273–Catching Up

i’m catching up so multiple

poem day the words ooze sweat

and clean soothe my bones add

wonder to my eyes give me

a foundation on which to stand

going into this new day alive

but not in the army no general

or president just an old girl

glad to be here on this spinning

experiment the control panel

no where to be seen

Advertisement

272–What If

its colder now the window’s open

no longer closed tight to keep out

3 digit heat the sounds of cars and

birds leap in though the stupor of

sleep but mostly i lay for a while

in your arms when i come conscious

why don’t you just discover instead

of spending so much time reinvented

she says to me from this cozy safe

place in the shadow of her wing

humm i think now that’s an easy

way to live kind of fun too not

trying to revise the world

we have such guilt these days

thinking we have destroyed

our gorgeous home but what

if we’re just here to adore you?

That Would Really be Something

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
—Zen proverb

I would like to make nothing
a verb. I nothing. You nothing.

We nothing. That second person
plural is my favorite conjugation.

Imagine. Both of us nothinging together.
Where? I don’t care. The garden.

The alley. The canyon. The floor.
More nothing. Oh, it’s nothing.

Nothing is sacred, anymore.
And there, on the altar of air

our minds and bodies rest. They unfold
in the hollow, the gaps. Though

when nothing happens, that’s
all I want to talk about. I thrill

at nothing. I love nothing.
Nothing’s perfect. Nothing’s easy.

The grass continues to grow.
Nothing to do. Nothing to say.

Let’s nothing together all day.

Hollows

Sometimes when I stand on this land
I remember a river runs underneath it.
It’s a secret one wouldn’t know from the soil.

Strolling here midst the western wheat grass,
yellow sweet clover and thick red paintbrush,
the ground feels solid enough. So much

of what happens is secret—not clandestine,
really, but it happens without our knowing.
It’s hard enough to take notice of all

that occurs above the surface, much less
to find time to mine for all that’s unseen.
And so often what we find is unsettling—

like a thin crust of earth with a river beneath
it, rushing and cold, moving through
all that we think that we know.

Thriving Between

Today I thrill in miraculous things,
like how five hundred pounds of gala apples
come off of one tree that began as one seed.

Like the star that shines inside the fruit,
like the universe expanding,
and that minds might, too.

Like bread rising thanks to the living yeast.
How an embryo forms in the shadow of the womb
and all that is light comes from darkness.

Breath. Strawberry. Wing. The unlikeliness
of a jellyfish. How one and one
can make fine rhythm.

How sometimes you say what I need to hear.
I wear wings of praise. Here come
bright things. I am right here.

Making Room for Morning Light

On the rim of dawn
my daughter cries out
and there is not yet

any light. I am not
thinking of the grass
with its vigorous green

nor the salsify in the field
with their fragile white globes
but they surround me,

surround the house,
and some part of me
that is still asleep knows

they are there, assumes their presence,
and does not give it any
attention or thought.

It is not like this with our love.
Even in a stupor at the fuzzy edge
of sleep, you come to mind,

and I lean into the inner glow
of mmm as I walk the dark halls
to the room where the girl

is already standing with her arms
upraised. Later, when morning
has lowered her bight hem into the yard

I will admire how the light
filters low through late summer leaves
and watch as it scrubs away

whatever seemed gray until
all the world is gold, silver and green,
and on my lips, a hum still sits

and waits for me to sing of the light,
how all night the stars inside
were shining, falling.