Black Rosehips

Rosehips shriveled black,
unpruned by the year’s white shears,
will not flavor tea.

2011, 2014

because I arrived in the dark

what I thought was rain was the river
moving over the mountain of sleep

I woke again and again in a room with three beds
and three poets, heads resting on the soft chests of words

not a sound, not even the sh of restless
sheets, only the breath of the river

threading through poems that might be
sewing this warm inside world to the cold

alpine spring, our almost stories blinking
holes in the high spaces of night

2011

for Laurie and Ellen, KCPF

Love! Love! Are you? Are you lost?

Again the owl asks from its unknown tree who are you.
The night between each star asks where is he.
The moon sees geese and asks where are my teeth.
Your heart divided in four walks around outside your body
on two mountains, through two cities and asks where am I,

where is my blood, and your blood answers.
I am a small ocean in a small white house with no tide.
A still sea ignorant of its own circumference and depth,
blind fishy eyes floating through warped blue like mirrors.
The circular edge of salt says nothing.

When three parts of the heart return, there’s more
pushing than receiving blood, lub louder than dub.
Each chamber gathers salt like a cork stopped jar,
white as the moon’s teeth, for safe keeping, for the kind
of healing that sings, we’re here, we’re here, and stings.

2011
title from “buffalo on the wing,” by la fey wit

Women 101

When your wilted beloved
hands you, if you are lucky
her tattered Manual of Me
a subtle, small print read

or worse, you’ve put this off
and wilted has turned
to loss, shaking in your face

her Idiot’s Guide to Keeping Me
full of tough love slang
and hand drawn cartoons,

it’s easy. Don’t put it off. Read.
Clean and rearrange your tools.
Fine-tune. Not her. You.
Notice she is reading yours too.

2011

Sky Gazing

Great

unclasped

necklaces

search

the sky.

There

is no

great

neck

to rest

and

mend

upon.

Geese

do not

know

what a

necklace

is

or

beauty

or what

their

honking

cannot

mean

to a

human

woman

a

Buddhist

woman

hearing

them

from bed

inside

on

Christmas

eve.

2011

to Ruth Stone, so old and so new

I want to hear you more, mottled
prophet of wild eyes searching air

I want to be one foot from your
stained folding chair, heavy worded

hands waving, begging, rubbing words
into your white hair and my ears

like a quiet wind blowing blue squall
stomping up and down ancient stairs

upon which we crumble and climb
into blaring white sky and fall through

a hush of soft green needles
where your words play our grooves

like a record scratching love love love
and we swear that is what we are made for

2011
in response to Ruth Stone

Radiances

may it come that all the radiances
be known as our own radiances
~The Tibetan Book of the Dead

As we eat, may we come to see
this generous bird is the seed
of our own earthbound flight,

these potatoes, our own
bright familial roots, reaching
through what is heavy and dark
to one another,

this corn, the sun’s teeth shining
in our own mouths,

these creamy beans, the liquid
marriage of everything green
in our own hearts and busy fingers,

this bread, our own ever-leavening
toward golden,

this pumpkin pie, the eight-spoked
wheel turning and turning us true,

this table, the mirror of our own
abundance upon which your faces
become mine, and we feast on
each other’s delight.

2011

October Monarch

because Becca found cancer in October, when I always remember

There are butterflies
in my stomach— chrysalis

ache of acid turning
bitter legged worms into monarch

wings. I throw back my head
gaze at sky, open wide my mouth

let in light. They crawl my column
of breath past teeth

and tongue, perch on parched
lips, unfold and dry. Then one

by one leap! flutter! wing away
to warmer climes where they

eat flowers, lay eggs in someone
else’s grief and quietly die.

2010/2011

The End of Daylight Savings

My hunkered shadow drives ahead of my speed
strange ear to the grey road, always listening
for the west in the eastern way I go.

And I wonder what is east in me, what sunrise
I avoid in blood beating west west west.
Why must I always long to live in sun set

when I know there is truly no disappearing
light, just a constant circling, my own looking
up and out, away from sun dial feet.

2011

Child

You are a walking sky
I’ve learned to fly through
my trepidation dragging storms
then light and red kites, murmurations
parting and mending like night swarms
sometimes a dark hawk riding heat
over the smallest of prey
or the day’s yellow promise
spreading warm for two ravens
cawing in outward circles of awe.
My personal turbulence, drops
in pressure, weather of my own
parents’ hungry patterns now mine.
Let them go. They are not you, or me.
I am just another sky joining yours.
We are the beginning of a widest blue.
(Please, my dear, do as I say, not as I do.)

2011