then settling again, they are tied
to the trees, just like me.

they come to the pond,

"the pond of one"

where the fish
are sleeping, they
are somewhere deep.

dreaming of spring.

and the winter feels long,
but it is just beginning.

i am preparing for the long
night.  i walk along a river
of ice, but i am all right.

a man with strong hands,
walks beside me and he
talks to me and he listens
to me talk,

he is a gentle force, quiet and
trying.

tonight he will be flying,

a world away, he races
toward the new year.

i hold back, and wait.
i will not run towards it.
i will not run from it.

i trace my steps
in reverent silence
along the
mariana, the barren
waste land, the garden
of eden.

we all are shifting, moving,
changing.  a hole punched
through the day sky, a
peep hole into the dark, dark
night.  a universe full and
glittering, littered with
black holes and sun light.

i tread in the fish stew,
my toes ever seeking
the stability of the bottom.

my tippy toes playing
hide and seek with survival.

but i am not one pulled
all the way under, my head
bobs above the waves,
my eyes dance with the moon.

i remember. i swim with the fish
but my head is with the stars.

       "how do you make a good life?"

                     "you are good -

                           it is just this simple,

                                it is just this hard"

2016 ~ what can I even say? but you know I will say something :)

Thanksgiving 2015, mom was failing, it was our last holiday together, the last time I saw her.

She was so tired and frail ~ she and Ella and I laid in bed ~ I stroked her hair ~ she said that my brothers and I kept running around her ~ her mind wandering back to the time when we were small, tow headed and innocent beyond belief ~ we were running and laughing, bickering and chasing ~ and then we ran out of her room and we didn't come back ~

and she reached out for us, she was alone and lonely ~

and she cried, yelling after us then whispering,


     "where did you go?"


      "where did you go?"


where did you go?


and 2016?  a rush and a flash, :olde time she is a flying:

healing, trying to heal, buying a 100 year old home,  finding out my dad had cancer,  trying to fix up a  100 year old home (i yai yai), my grandpa dying, taking on preschool at work (blowing my mind!!), leaving my beloved high school and middle school, my daughter beginning high school (????), my 25  year high school reunion (that I couldn't make it to),  finding out my dad's cancer had returned ( :( )  walking and talking with my husband and my friends and my daughter ~

in short, life moving on ~ the world turning ~

here we are, this is our moment ~

2017, here we come . . .

but it is from the past that we view the future:

the mist, heavy and grey
descends
quiet then hushed
even more silent than
the misted time before.

at the nape of my neck?

a fire

     < a place for fire >

the hearth at which you
can keep warm

and the dark one?
he lives on the shadow side
of the moon.

he never knew the sun.

he did not know.

he will live 100 hundred lives
and it will not be undone.

but now?

 c'est fini.

and what of us who love?

     "we are a bit undone."

yes and hush and . . .

in the deep.

swim the manatee.

and i whisper into her ear,

"people are disappointing"

    ~ even, when they do not mean to be ~

but still she trusts the sea.

and we swim, and we love one another,
we give birth then we die.

we are at peace, dreamless sleep.

you and i.

we are flesh and ash,
dirt and star dust.








but wait,
      (dear sweet, child)

where did she go?

who will eat the butter cream roses
on her birthday cake?


.......................................................................


she came in like a scorpion.
     fierce and ready to fight for what was hers.

birth right and being right, walking
the aisle dressed in white.

but she left, an archer.
     redeemed and afraid, fragile with love.

abandoning clarity for creativity.
relinquishing certainty for tenderness.

letting go the willfulness, to embrace the wide open
           spaces inside her sparking mind.

and though i was broken by her death-trap claw.

i had my own claws, daughter to her mother

     after all.


and even through my eleven thousand cracks,



           one hundred billion sparkles of light shine


                     they speak in deafening hum, the silence


                             quieting the haunted shreds of the angry temple.

and there,

                                                         (hush, hush the silence is growing)

     the mirrors

one after the other
       stacked, against the orange
bricks, aligned and close
           to the fire.

in the reflection, you see
       everything you are,
         
           exactly opposite.

crazy times, whispered lines spinning.

time and space.

the deep, unfathomable waters.

angels fly, their wings
blur, constellations unaware

of their origins.




and in the beginning, i was
surrounded by quiet.

my ocean, the sea, a reflection.

this is un-ending. without edit.

the story, before the story.



we were trees, green and slow to grow.

old growth, undying.

i know hell,
the flames,
the demons,
a devil.

i know heaven,
        i had some peace
       to try, some
           manna to taste.

                                         
                                                        (hush, hush, the wild things are birthing)


these are the things
we find.

earth, third planet,
blue alive and dying.
i did not want to
come, i was tired
deep into my marrow.

but once i drew the
mantle of oxygen
around my shoulders,

i cried for the joy

for the devouring pain
for the love
the fragile beauty

    of it
         
            all.


                                                         (hush, hush, you are wrapped in the loving)


you know and i know.
when the oxygen hits,
everything blue changes.



we are red,
   
             shocked and shocking.

and here, the robin's nest
brimming with the most
fragile of all hope.

there is copper and rust,
koi swimming, tender roots,
poppies blooming,
monarch wing set against blue sky.
patina and worn leather.

beating hearts and tired hearts.
new hearts and a louder beating
beneath all these things.

and all the while, the fire is burning.

i know much about the living.

i know even more about the dying.

and even as she was eaten away.

dark coils and
marigolds grew in her garden.

robin's nests and rabbit warrens,
built inside the click of her needles.

while her strength held, she
knitted one thousand X 11

knots and seeds, nests and garters.

she whispered into the seams of his
bandages, she incanted the quiet room
of the Wabet.

this was her way, and so be it.

and her fate was sealed,
no prayer could undo it.
it was "quiet, quiet"
then the quick explosion.

but his fate?

one woven by another and not by he?

it could be undone, the bandages
wished into a cocoon.  but for all
things ~

a price ~

                         but to pay it?

"remember," whispered the night sky.

"your death is much
longer than your life,"

one as
certain as the other is
unknowable.

hush the hum, and follow the star gazer.

"i have known the queen, even as she
taught her workers to make the comb,
then the sweetest thing,

                       wax and wane and hex and oath."

you can move closer to her, and be less afraid.
but you will lose everything that you have made.

just as the caterpillar, green and fat and knowing
nothing of life but the milk and the weeds.  must
abandon all sense of reason, to follow the gold dust,
the god lust,

                     you must cut off your head to enter the
                              land of plenty.

there is honey in the rock and a sea divided.

you must wish your wings into existence,
and look into the eye of the universe ~

this is how you fly away,
     i am sorry,
         
          there is no other way into it.

the slide begins, but the garden is still alive.

      a soft hum, a busy hive

i try to not think often or much of the skinny
days to come.

      ~ comme ce, comme ca ~

                   i walk, and i cannot yet
see my breath grabbing onto icy air.

     < there, there >

breathe and take the river for a walk.

     the sedum is a pink flush against
     the translucent, jade green of the chrysalis.

this is far and away above fool's gold,
foolish girl, this is the real thing!

she lives beneath your feet, you can
     feel her shift and heave.  she dances
in the middle of the night, she
     leaves on the light.  and you wake.

          (close your eyes, say goodbye to the stake)

you hear her sing, an alone tune
and full of joy.  monarchs float,
full-throated and preparing,

                                           there is a journey to be had.

many argue over and feel certain they
     can see through the end and
                                           into the ever.

you need not fight, you carry the forever
     wrapped in careful packages inside

the spiral staircase and the honeycomb cave.

when you enter, a million whispers to sweep
     you away.  the grains of sand, the soft decay.

and just when you think you are floating above it all.
     she sees you and says,

               "i know you, i know you, come and sit beside me ~ fold me into your hug"


but you will walk on, you know where your embrace belongs.

and then from the dream i was pulled.
i did not want to go, i was tired
and my nerves were a fiery ache.

but still, i was torn away and thrown
hurtling through time and space.



the first time i died, i was taken by the earth.
dirt filled my lungs, and sweet william bloomed
inside my rib cage.  birds alighted on my
white bones, and I became a home.

the second time i died, i was taken by the water.
the glacier found me and ate me up.  my skin
turned blue ~ all my thoughts, dreams,
and feelings were frozen in time and space.

the third time i died, my bones were crushed,
every part of me destroyed, so the fire was called.
i walked in slowly with relief.  all that i had been
was turned to ash and I became a new beginning.

the last time i die, i am guessing it will be the wind.
i will be swept and swirled away, taken up into the stars.
everything i am will return to that from which it came.
twinkling, silent rushes then I will become the dream.

lavender tea and the lightening to listen.

the warrior sets the perimeter,
he does not judge me,
he only ever loves me.

i can be kinder.
i can call the white roses into bloom.

i have known fine things.
net lace and dark mahogany, merlot in crystal.

i have know terrible things,
grenade words and earth too scorched to hold me.

someone i loved, stitched little
birds into linen.  they flew from
the fabric, making nests in her hair.

fledglings feeding from her shoulders.

she knew how to dance and sing.

she knew how to shoulder a loss so great,
it called her back to the beginning.

and in the deepest corners of my wondering,
the heron flies over me.

always.

11:11 and the 7, then the 3 follows me.

15, 15

stops my heart and aches me.

and the red-haired one?

he lays beneath the sunflowers,
and protects me day and night.

not many of us become angels or ghosts,
but he has become both.

a fháil dom? 

ní mór duit teacht ar an ghairdín.

i have taken the white road.
i am a ghost in this world.

i have walked through the prairie,
i have traveled the star spiral alone.

from a distance, i saw the storm
seed itself, so small and lonely.

it began to feed on all the sky,
it fed and it was hungry no longer.

no longer alone.

lightening in my spine,
thunder in my heart.

we lit the prairie on fire,
fire rainbow stretching across the sky.

i am not so proud, that i did not chase it.

whispers in my hair, you know i did
not catch it.

i did not catch it.

my hair is scorched, my soul is tired.

but there was nothing better than the
grasping and the gasping and the wishing.