*
*
if he cannot recall his own past,
relations, stories
if he forgets where he lives,
the year, the president’s name
if all that disappears,
those are his losses
*
if I am not remembered as wife,
as friend, as the one who cares
who plans, who cleans
if he can’t recall my name,
my special place beside him,
then I am erased too
*
*
She awoke knowing she wasn’t alone. Faint moonlight slid through the gauzy summer curtains. Her heart struck like a gong. A dark shape, a figure in the corner, appeared as a darker outline where the closet met the wall.
She pulled the sheet up under her chin, hands trembling. “Who-who are you?”
The figure moved slightly, emerging into the thin, dim light.
She saw the feet first, bare, and then cloth wrapping to shoulder, bare arms and hands, a stack of bracelets, an armband.
The head remained obscured, but even in the dimness, she could tell it wasn’t human. Large and square, with a huge, curved beak. A glittering eye reflecting moonlight.
“Who am I?” the reply came in a scratchy, unused whisper. “You should know. You called me.”
The one in the bed drew back further. “I-I called?” Flashing thoughts reviewed her most recent phone calls and texts. Nothing.
“In prayer,” came the crackly whisper. “You called for a healer.”
True. She had prayed, just that night, for help. Help with the unraveling health, and guidance.
“Can you help me?” she asked. “Heal me?”
“Where I come from, no one would ask that question.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Saqqara. Egypt. From the time before the desert, from the beginning. From the green Nile and the rains making furrows in the holy Sphinx. From those who read the stars and moved great stones. They called me Horus.”
*
*
More than this body of humming cells,
Swish of blood, strumming muscles
More than sweat or bones
More than ears missing tones
Clogged nose, unreliable eyes
Skin melting into wrinkled ridges
More than a restless mind,
Skittering thoughts to past or future
More than the mirror’s reflection
More than the labels, jobs, relations
Not this
Not that
Only breath
Only presence
Only now
*
*
Turning right off the Pacific Coast Highway
the dirt road becomes sand
ocean fills my nostrils, my ears
at the road’s end is the house
bamboo blinds down, but waiting
*
While parents unload the car
I run across the patio
fling off my flip-flops
tumble downstairs to the beach
*
Hot sand and slick kelp
waves swirl to my knees
dogs splash and bark
my paradise, my ocean mother
I’m home again
*
*
I have read that your loved ones greet you
at the end-of-life tunnel
You see their silhouettes against a glorious light
They welcome your spirit with love
once it’s shed the body, a discarded husk
*
I have wondered how–if I am met
by my mother’s spirit–
how she could also reincarnate again.
Can souls be in a body and the afterlife, too?
*
I have felt the rising pulse of awe
at the various and myriad forms of Creation
that burst from a pinpoint of light
and one single thought: to become
*
I have been in, and also out
I have risen in the violet flame
I have heard your moon song
I have sung you across the river
*
*
A luna moth emerges
from its rough, camouflaged cocoon
pale green grace, soft night angel
spiral tails, feathered feelers
No mouth.
No
Mouth.
Her cycle: mate, lay eggs, and die
*
Damsel flies, shiny blue, scaly
slim window wings
skim a handful of weeks
Gypsy moths cycle through a year
*
Boulders birth in earth upheavals
Jagged or rounded by weather
Dense consciousness, witness
to passing millennia
one exhale in one thousand years
*
We unshelled humans
spin in between
the slow life of stones
and 24-hour mayflies
We bleed and we heal
scabs and scars mark
skins and hearts
*
Our convoluted brains
seek the Presence behind
this strange mosaic of being
always becoming more
expanding to perceive Itself
in every wing, every breath
*
*
Curled in a yellowed egg
for uncounted seasons
a soul presses sticky walls
bows to each sunrise
faint glow through shell
bent into a pretzel
braided arms to legs
air bubble used up
weak weathered wings
the last breath
crack in the sky
fresh spearmint wind
of life remaining
–Mary McCue
*
*
The stranger who sleeps next to me
looks like an older version
of the man I married 20 years ago
but that person no longer resides in his body.
Dementia steals him away every morning
when I shake his leg to rouse him
remove his watch and necklace of rudraksha beads.
He lies there like a sack of sand
not raising arm or head to help me.
*
He’s a toddler going backward
not intending to provoke or obstruct
forgetting that the pants
go on before the shoes
while I seek a way to forgive
my spouts of anger, bouts of tears
His disease tethers me to home
like a dog on a line
*
Bitter words, vinegar sour
dare not look back at years lost
dream of a better time
Then waken next to a stranger
with his face.
*
*
the love river flows, then
sinks below ground
sludge, slime and mud remain,
mud, rocks, rotten leaves
crayfish or salamander corpse
in a trickle of silty murk
sharp shingle cracked
by ice and sun
*
step with steadfast care
do not abandon this place
hold heart-close the river’s fullness
beneath your feet
pray for the rain of grace
*
*
Restless in the afternoon
He puts on his coat,
Picks up the flashlight
Where are you going?
It’s daytime
You don’t need a flashlight.
*
She gives in, gives up
sewing the quilt pieces
Takes him for a walk
in the bright April wind
he shuffles too slowly for exercise
asks to go back too soon
It’s been barely ten minutes!
Already heading home
*
Where do you live? He asks
In Wallkill. You live with me.
Do you know who I am?
What’s my name?
I don’t know. I’m sorry.
*
Now he is further gone
And she is erased
Tangled Magic 