Confessions
Memories, decor at the old country house, objects speak, they tell the story.
Paradoxical Karma
Writing though it seems almost impossible at times; writing to find clarity, finding meaning amidst chaotic circumstances, connecting with ancestral karma.
Winter Scape Prayer
Make me the clearest water, a river’s modest current, transparent to the Sun’s arms, wintry cool though not frozen, winding lighthearted, all through out the original land. Make me crisp as linen, left to dry in the early winter breeze, to the matured caress of the daystar, my real lover. Give me if you may, the freshness of a dutiful morning, softly sloping towards the distance, all the inner children running towards me, frisky as home dogs. I hope for the scent of sunbathed hills, and the bite of sharp frost on my cheeks, the sky cleared of most clouds, infinite blue envisioned far and beyond. Make me more than a sketch, define this impression of a woman blurred against the straw fields, and sign this fine portrait as your own. Allow me the natural clarity of tall grasses, weed, obedient to the wind, free, wild again, but wise. Offer me up to the winter sky, let his frigid breath embrace this aching body. Its ok, we belong, the bite is no longer when I can melt to the chill. Now I walk on gladly, warm hands, warm feet. Crisp linen hung, swaying naturally, bleached, and the modest river our region’s pride, our last name in its winding current. Allow me then to strip away the clouds forever, and stay in my perfect winter scape.
Crying Inside/ Familiy Allergies
I heard about it, you’re crying inside. You won’t let it out so your body does it for you, brings forth the symptoms, and all of us bystanders seem unable recognize the obvious. Your sneezes, the watery eyes from seasonal hay fever, pollens give you a reason, you are permitted to cry. Tests say its allergy to mites; gluten got a high probability, but no one knows for sure and probably never will. The specialist assures the shots may do it, for a while at least. But can you quiet the reality of a sobbing bout that’s been building up steadily, for ages? Here goes again, the stuffy nose, red as a cherry popsicle, as if you’d been crying for days, decades. No, you won’t breathe tonight unless you take that pill, and push back the crippled grief, stuck inside the delicate tear of your long gone infancy. Tears travel in waves of past tenses, and stopped up noses. You carry others loss up to the present, their need of truer love, heartache, the feeling of a virus passing, scathed skin under a touch, an earache developing. Now, take a capsule a day, like most people do on this grieving planet. Or, you could cry for a week. I’ll wait here, won’t ask why. That would be a fine opening of the dam, main gates grinding apart, entire families weeping, up to the present, and soon maybe, allergy free.
Unanswered
Who are they? And where from? Old lovers, friends, sons, fathers, brothers Those who helped, guided, worried, cared Same ones who left, changed me for, walked away from, grew to hate My lost men. Who are they? Jitters arise for their attention I long for their excitement Mourning when they find another better Satisfied when they laugh it out Inevitably expecting A reaction. Why them? Why me? Who were we until now? Old flames in transformation Merge and part And we haven’t stopped yet Something reaches Lights our wick Impregnates our feeling Since long ago. They invade routine and fantasy alike I make believe they listen That they are here Drawn to me and I to them While they’re at work Away And I ask again Who were we until now? But no one’s answering.
The Item
There is a presence, an item, and it lives, without need for oxygen. But it’s not him, even if my mind’s eye insists. I made him up in the length of decades. After many words ensued, he inhabited my head, full of himself. He became a rant, annoying as a jump scare, never listened. But today I let him go, even if he imprints his presence, always busy in the background, ready to protect from the greatest threat of them all, loss. I created him, internalised the frequencies of his mission; absorbed into my stream the perceptions he embodied; took it all into the deep tissues. His worried presence, neurosis, accumulation of stress. The item fights a future he conceived in fear, almost a century ago. But today I granted him the possibility. I bade him farewell, gave him the freedom to disappear and to continue on as simple energy, told him he could change. I can differentiate now, and that is the difference. He is not human, but a servant of a will that is not my own, the envoy of a mission that I did not choose. Yet he must be appreciated, somehow acknowledged, and I do, by strange grace arisen at the summit of change, an eclipse, a dark Sun bearing the radiant crown of closure. An item to be left aside, to dissolve in the newborn year. He shall then rise as cottonwood seed would, in the warm air of my evening. In the meantime, I will fight to remember the way of brightness. Adventures free of expectation, clear roads unblocked, vacancy. I shall pray for silence, empty rooms, and a handful of future. Gold pebbles in the raw, the touch of Midas in my hands, a magical song dancing as a flame would in twilight. Intentional fire ablaze. Velocity inspired. He left in an instant, when I saw my fear was his lack, the familiar voice an poor imitator of my soul. Imagination transmutes fast, I know. Soon he will live differently, on another type of ray, a beam of tomorrow, dressed in clear splendour, waiting for my arrival.
Time stamps
Time deals differently now. I ask to the invisible ¿have I been dislodged, dug out of somewhere, a matured stone turned crystal? ¿Or was something dug out from me? ¿Is it possible to go backward, find the place where I was brighter, before solidity? Maybe even further back, to the ancestors, in the deepest forests, when conversations happened all at once; trees reverberated voices, whispers emanated as song, before this extraction, when the pit was left bare. ¿Could I sleep in such crystal perfection, resting as a goddess, carefree, accomplished just for being placed, that dreaming would be my only formal occupation, a profession eternal? But for now I must resist the call to the grind, the advancement mill of success, of my present time stamp. Upward I only see the whipped clouds. Skies rest before the coming of age. Our atmosphere heaves like the oceanic tide and then exhales, belly flat. I must learn to let it out too. And the pit, ¿what about the pit? It’s what I carry. Memories clinging for shelter, when the wind whines harshest. But time ran itself out, it chased itself mad, time to refresh. So, ¿should I fill it now or honor its sullen interior? I’ll give the pit time to sulk. Afterward I’ll patch it good. Make it wholesome with loosened soil, intense nutrients, aired by early spring. I’ll pack it firm, and mark the repaired hollow with a sturdy flag. This is my new time stamp.
Strange Riches
These strange riches given, Stand crumbling on the sullen street of times past. Grandma’s house with its ceiling planks bent, A violent crack runs wild, the length of the dining room, Shut doors, melded to frames, Of childhoods past, stories kept, Flooded memories. But Scheherezade still waits inside Arabian Nights, Bound in real leather, tightly fit in the carved Italian bookcase. Framed maps of antique parchment rest about the entrance hall, Leaning on the walls, waiting for something, Maybe the final collapse. And I wonder, Those long gone explorers, cartographers of time, ¿Might their eyes have met riches just as strange as mine?
Treading
Lately roots awaken from slumber Memories disperse whispers past Silent picture of her in a blue dress Running the fields like a promise. Autumn matter releases And in the spring floats in seedlings Like her spirit of stone and brook Her fields Loves I did not yearn And yet we correspond As does love when it reaches far Giving no reason for lengths of time. Lately her past is a promise The possibility of all I carry forth That won’t be lost Real butter on toast each morning Steaming coffee and real cream Her life enough to build my own When in the early winter I reach for the knitted blanket Still stowed with the linen since we were kids. Roots awoken keep spreading The ground roots unbeknownst to my treading feet Sheltered in old hikers boots When and where many pasts come to meet.