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A Valentines Day Poem for my Lover

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

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You extend your right arm

For me to come in and lay down.

We’ve done it, like this,

At least five thousand,

Four hundred seventy five times,

The exact same, wonderful way.

And always,

You are the first to disappear,

Leaving me to your heart’s beating,

The rise and fall of your chest,

Its hair tickling my nose.

I think, should I die before you,

You will remember this,

And no lover will quite take my place–

Not in this deepest intimacy.

Did I say I love you—

Before you went away in dreams?

Did I say I love you?

 

 

Anesthesia

24 Friday Nov 2017

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Is this what it’s like
To be dead? 

A big FAT blank.

Not even being able to think–

Is this what it’s like
To be dead?  

************

Nothing.

************

Nothing.

************

Nothing.

************

Hello!

************

Is this what it’s like 
to be born?

The whole world
In front of you.

Your happy places,
Spread like golden pastures

Just waiting for you to gallop through,
Thinking, singing, screaming–

Is this what it’s like
to be born?

Synchronicity: The Herd

02 Tuesday May 2017

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20170419_211840We must move together,
One mind, one soul,
One body, one purpose,
Says the herd.

We’ll bend our necks
To the ground,
Bite off blades of grass,
Like so: the Mustang,
The palomino mare,
The old sorrel gelding.
See how our heads line up?
Front, right legs forward,
One ear to the herd,
The other to the sky,

And bird sound:
The high pitch
Of the kildeer,
nesting in grass nearby,
The chattering of the geese,
The barn swallows,
returned to their nests,
Above our stalls.

We hear their song,
A composition,
Carried by the wind,
Through pine,
Through aspen,
Through crocus
And snowdrops.

We must move together,
One mind, one soul,
One body, one purpose,
Says the herd.

Flying Things

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

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1.

Under the wings of Canada Geese,

Rushed time:

 

Moments we wept

In our loss,

Wept in our fear,

Abandoned each other.

 

I stood alone,

Amid an ocean of dry leaves,

As the sky flew by in freedom,

And helplessness.

 

2.

How can I forget

That great yellow butterfly,

As big as a barn swallow?

 

It hovered around you,

Like a message

You wouldn’t hear.

 

Finally, it landed on your bare shoulder,

As you stopped work,

Leaned against your shovel,

 

Encircled of frail spirit,

And our children,

Chasing, laughing around you.

 

While I, woman in flight,

Watched silently from the back door,

Knowing I was letting you go.

The Way

28 Saturday Jan 2017

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The way the sun lit the branches of the aspen,

Traced the snow-lined needles of the Ponderosa,

Shone off each blade of grass in the dry circle

underneath that great pine, surrounded by snow.

 

I said, the way, as if it would lead to a thought,

But, in fact, it leads to fog, or the lifting of it,

Near the tiny Lilac bushes,

And, further still, across the blanket of snow–

A blanket that someone lay upon,

But not under, leaving an impression of a body,

The soft parts, blown away

From the crisp, frozen parts.

Look further still, through the lifting,

You’ll see the great Spokane Mountain,

And all the trees and houses

Which lead from here to there.

 

For a moment, you may think you can touch it,

Stretch, reach out your hand,

Trace your fingertips along its lonely edges,

And lift it into your arms.

The Coldest War

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Capo 3   (Am, Em, G, C)
His letter arrived on January Two,
He said the British were coming, but the snow came, too,
And they didn’t have food, and they didn’t have shoes,
He wanted to be home, but had to stay through.

Chorus:
Dan, Dan, come home to me if you can.
Leaving now won’t make you less of a man.
Come home to me now, if you can.
Come home to me now, if you can.

 
Soldiers were buried like sheep in the snow,
They were almost smothered by the storm.
The salt water froze, so the boats stood still,
And there wasn’t an escape from that wintry hell.

Chorus.

 
By the time my words arrived, Dan was already gone.
He didn’t have a chance to heed my sweet begging song.
And, the storm went its way, as if it hadn’t ever come,
And the world went on and on.

 
Dan, Dan, you’ll always be my sweet lovin’ man.
You’d have come to me if you’d had the chance,
But the world had other plans.
Yes, the world had other plans.

Where Are You Beautiful: A Song

31 Saturday Dec 2016

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Fingerpick C, G, Am, F repeat

 

Who are you,

And where are you beautiful.

Where’s your song,

That you must sing?

 

Lose yourself,

In all that is beautiful,

What’s torn apart,

What’s crumbling.

 

What’s Crumbling?

 

                                        Improvise

 

Let me hear

Your sweet song.

What makes you cry?

What sets you free?

 

It’s you and me

On the edge of losing

All we have,

To eternity–

 

To eternity.

 

                                      Improvise

 

 

Tell me now,

Where are you beautiful.

What makes you cry?

What makes you sing?

Song of the Chickadee

23 Friday Dec 2016

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There’s a rule among birds,

If it’s singing, it can’t be killing,

Which may, or may not, be true,

Except for the family of plump chickadees,

Who wintered beneath our cedar arch.

With their black caps and gray-backed wings,

They flitted from rail, to pan, to chair, to deck,

To aspen perch, peeking in at us,

Until I plucked my first A minor–

The 3rd and 5th string,

A melancholy chord found in most songs,

Even the chickadees’, it turns out,

When they hear you sing.

What is Aleppo?

15 Thursday Dec 2016

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“We didn’t want anything else but freedom.

This world doesn’t like freedom.”

Abdulkafi Alhamdo, Professor of English, Last Call from Aleppo

What is Aleppo?

All that it was, or dreamed to be,

In rubble. Have you seen rubble?

It’s what hope looks like when it’s collapsed,

Reduced to broken chunks of asphalt

And twisted, distorted beams of rebar.

It’s brown. Not dark brown, but light brown,

The color of dust.

There is no truth, but suffering,

And the realization no help is coming–

No haloed army, no golden trumpets,

No white horses or heroes.

The choices you made,

In your heart of hearts,

Choice, like stone in your heart,

That is Aleppo now–

Stone in your heart.

 

The Cold That is Loneliness

15 Thursday Dec 2016

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The cold that is loneliness–

Ice, snow, hunger.

Did we care

The days had shortened?

Dark mornings,

Dark afternoons,

We stumbled, it’s true,

But don’t we all stumble,

Slide on the ice–

A dangerous toboggan

Of metal and glass and rubber

Just sliding,

sliding, sliding.

Where will it stop–

Against a sign, a bank of snow,

An oncoming car?

We turn the wheel

Left, then right, then left

And tap on the brakes,

Hoping they will catch

Onto something solid.

 

My love, turns out

You were the solid thing

On which I caught.

Beautiful Mustang

21 Thursday Jan 2016

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Beautiful Mustang

Beaty’s Butte, Oregon 2007

Some things survive
Despite capture,
Despite fear.
Like memory,

How it felt
To take those first
Feeble, free steps,
Then stretch your neck
Toward breasts,
And the reward
Of warm milk.

The world was starving,
But some things survived,
Like the smell of sage
When your bodies
Lay down at night
And crushed the stems.
You dreamt of flight,
On strong legs;
You dreamt of rest,
Under the mahogany’s shade.

Some things survived,
Like the smell
Of your dam’s fur in rain,
The smell of her sweat.

The sound of her separation
survived, too,
The calling back and forth
From pen to pen,
Your first real lesson
On what it’s like
To be loved.

That way.

In the way
Of the terrible missing.

Some things survive,
Despite capture,
Despite fear.
Like memory.

beautiful watching may 09

 

Connection

17 Thursday Dec 2015

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12359931_1028927123816394_2292326234560685569_n

Sit deep, deep in the saddle,

Your ankle, hip, and shoulder

A line, that dissects some star

And continues past,

“Where does space end,”

The question your teacher asked

In the fifth grade.

Which is to say, it never ends,

And I can’t help thinking,

I don’t either,

Nor does this horse,

Engulfed in her own heat,

Evaporating into the cold air

Of another December.

What is it about two souls

That makes the one feel alive,

Connected, two dots, through which

A line extends forever,

Pierces a fabric, so thin,

We were together all along,

Though we didn’t know.

 

 

 

Light In a Black Hole

03 Thursday Sep 2015

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In the center of the Milky Way,

Exists a black hole

Equal to 4.3 million suns.

Its gravity so strong,

There is no light.

We stand on the edge,

An event horizon,

Or, the point of no return,

As refugees push out

And we argue about definitions.

Mothers and fathers,

Children,

Who dream of a good Germany,

A Europe with jobs and new homes.

They launch into black holes:

The Aegean Sea,

The Dark Sea,

Floating back in waves,

Absent of light.

We wonder at this hell,

A place of suffering,

And hope for something beyond,

A better place

Where there is love,

There is light,

Light in a Black Hole.

Break the Way

31 Monday Aug 2015

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Break me the way, you heavy hammer, 

To the deepest bottom of my heart.

Poem by Henrik Ibsen, on his Tombstone

The whir of fan,

the ticking clock,

My breathing, my heartbeat.

There is something

Pulling toward loneliness,

Stopped short by a good book.

The Complete Works of Ibsen.

I follow Nora through the door,

Oswald to death,

Karsten Bernick to truth.

I rush to keep up

With Solness, the Master Builder,

As he clambers the scaffold

To the tower’s highest spot,

Wreath in hand, dizzy, forgetting

He is destined to fall.

How intimate, to descend alongside

These haunted souls,

Hearts and motives exposed,

Laid out for me to judge or pity or pardon,

Or none of the above.

The truth of it fills my need

To hear true words spoken,

Even if only in my head.

Break the way, hammer.

Heavy hammer, break the way.

Norway: Henrik Ibsen

10 Monday Aug 2015

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“Let me tell you–that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.”

Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, Dr. Stockmann’s last words.

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Henrik Ibsen Skien

Henrick, Enrique, they say, HenReek.

The Henrik of Ghosts and A Doll’s House,

And Enemy of the People.

In Norway, he’s everywhere:

The looming statue in Skien

Framed by the bay,

And the old church

With its two sky-high spires,

towering above the ash-built town.

He refused to return there.

His ending, instead, Oslo,

Where the palace street

Bears his name.

The false doctrine that is the masses

Adore him, bend and kiss

The floorboards of his childhood home.

The compact majority, unwilling

To stand most alone,

More like Peter than the crazed doctor,

United in their fear,

But willing to tread anonymously

The now hollow path,

And bask in its echoes.

The Barn Swallows, Drowned In the Trough

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

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I can’t bring death to a world

Where everything dies.

Not even a spider in the front eve,

Its shadow, at night, a good five inches.

It scares the hell out of me,

But how can I fault her,

For dropping down, thread by thread,

And spinning her web.

I can’t add her death

To a world where everything dies.

And yet, I pulled two dead barn swallows

From the galvanized trough by the barn.

I regret, the shallow Victorian bird bath

I wouldn’t purchase, for fear

I’d lure the precious birds to our cat.

Despite trying to avoid bringing death,

It came anyway,

To a world where everything dies.

For Bernie

28 Tuesday Jul 2015

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The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love–
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

(Dirge Without Music, Edna St. Vincent Millay)

The Fall came in shadows,

The poetry,

Cancers of breast and prostate,

The tumor in the child’s lung,

By December it emerged

Another way, unpredicted,

Because who can predict death?

Fierce and final,

I would say it ravished,

But that would imply he may have lived.

And he didn’t.

What’s the word for being all gone,

The home you built, inhabited by strangers,

Growing cucumbers and tomatoes

In the garden you put away?

Did you think you’d see April,

The planting of the seeds?

Or July, with its harvest?

New hands take up old work,

And so, it goes on without us.

After a short time, even memory,

Struggles to keep us alive.