benign pineal cyst

~for my mother who cannot sleep

I dreamt
I held her head like a baby,
thinking if I spoke gently
she wouldn’t worry she
had lost her body. Bodiless,

she didn’t notice, but I did. She
should be dead, I thought, though skin
had grown across her severed neck,
thin tissue tendersoft as scars,
so calm.  I felt she could live.

Sh, I whispered, brushing hair
back with my palm, kissing
her scented forehead,
It is okay, Mama. You
are okay.  There now.

Her expression a child’s
at the breast, eyes wide
and soft in mine, mouth sounds
making less sense, I talked
and rocked.

She slept.

2009

In the middle

We’re in the middle of everywhere,
circling something circling something else.
Perhaps this is enlightenment, to be aware
of what we circle, what circles we share.
I circle you. You circle me. Though
our hearts live beyond this thin
dichotomy and laugh at the word “hearts,”
at the small strong muscle it suggests,
at the “s.” We love in between
letters and flesh, where love is best.

2009

Speaking of Houses

Your house is your larger body, said the prophet.
And your lover said: the house is no longer yours
when the sign is on the lawn.
And people walk through
who never invited you in.
And the realtor said they scoffed at the nudes on your walls.
They huffed: inappropriate for a home with children!
And the many armed deities of
myriad joyful capabilities became their demons.
And the unadorned Buddha with loose hair
became naked shame, not bliss unbound.
And they murmured on your stairs. So you
take this and other images down, box them
And laugh that, in closets, they will
still be the clothes of your most open spaces.

2009

morning toast after a night fight

scrape off what is black

with a quick serrated knife

to save what is soft

2009

After reading Rosemerry's "Homecoming"

So lovely, this waiting to be scoured of longing.
May we never be. May the rain never come to rearrange us,
or may it come, and rearrange our longing, again and again,
sparkling like mica, calling us. Is it gold? Is it?
Are we fools? The answer is always, always, yes.

2009

lost in bed

Some mornings before tea,
Tai Chi, sit-ups or cereal,
the bed reclaims the head,
and the head keeps talking

about novels that seduced
and left you lost, lovers
who once seduced, whom you
left lost, and your head

lost in a labyrinth of sweetgrass
that moved underground and sprung
from where you first planted it
in the wrong bed,  and your own bed

lost for almost a month, your hands
helping your hungry belly remember
this is how he touched  and found
you outside your head.

2009

In the beginning was a school bus

From one of its olive green Naugahyde seats
an 11 year old girl’s belly—
while trying to imagine her own
insignificance despite her Christianity—
disappeared into endless space,
into the place that holds all things
but is not held by anything else.

Her eyes fluttered.  Bouncing in the seat
over pot holes brought her belly back,
a nausea. When the bus stopped,
she walked out of its metal walls,
across the street, into the dry-walled walls
of her own home with the hidden key
under the railing. She turned on the tv.

2009

How to Herd Moths

Turn off the ceiling light.
Hold your small bedside lamp
overhead like Lady Liberty.
Lovingly lure them from blinds,
corners, ceiling and walls,
open the window, reach outside,
shake them loose into cool night.

A few may refuse.

Think.  An hour before sleep,
turn off all upstairs lights
except above the bathroom sink.
Leave the door open a crack, a lean beacon.
Wait.  Peek in to see the velvet clicking
herd, mad with their love of light,
whirling dervishes of night.  Breathe.

Minutes before sleep, screech open
the screenless bathroom window, squint
against dozens of diving wings, brush your teeth,
pull the light’s string, close the door:  done.
By morning, the bathroom will be empty.
While we dream, moths free
themselves into rising sun.

Mantras

Sit under the full moon
until you are sitting there,

and the week’s riot orchestra
is replaced by crickets,

and crescendos
and is replaced again.

Wind raises skin
and orange moon

brims to white while words
of the busy day grow quiet, replaced

by sky, glinting space.  It may be
morning before the messages

sift through  and out of you, so slow,
though speed has moved such water through

the body to burst, aching diaphragm
a fist.  Unclench, unclench,

the crickets pitch at angles.  And owl
begs its usual who? who? who?

unblinking under moon,
and Oh, mmm,  mmmm.

The chest opens its lid.
Breath joins the gentle wind.

Lidless, you are more
than you, and blissfully less.

2009

in a bardo house

you take down the photos
of family and red and gold
smooth paintings of nudes

because the doors
are now open to those
who have made you

want to leave
from the beginning.
now they wander

your halls, the only
place you were
ever yourself

and they become
the critics you
feared, making

pronouncements:
you are inappropriate.
you don’t belong here.

so you strip the walls
of anything that will
remind them you will

burn in hell so they will
buy your home
so you can leave

this hell
they’ve made of preparing
for heaven.