Fire

There are lines

that cross -

intersecting passions -

meetings

of ghost and

dream and

longing.

Like, when you call me “baby” -

and everything in me

responds -

as if I am the one,

the only,

ever.

But all the while

I am dancing 

among the 

many that came

before.

We dance 

together

at the refiner’s

fire; 

gifts of

past-love/old-love/lost-love

leap and prance

among the flames -

sacred offerings

holding space

upon the altar

of our new-found love.

I wonder - 

what woman 

has shaped you, dreamed 

you, nurtured and 

fed you, even in 

spite of yourself?

I long to 

dance inside

her skin,

to know her 

belly and her 

breasts, the scent 

between her thighs,

the way she called out

when you were inside her –

as if this knowing

will seal our 

fate: yours and mine.

Back and forth,

we dance.

Around and

around

the fire that

transforms

burns,

heals,

destroys.

Clay

I see my hands
are broken

even as I
open them to you
even as I
offer them to you
even as I
pray they can
shape
what this world
has given them

and make magic
and beauty
and life

with you.

Listen

Her fragile heart speaks

the language of the smallest bird, snowflakes
and (sometimes) whispers.

There are no secrets; only shadows 

that nest in high trees and search
the clouds for
openings
of gentle light: a hearkening

for songs of flight.

Stay

Rain in January
makes me want you.
As does
the glass of red wine in
my hand,
the half-read book on
my lap,
the memory of
my fingers
finding your lips and
needing to stay.

Witness

She saw herself
as a witness - a presence
requisite to truth
located in the
center of the edge,  underneath
the surface in the discourse of
the everywhere.

If you could see as she did,
what might you testify?

The starling, fallen on
on a cold city sidewalk has
a story - not told
by wing -
not told by song.

The heart still beats
even if not in this world.
Can you hear it?

There is: a poem

There is: a truth
A soft truth
A beautiful truth
Of trees
And sky
And gently falling snow
And early morning “I love you’s”
And endless possibilities

There is: a truth
A hard truth
Of loss
And anguish
And violence
And regret
And children
Taken too soon from this earth

There is: a truth
An incomprehensible truth
Of clenched fists
Pounding on aching hearts
And wide open arms
Embracing the whole
Reconciling the truth: there is.

Love song.

Perhaps you heard.

Love-screams filling my body.
A full-tilt/belt-it-out/body-soul song

traveling through kisses
crying out through hands,
belly, thighs, skin.

Meant for you,
meant for me,

sung for love.

Longing.

I wonder
if the longing, sometimes,
is more for the loving
than the lover.

Do you know what I mean?

Opening

I am like you,
afraid
but I am opening.


Winding threads of memory
pushing, pulling
slowly revealing

this full body of desire
tender
blossoming
fierce

hungry and vulnerable.

Like you (am I like you?)
I will open
and open again
and again

a pioneer
an astronaut
lifetimes spent dreaming
of the ultimate expedition
into the
deepest spaces
of human connection.

I am afraid,
but I am opening.

I am fissures to your cracks
chinks and holes to your fractures
rifts and clefts to your crevices

longing for exposure
(yes, please touch)
probing and plying
smoothing and sanding

changed for the revealing.

I am like you,
afraid
and I am opening.

Shift

Tonight I am
standing on the shore.
Sands shift beneath my feet and
I am waiting, even though
I tell myself I am standing/being/present.

But I know, in the deepest place of my
wanting, I am waiting.

There is, in this kind of waiting,
(for a love/lost love/found love/new love/old love)
a stirring born of hope
that can make you feel
so alive -

each grain
of shifting sand moved
in preparation for what might come,
the winds of blessed change
that forever alter
a landscape.

No one arrives.
Did you know this would happen?

I am here
standing,
wanting to be full and
alive without the waiting,
sands shifting beneath my feet.

The fire between us

Here we sit.
Not the first time,
but the first of any length of time,
the fire between us with
no middle in sight.

Not now,
indeed, not ever,
for you have found her: your true love.

And all I want to do is bless you.

All I want is your happiness,
and I am thankful, truly,
that there is a beautiful Italian woman
who speaks broken English and
turns you on like crazy and
loves you in all the ways
I never will. I am not jealous
and I don’t even want to cry.

We say our goodbyes and there
in the fire between us is
the hope that it might have been different.

Your arms open to me;
I fall in.
Alone with my choices,
feeling the loss of something never found.

Blessing II

What if I bless you?

I mean, really bless you.
Send you off with a kiss
and every best wish -
my precious message in bottle.
Set out to sea for unknown, exotic lands/
unknown, exotic hands.

More - what if give away every you there ever was?
Every incarnation.
Every possibility.

You as gravity.
You as adventure.
You as comic relief.
You as savior.

Give you away to everybody everywhere,
knowing the release will mean
someone on that distant shore will
catch you
claim you
unravel you
decipher you
understand you
love you.


And what if I'm ok with that?
What if that's the point?
Blessing you, and her, and everybody everywhere.
Knowing the sweetest gift is
the gentle opening of hands (of heart),
setting free what always and ever already was.

I will say:

I will say: I let your majesty move me.
Succumbed to your beautiful truth
in a sweet and satisfying surrender.
Open and bare and better for it,
stretched beyond where even you could find me.

Strong

I’d like to tell you to not be afraid,

You are strong enough and so am I.

But the telling of it is like promising fruit in the fall

when there was a killing frost so late in the spring

and the summer has been so dry

and the trees are struggling so.

It’s like that.

I long for us to be what we are born for

- bearers of delicious, juicy, fruit-

but I see the harsh while we are weathering, and you, little sister,

not rooted or hardened as I, must drop your leaves in such a season as this,

and seek nourishment.

And I, shaped by years of bitter seasons

recognize the storm deep within

urging, advancing, greater than the conditions that created me

allowing me this moment of calm and truth:

You are strong enough and so am I.

Blessing

I’m blessing you

with every breath I have.

I’m blessing you,

I promise, even

while my heart stops beating for a moment, even

while my mind quickly does its ritual dance of unworthiness, even

while this world of color and light flickers and fades.

I am blessing you

With every breath I have.

Unravel

If you unravel a heartache 
with hope to find its achey, tender core,
beware.

On your way, you will find your tears;
they come with the loss and regret 
that mark the journey.
Bring them with you to the center, for they are your guides. But know this:

It’s empty.

But more - it’s yours.
Completely.
It belongs to no other, no matter how you try to give it away. It’s yours and yours alone.
And it’s up to you to make peace with the emptiness.

That’s where a heart lives – in the expanse of emptiness.

It’s true; you will be tempted to see the emptiness as abandonment.
Betrayal.
Proof of your undeniable unworthiness of love.
Again and again and again.

But remember, if you’re
brave enough to attempt the journey,
have hope enough to unravel the mystery, 
and faith enough to seek the truth –

you are strong enough to sit in the center of the sorrow.

And when you do – sit there in that place – let yourself untangle. See the threads that wound you up tight and bound your heart in ache loosen.

And then, from that seat of power, watch.
Filaments.
Lifted out of the achey mass. 
Your loves. Your hopes. Your dreams. Your aspirations. Your promises.
Seen, perhaps, as if for the first time.

Let them be lifted. Let them be free. Let them dance and float and fly 
even (especially) 
if it means they leave you. 
Let them go.

Again,
and again,
and again.

Recovery

I am stepping

What once was granite
Is grass
Once shards
Now sand
Warm and soft
Beneath my feet.

The shift came with the tide
 And with the moon
Sharing her secrets
I listened
As though
Through the bottom of my feet
Through the lapping
The encroaching and retreat.

I am rising
I am sun
I give you gifts of sweat and grime
A beauty blinding
Binding
Biding
All time

The propagation of light in a medium

In the curve of time
- spacetime -
between you and me

where distance is passage
to the center
of celestial being

like the distance between the front door

(where I
above by five steps
bend to your presence)

and the foot of the landing

(where you
look up and smile
that sun smile
that star smile
that smile)

all light that is in me
is moving, free-falling
toward your gravity

(speed of light – nothing travels so fast as
speed of light)

and all stars
and all clusters of stars
and all stars that are suns for other planets

explode in a deep cup of immanence.

I’ve never been so glad to be here.

where there is: you

Standing in the place - not of expecting,
but rather: knowing

where hope isn't merely hopeful,
but rather: a deeply felt assurance of what is yet to come

where time folds in a perfect crease until there is no time,
but rather: an unfolding of every moment past and future that brings you to this place

this place of not expecting
this place where possibility isn't merely possible

where love isn't merely longing
where hope isn't merely hoping

where there is: you

poet

she watched the words fall out of her head/and land on his chest as he lay in his bed/ she hoped they'd melt and slide off his skin/ she prayed they wouldn't make their way in/ to his heart.

To Rumi: I am tired of love poems.

Rumi,
I picked up
a book
of your love poems
this morning

I am tired of love poems

of wistful wishes
and languid longings
of fire
and flames
and passions
that burn

this world
that surrounds me
has made of love
a practical thing

to be contained
and understood
through methods
and formulas
and surveys
and psychology

Rumi,
I am tired of the fight
my half protected heart
endures
reaching out to those
in full heart armor

There is no field of ecstasy today, Rumi.

I am tired of love poems.

crack me open

crack me open

take from me
each ray of light that shines its way through

each succulent yes,
divine more, please

this shining bursting breaking
is nothing if it stays in me, merely
nothing if you cannot taste it, touch it, see and know.

When the seeds arrive in the mail,

I will drive to your house

and leave them on the bench

next to your front door.

I will leave them to you,

to your care,

for without you,

I have no place to plant them.

The peas, well, they were just for me.

I wonder - will you still plant them?

But the beets were just for you,

so I hope you find a good sunny spot,

and set them in the ground.

There are many things I will miss you about you.

But I think, more than anything,

I will miss the things we planned but never got the chance to do.

Like planting peas and beets, and watching them grow.

Offering

Alms to the green of the shoot

So new, so bright, so tenacious

Twining through

Ancient crusty earth

So compelled by surface

So desiring of depths

Sinuating, undulating, into me coming

Loosening holds of maddening habit

Ah, surrender now

Floating, falling, blessing each passing.