Sky before dawn

Black sky, my ocean.

With one gaze,

I am swallowed whole,

tenderly held.

I long to find within myself

a place as silky

and encompassing,

a totality as comforting,

that abides as deeply,

as faithfully.

Morning meditation

There’s an existence

behind my eyes

beyond knowing

beneath perceiving,

more lavish and alive

than this plane.

Dark shapes shift

in thick water, they

pulse like drums,

sing like cellos, they

bounce in puddles of light.

Two hearts

We are two hearts falsely bound

by manufactured sameness.

I’ve never truly seen you,

so clouded have I been

by delusion.

Imperfection

I owe gratitude to my faults

my shortcomings, my pain.

Imperfection bruises again and again,

and I scurry home, seeing anew.

That I ever thought I wouldn’t falter,

that I could do it all fully and well,

has crippled more deeply than any hurt.

I look at this woman,

a child in a worldly fog—

I wrap her in a new love,

a just-as-she-is love,

and together we walk on.

What then

If she knows like the ocean,

If she’s tapped into the breeze,

What has she to fear? to regret?

What has she to mourn?

Why this struggle?

What prevents her from running free?

Compels her to break in habituated anger?

Why do trapped demons insist on being heard?

Mother and son

My bedroom door bangs against the wall.

All is black but the dim hallway light

tracing a silhouette in the doorframe.

Not yet three feet tall with a mess of sleepy hair,

a small body stands there, motionless—

then turns without a word

and pads across the hall.

I stumble out of bed and follow

in the automatic way a mother does,

the only sound, our socked feet on the hardwood.

At his bedside I wait

while he burrows in, backside wriggling,

a little creature in search of his resting place.

He peers up at me, his eyes reaching for mine,

so I slip into the folds beside him.

I pull fistfuls of rocketship sheets to my neck.

Our knees knock together,

our arms twist up like vines

and I simply stare,

marveling at his exquisite face,

at the perfect curve of pink cheeks.

For a long moment,

we swim in each other’s eyes.

What I see now

The spaces between our togetherness scared me,

threatened the portrait I thought we were painting.

For me, it was how things were and should be,

never how they might or could be.

Your insistence on you

was a rejection of me,

Your insistence on you

chafed with what others should see.

I didn’t do this consciously,

I woke, I lived, I slept, repeat,

unaware of my fear of our difference.

The first intoxication

The first intoxication

was unsettling

as Truth always is—

it rattles loose delusions,

crusty ideas,

old knowings and operating systems.

The first intoxication is merely a taste

but it transports to a place

so alive

that we long only to return—

to the great mystery

a world inside a world

a place here for us

yet hidden deep within the folds

of time

and space.

I will be forever gripped by this elixir

no matter how elusive—

I’ve tasted the place from which we come

the place we are going

the very substance of being

the flint of our existence.

Wolf Moon

Tonight my children sleep,

somehow sensing

their mother is

immersed in other worlds—

dancing with moonbeams,

alive under frosty sky,

buoyant with a power

that brushed her shoulder

saying, come along.

A love poem

I spent the morning in the garden, tending—

pinching off yellow leaves,

checking fleshy undersides for moth eggs,

wiping ribbed surfaces clean—

all while drinking in tomato-tinged air,

delighting in leafy clusters,

adoring sprouts bouncing in the breeze.

I stroked ribbons of spring onions,

smiled back at marigolds,

marveled at fanning poppies.

Later, while walking,

I squinted to see cabbage blooms

trumpeting shoots from their center crowns.

Later, while resting,

I closed my eyes in perfect presence

to see veins of oak leaves pulsing darkly.

Later, while praying,

tangled roots stretched from the soles of my feet

toward earth’s center.

Later, while dreaming,

I saw flashes of heaven—

the iris of a bird’s eye,

inky water blanketing stones.

When did you start to fill me like this?

To enter, bypassing the mind?

Comprehension eludes me,

but I’m content to deal in mystery,

to drink you in through the pores.

To be seen

There are days when

melancholy is a welcome friend.

I draw her to me

wrap her tight,

we rock and sway

I breathe her in.

I’ve yearned for this pleasure,

for this communion with depth.

I want only to rest in these arms

and let the rapturous tears fall.

Practicing for death

What to do, then, with this life?

Let it breathe and bend

then slip away

like sea spray

cast into the sky

Let it dissipate

waft and wane

like smoke

curling off a flame

Let nothingness replace self-importance

leaving a vast and potent empty

Let my presence on earth

be but a faint glow

No more striving

no more concern

only fierce, fierce love

then let it all go