The desert during a heat wave,
Quiet browns and reds,
Sandy rock for miles and miles and miles.
We sit in havens of shade beneath hanging rocks,
Socks prickled with cactus needles.
This windswept planet foreign from rainy eastern green.

Waiting until the hostile angle of the sun lowers to the crux of the mountains,
Shadows extend as jackrabbits skirt around us.  
Les fougères poussent bien à l’ombre.

We climb on top of the tallest hill,
Backs on hard uneven sandstone,
Covered in petroglyphs, we look up.
The stars begin slowly, then all at once.
Salt spilling on black paper, the arch of Orion’s arm
Whirls near Sagittarius and Perseus.
26,000 Light years from her,
Swirling in the dark.
The wind said,
This is now the place for you:
Our galaxy, a heaven.
The stars, a liturgy.
My desert, a temple.

Small video collages of opening eyes
Neurons firing and  
Right times in right places.
Homes painted after hospital beds.

What else?

Every minute of the dream was the brightest orange sunrise
We were camping in the middle of the field
I looked at you inverted,
Accepting what we already knew.



My heart is split in different places.

endless tirades of drunken tea, 100% cotton or cashmere.  mahogany polished, spiraling printed hallways and open rafters, dry summer heat and white gravel driveways.  the love for the deafening, harrowing silent divide.  not a single measuring utensil in the kitchen.  write a letter, seal it, see it off.  the leader and only follower.  holding someone’s hand that isn’t a lover.  sleep in the same **** bed, thin and worn but the softest feathery pink threads.  earth’s pulse slows, a meditative house.  pluck haloed moon threads to braid ritual belief.  art is observing closely, within, slowly, away.  it is fast, fire, air.  it is every sacral deranged golden filament scattering in sun-caught beams and rays of listening acutely to ecological love songs. awake from dreaming, downstairs on the wooden stool before the early sunlight, the days and days for her and her.  brushing one head of hair became two, became the sisters she longed for.  the rituals we seek.

Some days in crowded streets,
Loud restaurants,
Drunk wedding receptions,
Laying on the grass,

   I look at my hands.
   They move in light and shadow
   Trompe l’oeil religion.
    
If I see them,
Believe in them,
Or trust them?

The canvas,  
The beach,  
The borderline,
The liminal space where my body is  

[mine]

The sun is setting and I’m not alone—
We hiked to the middle of the Appalachian trail,
I don’t know who I am  
But the colors are moving
Nothing has felt so pristine.

On top of white rocks,
This is not a dream.  
A ridgeline where we lay our coats on the diagonal granite
Hands lightly touch on cold stone
Over pristine valleys of moving trees
Stretching from the blue ridge mountains.

My heart is not falling—it is ascending  
Like the summit,
Like the valley below
Floating in space
On the spirit of boulders, we scramble up with open hands.
Covered in delicate bonsai roots
Connecting the longest trail in the world,
Two thousand miles between us but we’ve never been closer
   In a warm car, floral turtlenecks, squares of paper
  I close my eyes because it’s too much
And the sun is gone.

Small movements lift white sheer curtains,
As I sit at kitchen tables in silence,

Rain touches the window like a morning kiss,
Pulling me from a dream, or a seance by a string.
The breeze navigates the house like a breath or a flood:
Silk falling from silk,  
Words falling from bridges,
This air is a pleasant dream.

Choose what is real or not,
Resurrect lingering memories like  
Transparent negatives overlaid in your hands:
There is a light and dark,
But an inverse of each.
Sewn together in a warm mess,
Liquid and melting light in time
Habitually, it drips from your fingers
Like rituals of burying artifacts
Far beneath the sun.








Before the leaves fell and the frost protected thoughts in a numb glaze,
I fell into the steam of chamomile tea,  
Pervasive yellow sweetened air
Swimming through medicated words like a needle before surgery,
A silence that amputates and eradicates
Hauntings of resurrection.

Two candles on a mirror.
Lighter clicks, sparks, reflects.
Dual realities.
Two sisters, burning from
Separated souls.


A gold coin widens slowly with heat,  
the room bathes in energy, clear and warm.  


Heartbeats flicker over white canvas sonograms.  
Evening light spills from the horizon,
An overturned glass of iridescent breath.  
Clouds hover like a ghost, a new melody of space.  

I blow candles out.  
Their love remains.





Under the mirror, the memory of light unfolds, a mitosis of energy.  I regard the extinguished flame, tranquil smoke running through the room like a prayer.  Under the wooden table, a carving with the initials of his name.


The love wanders to your open hands.  They move and smear with oil paint, mixing the sage green tablecloth, kinetic orange heats a canvas.


Nothing is the same
Relaxing, water replaces air
Everything is different now.
Nothing is the same.

Sunlight still leaks from the window like  
Dripping faucets against a clogged drain.  Her hair was turning blonde again, like when they were younger.
Humming, she was
Remembering his hands



















An emotional limbo where forgiveness waits
Intermediate neglect in oblivion
Lapsing into another’s life,
What’s inside you is not like anyone else
Every instant, a new reflection

More than sinking, less than swimming

Float on,  float on,  float on,  float away

I write letters,
Painted during golden hour.  Dimmer in the trees.  I must remind myself of it.
Walking up the fire escape and looking at the stars, I knock on the window, he looks gentler.
The most beautiful day here yet; the colors break down from pixels to prayers.
In person, virtual, ambivalent depths of shadow.
Peaceful and sincere, I need the essence of it.



I hope you’re having peaceful dreams,  
Smoke from burning mint,
Shakey & slow
Push energy back in me
What speaks colors in you

An oil spill underneath the ceiling light,
When you close your eyes, I am sunlight on water.
The reflection of my tears were colors
Gentle reminders to love.

If you ever miss me remember I didn’t walk away,  
I laid on the grass in the sun & watched the clouds,
Building cairns in the stream.


I was painting on the floor in your room,
It was raining in the basement hallway outside.
The walls were mirrors,
Trees and vines grew up your white walls
A foggy night and a stream formed outside your window
Where I snow fall for the first time.

A few days before summer break,
We went cliff jumping and it was warm again.

It is always lightly raining with open windows when we sleep together
There will always be more growing and learning
In your absence.

I thank the moon
sensuality and scrying in black clear pool
what veils keep
full disk brightens sheer membrane
lilies open
snowdrops retrace delicate steps
pull back fresh white sheets
morning arrival stretching growing resonating closing
departure shrinking suffocating apology
taken off in navy blue clouds
outline rainbow hallows
midnight clouds lift
sunset pollen constellations scatter
golden handmade paper
cut and torn seams
repurposed cloth covering
calm enough to fall asleep with
curled against her sweet face
I’ve never dreamt until a deer
casts a shadow on my shadow in dim blue light

I thank the moon

There is a ladder in the woods,
A tall V pointing up, four trees connected  
Unwound DNA of our bodies  
dreams of intertwining above the sun.

Two sisters climb down either side,
Metal feet spear painted leaves.

There is a forest between the ladder,
And beyond, a glassless window of autumn.
Fallen leaves like angels’ slender bodies
Reading in the dirt; old wine and stale memories rinsing their mouths.

i want to sit next to my sister - we do not have to say anything --- do I recognize her as a near 30 year old? - i want to stop and curl and curve my body like a little conch shell - i want to hum like the ocean - the songs of infants - the hands of grandparents - i want to laugh on my death bed - surrounded by bugs and bees digging deep into pollen cradles, clawing and rolling in dust, rocking wind.

i want to braid my sister's freshly washed, cool, clean turquoise green hair.  it feels like it has been years since i did something so simple, so caring.  i want to sit and weave it until there is almost nothing left, but the silk aqua rope i can run my fingers down like water.  i want to thread the pieces over and under my heart strings.  she is the earth, the sky, the moon - the altars of rocks - the shapes we see in them.

///
i dreamt of a woman sleeping - she was made of sand - she was off the shore of new york city --- before the sky scrapers, streets, pandemonium --- with purple kelp for hair.  she was so beautiful - a sand bar, as big as a dune, beneath a thin layer of sun-warmed translucent water as open as day.   she was silent, laying like a fetus on her side under the waves.  i swam to her, held in on the loose sand like an anemone. \\

i want to sit on a warm rock in the sun - overlooking the valley, the lake, the blue mountains.  i want to be the Appalachian air - i want to do nothing - but to live.  i want to listen and dance and run and flow - join a coven, scale a cliff.  i want to talk to the night, watch birds and find mushrooms - follow magical, mysterious things.  oxblood berry juice runs down my fingers.

filling the bath up to the overflow drain - i want to fix the faucet.  spaces became smaller, memories overlap and forage in Michigan forests.  the sprawl and creep - moss inches glacially over our backs.  the spine remains on the island, the bogs embalm.  i sit sweetly, cross legged, twisting my hair around my finger - thinking of pebbles as road systems, sycamore and sumac houses.  the quietest, mildest evening sunlit place you could imagine bathed in green and gold, grace - lit and heaven - struck.  a place of peace, calm, warm.

i am thinking about the sound of the stream through the house, how we always can choose simpler.  i want permeable walls to the sunrise - to rain sounds - to the crickets and cicadas and spiders - to the smoke, the fog, the mountain laurel.  wild raspberries are wisps of cadmium red on raw canvas.  ducks fade in and out of graphite and watercolor drawings against the sky // buoyant on the pond, hawthorn and mugwort dreaming.

i want to see the flickering rainbow lights, sit on a fairy's wing.  sway and jump and spread my arms wide - wide - wider - up - up - and up!  iridescent, shining, on a beam of light.  i am lighter than air, i am the essence of light.  the memory of time.

a copper suncatcher eye, a fragmentation through a lens.  i want to sit - i want to rest and run backwards in my mind - upside down and through the channels of plants - tracing each petal of a daisy.  the circulatory system of green canopies.  i want to turn off and on again, i want to be shocked and taken to the sea.

the patterns take me, the colors soar.  i sit and feel the love from everything.  it is tangible, weaving itself between my fingers like yarn.

uncover my soul, tell me it is real?  i want to make - i want to remember - i want to plant, eat, grow.  i sit and revel at it all - my motherhood, my sisterhood, their daughters.  the womb, the darkness to light to the peat.

to live in a spiral bound sketchbook, in my great grandmother margaret's wooden, hand-painted pencil box.  i would make the memory of her love my home.  the piano keys float through open kentucky windows to the garden.

i tighten the knot, the bread rises in the corner of the kitchen.  i live in a place where i am but i am not - the story is told, i put together the pieces differently.  the forest shatters, i'm holding a piece of the mirror from 3 years ago.  it shimmers, cuts, fades, dissipates the bass neon jungle throughout the night - i find it all incredibly comforting and dizzying, being made of love to love to be loved.

the moon phases - arcs - dips - dives - toward you - through you - glowing, resonant, alive  //\||

A small area of wooded shelter,
Hammocks in the sun, a warm fire with toasted sandwiches and beer,
It was where the rabbits chose to laze this evening.

The sky reflects in the muddy pools of our sticky footprints:  
The last mark of my being.
The air will diffuse into my body like a vaccine,
A warm bath,
Falling asleep.

Its quiet and her cuts have been cleaned.

asserting sleepless wounds cut like a knife
indenting and pulling splinters from tables
it tastes of forest paths
fungi returning sky to syllables
acres of where
veils descend upon twirled twine
fraying between fingers
frantic
numbing
november rains writing cursive letters
fastening the earth
slanting struck match
l’épée of cedar within smoke
upon incense glow
they assemble reeds
in dying light, retreat, stories upon dreams upon memories within our never-ending

the wall fell away: sun evaporates landscape, the cars, the ever present concrete, orchids resurrect inside, clawing fern wallpaper flowering baby’s breath doused in illustrious orange light thick as down blankets
graphite illuminates curves of bodies, a womb and a heart, 1063 degrees of interconnected

living in a greenhouse, northern frosted January feathers wood paneled, southern carpeted floor
salt covered opaque film
musty smell of ancestral altars
pianos tuned in the last century sing Austrian lullabies, purple wood peeled back, smiling gaps of teeth veneer cinnamon hues
the spirits of those we never met
but share cupids bow, brown eyes, high cheekbones,
the hunt for the perfect wine cap

the daughter will have a daughter, the sun crests over the mortar, up delicate tendrils of transpiring verdant circumnavigators
it’s midnight and the sun hasn’t moved an inch —// it spreads between webs of fingers, behind my teeth.  pulsing red clay with fingerprints, rabbit tracks, deer paths carving the canyon as spirits float by ‘’’
attune to them, sulfur in the dark

winter threads needle’s eye
turning wheels again and daughter knows
what grandmother thought
of sumac and dogbane, oxeye daisy and lemon balm
crescent moons imbedded in palms,
striped shells from freshwater creek click against teeth
trusted within sand, ever-present spine, joining figments and childhood never-ending
sand spills through fingers, breath before the ocean, terracotta speckling periphery of view

I can imagine, now, what she sounds like

on his birthday, a trick of the eye
a chime, lime green glimmering dark
slowly, a harp being plucked.  another chord - a melody unfolds.
buoyant hum -- the first of seasons, the first of firsts.

climbing the rocky, root-laddered hill, Sylvia's blackberrying echoes on my breath.  she frames the bakery courtyard, the home hill (an old couple planted daffodils under them, every year we cut some for our mother), and the bushes next to our apartment.  my foot arches around the curve of a root, and an oriole beams last rays of sunset as he darts into the dark.  cinnamon, caramel, and chocolate waft off my clothes.  they dance with the open, earthy, and full scent of her, encompassing.

intertwined, woven in the basket that held my mother's ribbons, our gratitude, and the elementary playground (we climbed the fence behind the basketball hoops, stretching to reach and shake the pale purple, sweet berries).  coils of gold, glitter, silk, satin, the handprint leaves, the gradient of small white to full purple bumpy pockets of sun.  such of tangible happiness I could hold it - twist it in my hands... even braid it into my daughter's long blonde hair.

we watch the mother and her three fawns, so close.  I can be happy anywhere if I see my friends.  rabbits, deer, lightning bugs, blackberries, dawn redwoods, and birds at dusk.  If I close my eyes I feel the earth, the prickly grass, and ants' expedition across my legs.  I remember.  like the first time, being called home for dinner.  overturn a rock, mesmerized by the traffic of roots, bugs, the city underground.  every day is something to cherish, to fill, to love, to share, to learn, to explore.

we are reborn in art. where the forest swallows the city horizon, a cocoon of peace.  I am always transforming.  a cool stream carved the valleys of Pittsburgh, beyond the plateau of the meadow hill and through the winding trails.  sisyphus's stone is a pile sand; the rocks are smooth as I turn them over in my hands, no jagged edges in my pocket.  my footprints fossilize, collaged with clover, fern, daisy.  a resonance that opens your heart - bathing in belonging.  the sounds, textures, smells, colors, and creatures welcome you here.

the museum of outside.  it was one woman who wanted it.  now it is everything.  the pictures in the gallery sit still - i tell my children that we can play pretend.  jump in the painting.  take a deep breath.  what do you smell?  flowers, pine trees.  what do you hear?  rushing water, birds, wind, frogs ribbiting.  what can you feel?  splash the cold, clear water - woo!   can a museum be a place of joy, exuberance, noise?  can we see everyone represented in it - even the smallest of creatures?  why have we done so much to be 'industrialized', 'civilized', 'developed', if we have sterilized, destroyed, polluted, and erased culture - intrinsically related to land?  

I say thank you to all the beings.  I say it out loud.  Sometimes I whisper.  Sometimes I am too awestruck to do anything but gaze.
I wonder if my presence transforms them, too.  I teach in the museum the next day, waiting to surrender back to the blanket of green.  from marble floors, satin walls, glittering crystal, and hand-painted ceilings, to holding hands.  playing.  running.  being wild.  whispering I love you to all.

the lightning bugs love the tree - they almost seem to follow our path home.  

𓆣 · 𓆨 · 𓆤 · 𓆦 · 𓆑 · 𖦹 ·

I wrote your words on porcelain leaves
Petrified in lucid air
Shimmering like wounds
In true light, I paint  
Illusory rendered responses

Who’s to say the scene is not real – she speaks, breathes, walks in light?  My hands?  Her soul between the leaves?  
Belief in what?  
A reflective gospel.

Palette altars scatter the earth.  
Habituative, neurotic wildflowers  
Crawl from mirrored pools inverted in innocence,
Inviolate rhythms, hymns of absence.

Les fleurs suivent avec tous les pas que tu prends
et tout ce qu'ils fleurissent
Elle m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, a la folie, pas de tout /

The leaves are falling, they shatter form syllables of your voice.
















It is in itself,

[As I look at her ghost]

Love, I am already in the ground.

Painted leaves sway above us like cathedral glass

They categorize memories of light
Illuminating ripe windfall on forest floor

She walks South from the setting sun,
Blonde hair bathed in colors of heaven
A boy follows her path with an orange cat

Where is the wilderness of childhood?  
The time spent where you and I were together,  
trapped, open yet closed?

The canvas glows fervently  
Wandering between blind contours of trees
Arms outstretched; feet bare
Toes drift on warm earth.

What did I say to him?