*
*
Old lady nails a yellow 5 on the door post
Raises her reedy voice to the widening sky
Moonlight, starlight
the solstice is coming
Ice light, snow light
winter stars humming
*
Redtail, blue jay,
woodpecker, finch
Sing a song of four birds
a pocket full of leaves
Round the house
Round the house
a pocketful of grief
*
Old year, new year
heavenly wings
Angels, ancestors
what will they bring?
*
*
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
From Remember by Joy Harjo
She came in the door today, carrying a bundle of leaves.
You sit there, she said, like a rotting avocado, picking
out your black spots with a spoon.
She flicked her fingers through my hair, kicking
up puffs of cat fur, humming a windy tune.
*
She ruffled the pages of the book of mandalas.
Ha! She puffed, The universe began on a breath.
Only love is real, nothing else, not even death.
You sit there wringing your sweaty palms,
examining the dirt in your closet.
*
She threw the leaves, dry and crisp, on the floor.
She blew a scatter across the planks.
Pick up your broom and sweep! Leap
into the present, foolish woman! Your heritage
is splendid, daughter of Isis. Fly!
*
*
If half the spinning galaxies of the universe have sun stars with planets
and
if only half of those planets host intelligent life
and
if half of those populations resemble humans on Earth
and
if half of those peoples take their lands and seas and skies into ruin,
the Great Mother of Creation must have known this would happen.
*
Will this omniscient Creator gather up all the sorry star-souls remaining
on planet Earth
and
lovingly place them somewhere new in the vast universe?
Will the Great Mother of Creation give them a fresh, clean planet,
green and blue and flourishing, saying,
“See if you can do better this time”?
*
*
The Fall
If I send you the red leaves of autumn
press them flat inside an envelope,
will you remember the Japanese maple
you climbed in the summer’s green?
*
If I mail a postcard of a Studebaker
pickup truck carrying milk cans,
will you recall the Matchbox cars
you lined up on the play mat here?
*
If I ask your forgiveness for all
my misperceptions, my withdrawal,
a mud pit of wracked emotions,
will you let the light back in?
*
If I place my heart in the circular present
attach my faith to the hem of the garment
surrender what’s left to the stillness,
will the mirror show me my true face?
*
*
One day everything changed. At first, the morning unfolded as usual. She started the water to boil, and put fragrant coffee grounds in the French press. Took a waffle from the freezer, popped it in the toaster. It was while she was scooping cat food into Raymundo’s dish that they both stopped at the sound. Raymundo pointed his pointy ears toward the bathroom. She frowned, then tiptoed to the bathroom door. Splashing sounds. Thumps and bumps. A grunt.
Slowly, cautiously, she turned the knob. Opened the door a crack. Peeked in. Someone was in the tub. A large someone. A someone with wings.
She gasped. The someone looked up.
“So sorry,” he said. She could tell by the voice and the shape it was a “he.”
“So sorry. I must have taken a wrong turn up there.” He stood up. Then she saw all of him. His skin was a deep violet, shimmering with tiny scales. The wings were made of iridescent black feathers, like a raven’s.
“You see,” he continued, as he dried himself with one of her towels, “I was aiming for the mountain lake, just north of here, but my hydrodetector malfunctioned and I ended up here in your bath.”
She was speechless.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just be off. Might you let me out your back entrance? You do have one? Won’t do to walk out on your street this time of the morning.”
She opened the door and stepped aside to let him pass.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.
*
*
The one I left behind
has blank eyes of amber brown
stares at a future of days unchanging
leans forward in the wheelchair
tries to stand on legs too weak and trembling
*
The one I left behind
eats from another hand
like a baby bird
lives among others who wait
for something new or different
or death
*
The one I left behind
left me behind
retreated into a place
mysterious, unreachable
Perhaps he’s on a divine mission
perhaps he’s dancing with angels
perhaps, in his eyes,
I’m the impaired one
lagging far behind.
*
*
Moon Meeting
Yesterday morning, I met the moon in Walgreen’s. She was looking for silver nail polish with glitter.
“I lost my glasses,” she told me.
I helped her find a bottle called “Sheer Sparkle.”
She smelled like peppermint and lavender. Her hair was long and white, bundled up in a messy bun. She wore a baggy white t-shirt and wide leg jeans.
How did I know she was the moon?
She introduced herself, offering me her hand. The nail polish on her fingernails was chipped. Her nails were uneven and ragged.
“I am the moon,” she said.
I told her my name.
Her fingers felt cool and knobby, like an autumn branch.
“I’m in pretty good shape for 65,” she said, leaning forward to look in a mirror on the cosmetic counter. She lifted the skin on her jawline and sighed. “I’m beginning to sag a bit.”
Then she turned with a bright smile. “Would you have a buck or two for me? I’m a little short today. You know—waning.”
I paid for the nail polish. She sailed up into the sky.
*
*
Joy
“Then did I learn how existence could be cherish’d
Strengthen’d and fed without the aid of joy.”
-Emily Bronte, Remembrance
Joy is not where I live
yet this life I hold like a damsel fly,
delicate, light-footed,
whose touch I thank each morning
*
Joy is not what I speak,
but rituals, deeply rooted,
as the stream-fed cottonwood
affirm life’s leafy purpose
*
Joy flies too high to grasp,
caught on an updraft, rising
on dappled, pointed wings
a lightness sought, inspired
*
Joy is a bird rarely seen,
a fleeting lift of heart
while feet mark the dance
of a foreign time-signature
*
*
I am from a no-God home with
a philosophical father
who lectured in ponderous tones
a mother who only liked Christmas
because her father was Italian.
*
I am from a visit to an Italian hospital
where the winged blue nuns
sifted through peaceful sunbeams.
I am from 11 years old longing for that cloistered peace.
I am from a knowing there was more than
the right pleated skirt, the red ribbed sweater.
*
I am from a meditating neighbor whose
tiny apartment hummed with a velvet love
that I coveted, and so learned the practice.
*
I am from locking eyes with a living saint
whose gaze changed me forever.
Slight figure in orange robes, she opened
my first chakra and my heart.
*
I am from chanting God’s names
with a thousand souls
the rising divine vibration of the universe.
*
*
Anywhere I go, the songs follow me.
The man was a giant to my five-year-old eyes.
Tall and skinny, with a long-neck banjo
he threw his head back and sang,
hopped like a cricket around the stage.
*
Camp songs carried his imprint.
We told Aunt Rhody
her goose was dead. The Midnight
special kept shining its light.
While he was blacklisted,
his songs rang like the hammer.
*
And then it was all about
overcoming, and equality
and bringing ‘em home
from Vietnam. We were
singing. I taught his songs
to the next generation.
*
How we all came together
on the river, once sewer water,
then a swimming pool.
The songs sailed up and down
the Hudson, sailing on into
choruses while he swapped songs
by the Sloop Club’s wood stove.
*
Handing down clothes to his
granddaughter, visits to
the log cabin above the river,
cowering under Toshi’s gimlet eye
her sharp words, no nonsense
for her who managed it all.
*
The song of a man threaded music
in silver strands through my living days,
the score of a life of giving
a shining pattern of humility and power.
Tangled Magic 