When I Am at Home and Among Relics

When I am at home and among relics of you,

I can't help but be consumed 

as the whole of love comes upon me

while you are far away. 

You will soon return, you say,

but in how many desperate hours?

When will your aching body 

reclaim the place that my bed,

expectant and healing,

has been keeping

as I am counting the days?

When will my hands get to hold your tired head?

And downstairs one apartment floor,

your door--

Each time, walking past,

I hope to see a light through your bright window,

or that smiling face,

like the first time I saw you 

as you waved and I was startled.  

  

Then again, like an ocean,

the whole of love comes upon me

while you are far away.  

The warm tides of longing,

And the infinite ache.

The Cost of Education

Solitude, o solitude
In thine arms I rest.
Your love weighs ever-faithful
on my heavy-laden breast.

Solitude, my loyal friend,
steadfast, will never leave me.
For I seek truth and trust no thing,
and you are not deceiving.

Solitude, you're here to stay,
and the invitation's come from me.
For climbing up this tower high
leaves me with no company.

Because knowledge is your brother
and wisdom is your wife,
we've grown close the years I've lived with them
(Which is to say, my life).

So keep climbing with me (we can't stop now),
companion ever true,
to look out over tops of mountains,
where air is thin and friends are few.

Looking at You I Wonder

Looking at you,
I wonder if people ever ask themselves
what is going on inside that awful, lovely head of yours.
What wars are being fought in the trenches of its wrinkles and folds?
What nightmares lie in the depths of its seas,
beneath dormant volcanoes that time created?
What faces are etched in permanence, voices and names all but forgotten.
What sweet or bitter scents rekindle fires and storms...
What ancient melodies transport you to
a summer, an era, a love?
Looking at you,
I wonder.

I Contain Multitudes

I have within me
perhaps the president of a free nation.
(though dormant now),
within me lies a great somebody,
or a great many somebodies--
to surpass me.
A greater writer than me,
a better lover than me...
a farmer, a teacher, a father, a mother.

My body contains future bodies and future souls--
I contain multitudes.

I share with all fair-sexed creatures
the most base of instincts--
to choose a partner worthy.
What good and hearty man will raise these babes up
in the sunlight of my absence?
Who will help me to nurture these
future hungry spirits?

I contain the world within me,
and whatever remains of life that I cannot do myself,
I will have birthed babes to do them in my place.

I am a woman,
I contain multitudes.

Te Espero Descansar

I wish you respite now, and why,

because the breeze and I dance cheek-to-cheek,

And I feel selfish for hogging the best partner.

I wish you a moment’s rest,

so that you can hear for yourself

all the stories the leaves are whispering—

I don’t think I would quote them right,

though I try to remember.

Los besos del sol?

Be not jealous—I am starting a collection

so that I may embrace you with their golden limbs,

and all the light contained therein.

I wish you respite now so that I may give you

the soft kisses the grass
planted on my rosy cheek.

My Heart Has Had a Change of Address, Or, The Blood Letter

Send my love letters away
to reaches far enough that
the emotion is lost even to me.

When the pen hits paper,
may the ink transubstantiate my blood
and let me of this ill--
flow out as my heart in place of me
and send with a stamp of grief,
to reaches I've not seen.

Better yet-
as the plume carves characters on parchment,
may it carve the damned thing out
of its fixed post in the cavity, better hollow anyhow.
Fill it with something else...
Fill it with air-- I don't care! Just get it out,
this thing that won't let me be--
this big, bleeding mass is the bane of me.
I am as a prisoner in the cage
of my own ribs--
send them back to Adam!
Better yet--
kill two birds and mail them with my blood letter
(just leave off the return address).

And if none of this can be done today,
just tell me-- what's the cure for pain?

You Were Always Me

Under the weighted blanket of stars,

feeling heavy with living,

I posed to God the most frequently-asked, the most human of questions:

"Why am I here?"

God said:

"Because I wanted a friend."

    "But why, then, didn't you just keep me there with you,

instead of in this prison of a half-life?" 

God replied:

     "Because I wanted you to be empathetic to my suffering."  

Ok, then, I thought... What else is there to do?

"Plus," God said, "I have given you the whole world."

I looked at Ursa Major. 

"I made that bear to dance across the sky for you in starry

formation.  Do you ever wonder if night will fall?  Do you ever doubt

there will be some light in it?"

So the world was mine--

it always has been--

and why not take it? 

When I recited to God Say I Am You,

God said:

"Just look at your hands and feet

and use them to be a friend to all.

And you were always me."  

Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim. 

Her Heart Was Caged in Spruce and Pine

Leave the woodpile to rest,
latch up the duck house to keep them from the foxes.
Walk slow up the waning sunlight hill,
grass cool and dry still
under lazy, ascending feet.

She goes about the evening routine,
feeding the animals and drinking in the splendor
of berries growing wild in the bush,
a night about to fall.
Throat cool and quenched from the
early summer air, infused with some magic
of ardor and imagination,
an invitation
to be vacant,
unnoticed
for a little while,
to meet quietly with her loyal love-
always faithful is the night.

So in this blissful cool of dusk,
she looked up to the sky and thought,
"I want to be free but I want to be loved."
She wondered if nature could afford her
all the affection she needed.
After all, the hammock was gently rocking her
as if a child,
and the sparrows and swallows offered their songs
as lullabies.
Nature was free but it was always with her,
the most loyal of lovers indeed.

You see, her heart was caged in spruce and pine,
latticed birch and cedar.
A jealous partner is the summer night
of wood, and sky and freedom.

"How wonderful to be alive, he thought.  But why does it always hurt?"

-Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago

A Certainty

"This freedom came from the feeling that all human lives were interrelated, a certainty that they flowed into each other -- a happy feeling that all events took place not only on the earth, in which the dead are buried, but also in some other region which some called the kingdom of God, others history, and still others by some other name."

-Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago 

Tonight Held a Blessing

I had a date tonight, but didn't feel like going.
I'm not sure
     whether it was
 

             t h e    w e a r i n e s s


of having      given               f  o  r  c  e  d emotion
    time
       and
          time
             
                 AGAIN

(oh, I am exhausted),
                             

               or simply

that I knew              tonight
                                                    held a blessing.


                       Indeed, I have found love

in      a         book            of

            poems.

                 What joy b e y o n d interaction!


Waiting for me                     tonight


     was           my           own        soul.


          And     it     feels   g o o d

 to open
       the
           cover.

Because I'm Unearthing

Though it is far from Winter (and thankfully), I have uncovered another poem about Kansas that went along with some photos (ca. 2010):

A Kansas Winter 

A Kansas Winter knows no end 
but sees the Earth chilled to its bones; 
birds give their shrill cries to the wind 
and flee now from their fragile homes. 
The silver plains meld with the sky 
all colors blended into grays; 
the seats of Spring sit idly by 
as their ghosts wait for longer days.

At Night

I may have written this in 2009, but it feels yet close to me. Rediscovered and tweaked,
here is "At Night:"

As I lay here and watch the sky get black,

I recall the demands of the day.

Everything seems so trivial now—

Each hurried event more distant than the next.

The harmony of leaves rustling in trees and the smell

of the summer wind lull me to a sleepy calm.

And as the sky turns from purple, to navy, to black,

I envision God dimming the sun

and saying, "Shh..." as she slowly pulls the shade over her sky-window

and then clicks on the night-lights,

one by one,

turning on the stars to twinkle reassurance and urge a new perspective:

to remember my place in this world.

I am but an atom in this infinite universe—
Below the stars,

the moon,

the quiet clouds that pass steadily below them,

the trees turning gently in their breezy beds,

and the town.

And beneath this great mystery I lay,

not wanting for another day.

What Does Love Encompass?

So often-- really anytime someone asks what I study--
I am asked how or why I can believe in God.

But I tell you,
God is nearer to me than my right hand.

The reality of God transcends
whatever I may discover about any religion--
religion is so inadequate a tool
in understanding the divine,
yet I see splendor in it still...
there is beauty in the seeking,
whatever form it takes.

Many people, I think,
have God and just don't realize it.
They tell me everyday that God does not exist,
but I think they are just confused on the definition.

Why do we confine God so?
It may be helpful to expand our notion--
what does love encompass?  

Though I may be confused about my own religion,
I am no good without God.
God is nearer to me than my right hand,
will never let me go.  

The Past in Present Tense

History may not repeat itself ad infinitum,
but people surely do.

No one is new under the sun,
there is a you, a they, a she, a him
and multiples beside them.

The longer I live, the more people look like people who've hurt me...
but thankfully, too,
I'm seeing friends in new bodies.

There used to be a now and only now,
a you and only you--
but now that I'm older, I think about later,
and no one seems too far away
(You'll be coming around again).

When My Days Have Finished Dawning

Some previous poems may have indicated a paradoxical fear of both death and life, but the way that I have recently come to terms with it is to remember my own infinity:

       I have been around
  f  o  r  e  v  e  r.

             I am in the earth,
the heavens,
            every smile.

              why fear dying so much
if so much

            of me
                           will still be
around
         when my body goes?

The world and I...
        we go
                    w   a   y   back.

"death," you call it,
     will only bring me
d
e
e
p
e
r
      into her soil.

I have asked the pregnant moon to
     keep having God's lovechildren

and the sun to keep watch
       over them...

                           and you.

I have asked the birds to warn of any
    t
     r
      o
       u
         b
           l
            e

and for everyone to keep
       learning and trying
to
    fly.

They all said
       YES.

                   See?
The world will be just fine without me.

                Life is not g o i n g anywhere.

I love this world and I don't want to                      leave                 it,
    but its existence won't depend on my perceiving it!

                 Lovely      and      new
each
morning,
                 dawn will dawn

and the sun will wake on time and
       get to her post in the sky...

  I know this for a

f
a
c
t.

     She promised me.

I Wept at a Flower Blooming

To really think about a sunset, the Prophet wept for an evening.
I weep, too, when I think about the pure and silent lives of plants and creatures...
Nature is something we watch on a screen like a spectator sport--
but it is right outside our doors!

I think about the ducks hatching their eggs, quietly and without ceremony...
Whether detected or not by the human eye, this life happens;
this grand miracle unfolds.
And so has it been since the beginning of God's wondrous creation.
Is this what God intended?  For us not to notice the delicate
unfurling of a lily?

We demand attention at every turn--
posting photos online of everything.
But the unassuming rabbit goes about his magnificent day unnoticed...

Every tree-- every fish and fern-- has a story to divulge.
Quick-- listen!

Reflecting on the miracle that is bushes birthing berries,
or trees making homes for birds...
I want to weep.

It is not a rare thing, nature.
It is more real than all our hand-held screens
and workday trouble.
It endures.

Quietly, quietly, quietly
life abundant, flowering life
occurs just outside our shutters
and parking lots.

Quick-- look!
And listen!
Be a humble friend to all that is natural and good,
all that is not sterilized and paved.
Be a part of the unfolding,
the miracle that is real
life.

Sacrilege

I call it pure sacrilege
to cross out calendar days
as though each of them was not given
like some big, blank check.
Why write "void" on our lives?

Sustenance

Your banquet lays before me,
I simply cannot devour it all in one sitting.

I gather all the musty parts of you,
and kiss them tenfold
in reverence.

As though waiting on my doorstep--
the card reads from Mother Nature,
ripe for the picking and
bountiful,
warmed by the sun of hot breath and
smoldering eyes.

We are silent--
Why disrupt the gift of the night?
Let's keep it holy
and bless this sacred feast.

A Loneliness Quelled

The day that comes
when I don't have to explain anything--
a loneliness will be quelled within me.
Of my soul, an understanding--
with scarcely a defense.

A great chasm,
when crossed,
leaves still the gorge behind,
though the river beneath
knows nothing of an emptiness.

My heart pumps but
this canyon river though me--
One needs not a bridge over it,
or boat.
Only to swim this river--

to know nothing of emptiness.