Friendship

Before friendship can save you,
you must crash your rattling, shit-caked
semi-truck pride, release every tender eyed cow
the ones you were driving to slaughter for a low price
let them wander into the tall meadow
of flowering nettles and mullein
she left growing for you.

Before you find friendship’s nourishing weeds
you must first stand alone by a huge green garbage can
whose ashtray is full of discarded butts, and smoke one, remembering
embers passed to you, broke, or trying to quit, unable to resist
putting your lips where your friends’ lips were, taking in
smoke to make breath more memorable. You must
remember breath shared is like smoke.

Before friendship can spread your deepest sigh
you must let her hammer dynamite into your granite
heart, listen well to her story of lost breasts, lost mothers, lost sisters
found names, until her fire sends the fuse aflame, until your heart
explodes into giant boulders and tiny irretrievable shards.
You must let her glue you back together in her arms
into the shape of a hand reaching out of earth.

It is only then that friendship
hooks your hand around its hip, friendship
that is staked in a square around you, small sapling
that you are, held by sturdy ropes on a windswept plain
friendship that holds you tiny while your trunk
gains girth, prunes your bony winter twigs
to train you for a lifetime of springs.

2012

Water Speaks

I don’t know what I am
moving this way. I can’t
see myself. I know
myself by what contains

me. Shifting shores, stones
whose colors I have
no names for. If you
are not holding on

to anything, I can take
you with me. I know
myself this way, too,
by the shape I make

around you, woman
wishing you were more
like me, a bit more
free. This freedom is

too big for you. You
tremble to lose
your name, to spread
and sink so deep,

unseen, to lift
and blur so wide
you want to name yourself
a cloud, write vague

poems about rain
and floods, and living
mud. No, I’m sure
as rain and mud my way

is not for you.  Accept
this human shape
of me, the only way
I know to speak.

2012

because I arrived in the dark

what I thought was rain was the river
moving over the mountain of sleep

I woke again and again in a room with three beds
and three poets, heads resting on the soft chests of words

not a sound, not even the sh of restless
sheets, only the breath of the river

threading through poems that might be
sewing this warm inside world to the cold

alpine spring, our almost stories blinking
holes in the high spaces of night

2011

for Laurie and Ellen, KCPF

Ravens

1
Look

2
He was already
Driving home from
Taos every few miles a bird
black and black over plunged
the highway ahead  Each time she asked
him its name  That is a raven

3
You always say
that she said (1)

4
A week later hands
under hands under
a table she listens neck bent In the grand canyon
I saw two checking out
the landscape riding a thermal
playing People assume human beings

5
are the only creatures capable of aesthetic
appreciation The male and female (2) I think
have the capability of caring for one
another mate for life

6
So many sugar pouches under the leg of our vague wanting to be ravens

7
In sleep he has never flown but fallen fallen fallen

8
from buildings into sand (3)
Now she on the other
hand remembers in her stomach how
to lift and dive without

9
fear Feathers mark pages in her
books prick her thighs through
thin pockets when she crouches
She stuffs them

10
ruffled into bottles shakes them out to check for black
______________________________________
1.  So start asking about the other birds
2.  fly touching wings
3.  It doesn’t hurt

slow hold

the gentle
plains of your body lay

unconstrained by seams
beneath slow palms. slow

as they could go.
eyes I knew, even

in shadow: your mother’s
blue kindness. (was she

also a sharer of spinach
and rice?)  silver

caravan, Cache La Poudre
could not contain the crash

of us, or our condensation,
clouds born of pulsing

breath and skin blushing
windows. finally, out in

the air, Hold raised her head.
Owl asked questions.  we smiled

inches from the beds of
our lips, faces reflecting

suns of bare teeth
hiding tongues.

2008-20012

Rachel on Poets’ Co-op TV

Catch a clip of Rachel's April 2012 performance on Poets' Co-op TV

No metaphors for

Say hello to the great shining
embroidered with your fleshy personality.
(The shining may be a clear hole, but if that scares you
think instead a rimless, bowlless, friendly bowl.)
I pull at our tight threads with poems.

Unraveling, I talk too much.
I’m paid to tell you what I know, but there are holes
in knowing funneling toward the shining hole,
and you fall through. I can’t catch you.

You can’t catch me.
We think our words are handholds,
or that our hands are words, but they are only bumps
stalling speed so fast it’s empty, so vast
even the sky falls through.

2012

Distances

Geological, mythological,
biological, neurological,
psychological, theological.

Perhaps there is no logic at all
in the urge bridging
or forcing the gap

between this earth, this story,
this skin, this charge,
this mind, this god and that.

2012

Where Words Wait

When I am nearly quiet
and perfect words appear,
silence is more perfect.

I tuck the precious phrase
behind my ear like windy hair,
or gum to save for later chewing.

I promise words a quick return.
My most important work requires
such wild undoing: an empty mouth.

2012

The Work of Dogs

Like my young pup
I can’t resist nosing dead starlings
in the back yard of my heart.
I snatch up every one
in my well-fed jaws and dart.
Yell for me all you want.
I’ll come back when I’m done.

2012