Symmetry

For fifteen years I lived in one house that never faltered from its fixed foundation
but then, with a death, it fell.

Since I left there I keep leaving, every year. As soon as I know where all my belongings go
I've already gone to the next - 

I'm so tired of moving and packing, arriving with all my broken possessions. On the day before the last I look around and wonder why I own all this garbage and what is the point of it all...

I am about to be longer in the adult world than I was a child and still I am aimless and scared. The thunder rolls in and my baby cries and I can't type fast enough or enough enough to make myself make sense of it here.

I wasn't promised balance, but I invoke it often on the precipice. Either that, or the courage to jump.

Self-Pity

It's not that I consider myself a motherless child anymore, so much as someone entirely bereft of family or maternal guidance. The truth is, they were never what I wanted. I should stop lamenting their failures and move beyond their genetic catastrophe. As soon as the Zoloft starts working, I'm sure I will not fear success.

In Search of Identity

"I listen to my words but
They fall far below."

Cat Stevens, The Wind

Being Peace

When you're holding the baby, hold the baby.

So Much Depends on Tuesday

We walked the perimeter of our yard and smelled the warm air and noticed every detail of this landscape we inhabit. We sat beside the chicken coop and in small fields of dandelions. I tossed you up in the air under the apple tree. We sat in the glider where the peach tree resists its blossom. We looked at each other in the shade. We looked at each other in the sun. I took your picture by the rhubarb patch. I saw you seeing bees and leaves and pine needles. The goats tried to get out attention. The barn stood near to us, a stripped, stained red. We walked the perimeter of the yard and came back into our house.

Green Tara

Every leaf and nubile shoot
is imbued with the spirit of Her,
eternally youthful and ever-renewing.
I look up and up and inward with my child eyes
and ask Her grace upon my every gesture.
She is the aspect I appeal to in spring;
I recognize Her gentle blessing in the breezes
that regularly circulate on the wheel of my life and breath.

a poem written spontaneously in three minutes while listening to the Green Tara Mantra

All The Artists of My Youth

The artists of my youth are falling
like glass bottles in a carny's unfair game,
stacked precariously in a cluster pyramid,
being taken down one by one by a fast pitch ball
thrown by an unseen hand

If they're falling or ascending
depends on where you're seated
Where they are going nobody knows
...
Perhaps they'll meet
in that far-off and infinitely close land
Where the wild things are
and you don't have to fight for your right to party.

RIP MCA and Maurice Sendak

Rainy

I really want to drink a splash of whiskey in the bathtub and read Parabola and be soothed by the sound of the wind and the rain.