black with bad luck.  
Wow, how to manage this.

I've had no success of anyone staying with me before.
If I slow play it, hiding my cards close to my chest and check it down to the river,
he would fold at any hint of what I have,
and I’d be left just wishing with nothing in the ***.
If I come on strong, and he thinks he didn't catch anything or he's not even drawn to the river;
he would fold,
and I’d be left just wishing with nothing in the ***.


I study you, ascertaining me
with a look on your face like you just may have found something good.
So I do something totally unexpected, just say the truth outright
I've got a house full of dealbreakers.
You're looking at me as if no one else is in the room, and with a smile in your eyes you say
Lets not call them Deal Breakers, lets call them Deal Makers.
...... and I'm All In,
You call, but then ask chop the ***, be equals?  revealing
once-in-my-life quad eights, all that infinity in your hands, and the Queen of Hearts.
You say, hey, lets go...  and as we're walking out into unspoiled sunshine,
you reach into your pocket, show me a few sparkling diamonds in your palm and ask,
*you want these?

Every last highway narrowed to road diminished to ruts reduced to trail
eroded to footsteps and ended, choked by weeds, in all directions. Every last one.

Status Quo has led to dire starvation, protected behind walls.  
With no options the city is dumbfounded in famine.

But Nature concentrates disconnected genius and ungrounded creativity in a few souls,
So unique they don't fit in, isolated by their own perceptions.

Society cruelly throws them out to suffer alone the cold wilds,
into the throng of ravenous wolves.  Just as Nature intended.

Few of the outcasts survive, and fewer of those resourceful souls live to tell, or care to return.
The town warily welcomes them home, but celebrate the path that was forged to a new harvest.