Witness

When a soul finds its home

In the watery nest

Of a woman’s bones and her hands come to rest

On the dome of her carriage,

She fancies herself as the giver of life,

Always misunderstanding 

The nature of time as a circle 

That sweeps through the middle 

Of bodies and dream worlds, but witness:

The stem cells of babies are left behind

In the mother’s blood for the rest of her life

And they rush to the site of her injury—

When her heart gives way,

They return to weave

The magic they carried into this world

To sustain the first rhythm that they ever heard.

The wide dominion of innocence

Finds its freedom in this and only this—

When you spend your whole life giving children the tools

To dismantle the very specter of you. 

Woman

With hips like a rose,

She gives life to the earth.

When she opens her lips,

Seven rivers emerge

And they roar like a chorus

Of angels whose wings

Beat in time to the tune

Of the song that she sings

To the babe in her arms

As she learns how to dream.

Her soul is a lean-to

With stars peeking in 

Through the slats in the roof

She’s been meaning to mend

But her tasks are forgotten

With each little cry. 

So they breathe in the starlight

And sleep through the night.  

Cocktail Napkins

What is this flesh with us

That beats its chest with us

When death is just a set 

Of growing compromises?

The courtyard swims with cocktail napkins

As the movers pack up all the rooms that we were trapped in.

Silence unspools

Backwards from the grave

Opening up the space between words

By one deep breath each day.

Hidden Rooms

In one of the quietest rooms in my mind

There is always a standing column of light

From a bare, open window, scattering gently

Across a gleaming hardwood floor.

I happen into this hidden room

In certain of my dreams, and in between

The scaffolding that offers me

Access to my memories.

The quiet center of a life

May hide behind a turn of mind.

Monument

One day perhaps the fish will swim

Among the Lincoln Monument,

Recalling through ancestral blood

The petals in the rose garden.

The wheel turns and the cotton spins—

Words become threads

With which to weave

A net to catch our Being in.

Time is like a two-way mirror—

We are there and also here.

To the Quick

Quick as an inhale, the moment arrives

When we feel time’s sickle 

Slice straight through our middle,

Dividing the timeline to before and after.

The basement is stocked for a nuclear winter

But I have nothing to eat for dinner.

Now is not a legal fiction, easily traded for Then.

Tomorrow dwells inside the palace of the imagination. 

This Way—

It’s spring that catches in the throat—

A laugh that’s swallowed in surprise—

The light that peels the shadows back

From trees as they adjust their crowns 

To hold their silent bombs, the buds,

That no one ever sees explode—

“This way, this way,” the bird song goes—

They land and reconnect with their shadows.