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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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The Brindled Understory Cento

The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
with their dark wet gold out,
bartering with the wind
over the pond’s reflective mirror — bruised
azure acrylic, butterscotch glass, anyone’s flesh-tone, chrome.

Listen You.

Who disappeared into those shadows?
Joined at the spine with death and life?
Unravelling like smooth threads?
Listen to the rhythmic thumping inside water,
like black birds pushing against the glass
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
words frothing out merciless and angry:

You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.

Down over the rocks, an explosion, a discovery
of the torched & reckless hour
in this carved gold of shifting faces:
tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves and a scorched coil of greasy hemp,
scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell
of gasoline,
thick glass blood cells, a throat slit pouring silk
whirled in the ochre light —
the light of truth.
His head is a rose being burned alive.

How the soul feels like a dried sheaf,
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
and the small wings
unfold from the fabric of night,
bound up at length for harvesting,
darkness after it, dark riddled through it.

Manna does not fall.
Saviors do not save.
The earth drinks men and their loves
like wine.

Souls which are planted . . . continue growing . . . until generations
will tell tales of having met someone who knew.

The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves,
and all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth —
it’s breaking apart, it’s turning over, it’s pushing up.

Listen You, if no one else,
Can you feel the ground rumble under your feet?
Back through the brindled understory
etched in wood…
You can’t abandon your history
and it won’t abandon you.

SOURCES: The Brindled Understory Cento is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from the following poets (in order of appearance): Edward Thomas; Roger Reeves; Lynda Hull; Jill McDonough; Tino Villanueva; Adrienne Rich; Sonia Sanchez; Anne Sexton; Brian-Komei-Dempster; Lucille Clifton; Margaret Walker; David Bottoms; Jake Adam York; Mary Oliver; Lynda Hull; Sonia Sanchez; Richard Wright; Robin Glow; Jane Kenyon; Nikki Giovanni; Roger Reeves; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Mary Oliver; Jake Adam York; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Daisy Fried; Lenelle Moise; Yehuda Amichai; Nikki Giovanni; Sylvia Plath; Philip Levine; Anne Waldman; Tino Villanueva; Anne Waldman; Donovan Kuhio Colleps; Laura Da’; Jake Adam York

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Her Haiku

Shimmering bright but

She’ll crumble like eye shadow

if you touch her. Don’t.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Stacked Beauty

I

want

to write

words

stacked with

beauty like

magnets

or rock cairns

attracting and  

guiding readers to

breathtaking views

of tangerine skies

sea glass windows

into cliffsides

cranberry bogs

lavender fields mercurial

storm-swept sea beds

to find coral and almonds

the mottled man in the moon

drink twilight smoke

cloud wisp bite

bourbon and

shoulders

hear stars click on

feel fireflies sext

in the gloaming

wings beating in wild

persimmon percussion

hearts lit limoncello bulbs

see me and see me 

and see me please be seen

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The Song of a Mother

My son swims in jell-o-bright water,

a nine-year-old Achilles dripping blueberry syrup 

from sanctified limbs. 

Fluid and free to flip his hair, sashay his tail,

he bobs along, suspended in color-soaked dreams.

Sweet honeyed daylight dapples his skin in flashes

and splashes like sequins (not chainmail) like scales

jazzed

and

pentatonic

daring swift-footed heroes to dance and sing

eat peaches or figs

whatever they like.

He’s not like most boys. I know this.

And he knows this too. And because he’s not,

monsters lurk in his idyll. 

Charybdis and Scylla cast shadow and stone in his bright jell-o water,

stretch tentacle to tendon, would cleave him in two:

half oil-slicked wreckage half solar eclipse

Claim he’s the monster here –

not dazzling and daring, 

but different and dangerous, 

contagious, blasphemous,

wrong. 

A sinister sign of the times. 

I pray he sees the truth – how sinister and wrong they are;

masquerading their message of love 

that’s not love.

Love is celebrating your bold, burnished child 

(any child, every child) 

and love is providing the armor 

(why must it always be armor?) 

to help your child live out his love 

(any love, every love). 

Not the love you would prefer he live –  

a love dipped in non-Styx Teflon, 

safe and colorless, sealing him in tradition because: 

it’s easier (not because you believe it’s the right way);

it’s smooth (not because it’s straight);

you love him (not because love is love is love is love).

But love IS love is oh-so glorious and personal and… love.

So, you do love him 

and affirm him. Tell him he is alright. 

That who he is, is not wrong. 

Or I do. Not you…

You wrong and hurt him. 

Tell him he is too colorful. With too much sashay.

A boy’s light should glint with steel, not sparkle with glitter, 

be myrmidon dark, not technicolor twinkle.

Should be sharp, uncompromising, heroic, brave. 

To be otherwise is unwise.  

Like some problem to solve correctly.

A choice on some standardized test.

Answer A or B. 

There is no C.  You were born how you were born. You have no choice.

At least on that we can agree—

I mean, would anyone choose something as hard as this?

in a world that hates heroes so flush and plush with sparkle? 

then again, if we could — why would anyone not choose sweetness and light?

not want to live somewhere beyond bedeviled and bewildered?

beyond haunted or hardened? 

somewhere

weightless and fluid and free,

my son

floats in jell o bright water,

a nine- year-old Achilles

dripping blueberry syrup

from sanctified limbs.

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A list of things I love (Susan Sontag style)

Black coffee, green clover, paper white blooms.

Morning writing. Afternoon naps. 

House slippers. Cozy nooks, nubby blankets, and poetry, 

So much poetry.

Football season. Football weather.

Hot baths. Red wine. Soft beds.

And family.

Pancake breakfasts with my girls. Bedtime reading with my boys.

A place to call home,

With money enough for travel and books and to spend a wee bit on décor.

The smell of gardenias reminds me of grandma.

Cardinals in shrubbery remind me of dad.

As does lichen on tree trunks

And moss on an old stump.

Hawks riding thermals,

Bushy-tailed squirrels.

And white tailed deer,

Bounding through underbrush with leaves crackling.

Pine straw underfoot.

The sun on my shoulders

A sliver of moon

The liquid of midnight

The stories of stars

Also the pale pink of dawn,

The mist of drizzle

Dust motes dancing in golden hour currents. 

All hours. All times.

Dandelion fluff, eyelash wishes, butterfly kisses. 

Ladybugs that light on screen doors,

Lightning bugs at dusk

Praying mantis angles,

Black widow curves

The texture of blackberries,

The perfume of raspberries,

The denseness of gingerbread,

An avocado’s flesh.

Vanilla milkshakes.

Salted caramel everything.

And you. I. Love. You.

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