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Spring Blankets

Just yesterday morning, rain clouds filled the sky in gray velvet folds draped heavy over the newly hatched woods, leaves shivering, sagging from the weight, the wait. The dogwood blossoms — bright as match flares – trembled, knowing soon they’d be doused, tender petals downed and drowned. The cardinal couple, wings flame-stitching the shadows as they lit from sod bank to branch and back again, banked on a breakfast cut short and shared their worm like Lady-and-the-Tramp pasta boiled well past its prime. While the cat, shoulders knuckled, crept toward them, one ear cocked to her prize, the other to the threatening cloudburst, the roll of thunder overhead. Then the clouds split wide –not with rain, but golden sun – showering treetops

in cream soda light,

leaves glowing lemon and lime,

blossoms blinding white

Today the same skies are different still, pale pink haze over lavender-blue, lying whisper-soft as an infant’s shawl above the feathered limbs of fizzy trees. The cat naps on her pillow. The dogwood blossoms tremble still, at the brevity of it all, the beauty of it all, as does the cardinal couple singing cheer, cheer, cheer through the

baby soft hiccup

of this morning’s scene, dogwood

blossoms losing steam

April 5, 2024 0

Easter Boys

Last night, I watched a dozen preteen

boys hunt Easter eggs in the pixelated

gloaming.

Too big for their baskets, they chose bags

for their haul, grocer’s plastic snapping in

the wind

as they raced. Each new prize plucked from

its hiding spot settled snug in their sacks,

until, from

the ends of their peach-fuzzed arms hung

lanterns of multi-globed splendor, synapsed

and pulsing

with LED portent. Soon peach-fuzzed forearms

turn to timber-lined jaws and egg-hunting spring

turns to

university fall. And so on and so on until one day

quite soon, these too-big for-their-baskets egg-

hunters

become fathers with sons who choose the pull of

plastic beneath their fingers to the heft of handles

in their palms.

March 31, 2024 0

sssssslay me

expose the wonder. peel my layers back

with persistence and your forked, silver tongue

‘til light unzips my folds and I lose track

and all control; ‘til hoofbeats pound, unstrung

notes sound, in the bowl of my core, the bell

of my temple vibrating, keenly and round.

peel me with your teeth, pomegranate knelled

and bursting, unleashing all the profound,

forbidden mysteries of paradise

throb after throb unspooling like ticker tape,

grazed nerves flushed with brimstone and god light,

making my body, consciousness, soul ache

for more dances with death, more cessation

of breath, more kingdom-come-hellfire-salvation.

March 23, 2024 0

Paper Doll

She walks

in beauty like a

Joan Crawford/geisha

girl, like a paper doll, silken

kimono cinched tight at the

waist, soft sleeves ballooning

beneath shoulder pads, fabric

flaked with the fragments

of your love, with the

fragments

of your

whims and shifting moods.

Blue like the jet stream from

that trip in September to Paris,

the one where she spilled coffee

(your coffee) at that café and it got

on your newspaper, and it got on

your nerves. She wears that

memory, you know,

deep inside.

She wears it

like the azaleas

blooming at those houses

you toured in Savannah last spring,

their pearlized pinkness nearly matching

the sunset and her lips, before the blood and bruising.

Before something, a misstep — a missed step on the historic

steps — broke a heel on the Prada pumps you bought her just

three weeks before, so you broke something too. Some

thing you regret, of course. Something that turned

all those little pink houses ghostly gray, the

pinch of your fist erasing her smile, the

soft light in her eyes. The wind will

rise, she’s learned, and she can

only try to curl inward for

shelter, to erase her

self even more.

Her center

is cinched

tight, but

her fold-

over

tabs

flap loose as,

broken-cheeked, with blackened-brow,

she walks in beauty, diminished by night.

March 2, 2024 0

How Can We Fix This?

A child was lost.

A child lost.

The world beat him

Battered him, bruised him to breaking,

And – go figure —

He broke.

His spokes gave out.

His wheels flew off.

His handlebars torqued.

And he tumbled.

He’d been tumbling awhile.

But this time,

He tumbled so far

He could not,

Would not –

Refused –

To get back up.

On the front end of a warm Tuesday

At the ass end of a cold month,

Sick to death with hurt,

He took charge.

With a discharge that fixed

And dilated

His pain

In a huge, gaping hole.

That opened to a ravine

That swallowed a family

And shook a school

And rattled a community.

His mother unhinged

His father undone

His siblings unstrung

His promise unsung

His lyrical, beautiful,

Guitar-humming

Soul-strumming

Sweet promise,

That could make this place beautiful

– so, so beautiful –

Left unsung.

How can we fix this?

Not this, that’s impossible —

Fixed forever in a curled dark hole

Deep in his family’s ribs

Howling unchecked —

But this?

This brokenness

This curled dark hole

Deep in society’s rib

Howling unchecked

… and ignored.

How?

February 28, 2024 0

Pivot like Rilke, Pause like Oliver

You must change your life, Rilke said.

There is no place that does not see you.

So, burst like a star from all the borders

of yourself.

And to do that, you must:

Pause

and attend to

the riotous performances

of those that

recognize life

and its beauty in the

here and now,

in the being,

said Oliver.

And to do that, you must:

Be alive in the fresh morning.

Be the dark center where procreation flares.

So, pivot like Rilke. Pause like Oliver.

Be permissive.

Like a poet.

Like roses,

fully blown,

drinking the air of the silver morning

with their petal-soft mouths,

tasting and celebrating all that there is,

in moment after moment of perfumed possibility.

Pay attention.

Do that.

January 27, 2024 0

The Butterfly Effect

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has and these are of them. Whither have they vanished? ~~ William Shakespeare

When I read this week about six people from Missouri, four adults and two children –

read about the metaphysical-and-quantum-physics-spouting cult leader spinning chaos

from a prison cell, proclaiming his targeted victims “carbonated beings,” I couldn’t help

but think of Banquo’s quote from Macbeth. Because those six people, like ginger ale fizz

and the three weird sisters, all vanished into thin air.

Kind of like me at sixteen – a victim of a cult, but a victim in reverse. My father, a chaos

physicist, teaching the science of surprise, the science of the nonlinear and unpredictable,

while mourning the loss of a father, found evangelical fundamentalism, fusing love of

subatomic principles with an unbending rendering of scripture thanks to a ramrod patriarchal penis-head

stirring butterfly wings with bible verses, and unspooling

a teenaged typhoon in Tennessee. All because I refused to walk as a sheep. Me, who used to

trail after my father like the dust trail on a comet, shimmering in his presence, preening as he

presented to my fifth-grade class all the mysteries of our brave overhanging firmament, fretted with

golden fire and planetary motion, his faith never faltering, even as his faith failed me. I learned the

science of surprise, how lines of scripture can become prison bars

destroying free will and families alike. The mother of one of the missing mothers in Missouri, when

interviewed, says she’s “holding on by her faith” to the hope that her daughter and grandchild will be

found. Ironically, that’s exactly how her daughter vanished – by holding on by her faith. As did my

father’s daughter — his faith a soothing balm for the ache of a father’s loss in his heart, which then created the ache of a father’s loss in my own.

The flutter of faith’s metaphysical wing – so fair and foul a thing I have not seen.

January 20, 2024 0

Cold January Light

Lavender air sifts

through pine trees

cold as the silverware

left on the back porch

overnight. Winter is

here, the season has

changed, and the light

has changed, and the

temperature too.

Layers of chill like river

sediment, like somebody’s

nose against your nose,

like a traitor’s kiss, lips

dry, cheeks chafed,

earlobes berried

as the lavender air,

clanging with goose calls

and church bells, hollow

and cold as the spoon

on the back deck, as the

hoarfrost on the handrails,

as the saplings and sentinel

trees, backlit, starkly naked

completely exposed above

the sleeping groundhog —

oblivious in his burrow,

of the season changing,

of you changing —

knowing only that

now is the time to curl

up before being reborn.

January 19, 2024 0

A Thousand Twinkling Sparks

I’ve always loved starlight.

The dusty sprinkle of the Milky Way,

the brittle glitter of constellations,

the renaissance glow of old and new,

of reds and golds and faintest blues.

And the flames of candles, too.

The shimmering flicker of a haloed wick,

the undulating liquid light that peaks

and flattens, fizzes and flares,

always moving, yet still so still.

So, of course I love Christmas —

the dotted-light stitch of houses

and trees. The starry-night feel

of them, as if we’d dredged the

heavens with a honey wand and

pulled its sweetness down to our

hearths and homes, our hearts and

bones kindled with a thousand twinkling

kindnesses, a thousand twinkling well

wishes, a thousand sparks of love

of comfort.

of joy.

December 21, 2023 0

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