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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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Dawn Rising: a Haibun

She slips into her fuzzy bathrobe with all the sleep-rimmed focus of cream unfurling in coffee. Eyes but slits, she stirs the marble mist. Shadows spin and settle; shrubbery and tree line appear. Lawn purls silver-sage, and the yearling slips from his bed to graze at the sod-scalloped hem between clearing and wood. A roll of her perfumed wrist and his coat froths cappuccino; the dogwoods don lemon lime skirts. Onward she shuffles now, gathering steam. Wiping her eyes: the limbs limn tears. Flexing her toes: the moss fuzzes stone. The yearling cocks his head to the arched swirl of undergrowth, an almost-cave of wonder and wild behind him. The sun-sprinkled lawn, bustling and bursting with civilized snacks, in front. Inward or out? he ponders in pause. Meanwhile, sliding off her slipper and sash,

Dawn lifts gold arms

to comb back the last clinging

haze from her crown.

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Lines Written a Few Hours Before Tintern Abbey Departs 

(Or Cleaning out My Pocketbook)

 

Five more hours with my uterus 

tucked inside me like a coin pouch,

calcified stones rattling like spare change, 

making their presence known.

 

For nearly 58 years she’s been with me, 

snug above her pelvic foundation,

inside alabaster birthing-hip walls,

and a flying buttress of ribs,

my pear-shaped cathedral, 

host of clutch and caul,

of four miracles total —

once (deep in her aged patina splendor and

a glorious display of gothic revival)

even two at a time.

Yes, she’s always been there.

 

And now, just five more hours 

with my clutch built for precious cargo.

(Well, more like four-and-a-half now.)

She’s been a dedicated little pocketbook,

sloughing and sluicing, building and producing

and though she’s more paunch than pouch these days,

more crumbled cabin than cathedral,

she’s a part of me —

and bruised and battered,

torn and tattered though she is —

I will miss her.

 

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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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Spotted

Like

a calico kitten or a Dalmatian pup?

An appaloosa’s flanks or a speckled green toad?

Ladybug shells or butterfly wings?

A giant giraffe neck, a ginger’s freckled chest?

Cheetahs? Leopards?

A lantern fly nymph?

Or more like

Blueberry muffins

Or chocolate chip scones?

Or more like red-capped, warted

mushrooms? Poison hemlock stems?

Or spotted like

Cruella Deville’s floor-length fur coat?

Daisy Buchanan’s skittering pearls?

Desdemona’s strawberry handkerchief?

The sleep-haunted hands of Lady Macbeth?

Gertrude’s black and grained soul?

Or spotted like

The hiccupping sun’s surface,

Brewing disruption in planet-sized

Storms of magnetic mayhem…

Pretty much like this thing

Spotted

There on the monitor,

Blooming like Rorschach’s inkblot

Amidst the hollowed-out, round, sound-

Waves spinning didgeridoo vowels amidst

Rumbling, bubbling bowel sounds.

A shifting, sizable storm cloud.

A pale and pockmarked moon.

A shadowy, seething portent.

Marring the vault of a once

procreant cradle.

A dappled dollop of disorder.

Spotted.

Get it out, out.

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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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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?

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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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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.

 

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