Jupiter in March

There, that red spot, that’s where I am and who –
that one immense high pressure band
swirling above the calm blue curly-cue
sea. I’d rather be the sea, salty and

expansive, but I keep spinning around
myself, a counter rotating vortex
at odds with my core and all that surrounds
me. I am Jupiter’s great red spot, vexed,

irritated, a cosmic blemish, hives
a bruise, a zit, a corpuscle, blood
red molten mass of sunset and sunrise,
both in a hurry like a racing flood

of ruddy mud, undefined, I am that,
but I’d rather be the milky blue calm
of the Earth’s surf, surrendering to flat
shores, a slight white rush of foam, then a balm.

Ebb and flow, wax and wane, in and out,
I’d rather be that consistency,
moon tide, breath upon breath, yes, I’d rather be
one breath of the sea.

Sonnet

Some of you were asking for the most recent poems submitted. This is a classic sonnet.

Calla Lily

Dear calla lily, how he does ascend
into your lingering, gilded beauty,
you and you alone are his fleur-de-lis.
Unassuming grace, never to offend,
you bring an aged and wounded life to mend.
Without, you see, he can no longer be
so has sworn forever your devotee.
Wishing this blissful union to suspend,
your ardent worshipper plucks a full stem
to quill his still and clutching cobalt heart
and claim you, Calla Lily, all his own.
But, man’s transfusion is lily’s requiem.
Colorless and wilting, you soon depart,
fertile gifts aimlessly drifting, un-sown.

I don't write much in January

only this silly little poem:

The baby robin
begins her job in
hunting worms outside my window.
Cheer up! Cheer up!
Oh, fill your cup
she chirped, insisting I do so.

I have nine months of practicing new life and I no longer cling to anything that drags me away from the present.

Anna Akhmatova

Sunday morning, October 31, 2010 -- I have many chores to do and yet I cannot put down this book of poetry, this book of answers. I flip through the voluminous Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova for a thank you/gratitude poem for the friend who gave me this book. I know Akhmatova’s poems from ’96, when my passionate, painter lover sent me:

2

And as if by mistake
I used the familiar: “Ty…”
And the shadow of a smile lit up
Your sweet features.

From slips such as these
Such glances can blaze…
I love you like forty
Fond sisters.

Page 115, I tore a scrap of paper from my to-do list to remember, just a small piece to mark a moment between chores, a memory. I must get back to work. The coffee is cold. I am cold. Having stripped the bed for wash and not turned on the heat, I put in a load of laundry. Feeling less guilty, I open the book again. Shouldn’t I feel guilty that I haven’t written anything but lesson plans and meeting minutes for over a month? I am the poet. My friend gave me this book because I am the poet and yet I skim the shorter poems thinking I really don’t have all day. I should buy Halloween candy and write this thank you note. Where is the poem of gratitude?

Maybe page 93? But first, some context. My friend bought this book for my birthday. I turned 50 this last May. We, just two weeks ago, October 15th, found time to finally meet. She joined me for another birthday, six months of sobriety and brought me this book. I was grateful to have her there to honor six months of ridding myself of those profligate companions, whiskey & wine. The challenge, oh the challenge of saying goodbye to my toxic love. There is no replacement right now, only faith that “placid happiness” will again lead to some form of sober bliss. Thank you, Karen, for recognizing both of my birthdays:

When you’re drunk it’s so much fun –
Your stories don’t make sense.
An early fall has strung
The elms with yellow flags.

We’ve strayed in to the land of deceit
And we’re repenting bitterly,
Why then are we smiling these
Strange and frozen smiles?

We wanted piercing anguish
Instead of placid happiness…
I won’t abandon my comrade,
So dissolute and mild.

A woman in my recovery group was asking if this contentment and serenity was pretty much it or would she ever again experience those adrenaline rushes she identified as happiness. I worry about that for myself. What if the quivering passion I’ve known in the past was purely alcohol induced and I will never write another love poem or even marvel at the warm night breath on the other side of the pillow, so much so that I never wish to sleep again.
Such a thunderstorm, of course,
Promised me little joy,
I learned about the eyes of happiness
Accidently.

I cannot choreograph my happiness, but I am aware, this chilly morning, that poetry and music are stirring something richer, sweeter than wine in me.

Broad and yellow is the evening light,
Tender the April coolness.
You are so many years late,
Nevertheless I am glad you came.

Sit here closer to me
And look on joyfully:
Here is a blue composition book –
With the poems of my childhood.

Forgive me that I ignored the sun
And that I lived in sorrow.
Forgive, forgive, that I
Mistook too many others for you.

After my lover introduced me to Akhmatova, I ingested as many of her poems as I could. Given that I am not Russian, not political, do not read Pushkin or Brodsky, I wondered, at first, if I could find any connection to this poet. Then I found her love poems. She understood the dialectic nature of love. She reminded me that a lover was not my ticket to happiness. She wrote what I couldn’t say, that conflict in me of “I want, I want, I want, but not too close, not too long, not too deep to rip open those old scars.” I battle my need for love and companionship every day. I fight this desire to belong to just one and the pain of exclusion when I discover I am only one of many. I DO NOT NEED anyone. I know the absurdity of that statement. I know I will love again and again and again. By the time I die, my heart will be stitched together so many times, patches upon patches, that even Goodwill will refuse its capacity to warm anyone anymore.

Love

Now, like a little snake, it curls into a ball,
Bewitching your heart,
Then for days it will coo like a dove
On the little white windowsill.

Or it will flash as bright frost,
Drowse like a gillyflower
But surely and stealthily it will lead you away
From joy and from tranquility.

It knows how to sob so sweetly
In the prayer of a yearning violin,
And how fearful to divine it
In a still unfamiliar smile.

No wonder AA suggests people in recovery not enter love relationships until at least a year. And yet, the irony, if God is love, and in AA we surrender to a loving God, we surrender our hearts, first thing, to both the dove and the snake. Yes? Hmmm…maybe that IS the point of that little Eden/Apple story! Where is the freedom in this understanding?

One heart isn’t chained to another,
If you want to – leave!
There’s lots of happiness in store
For one who’s free

I’m not weeping, I’m not complaining,
Happiness is not for me.
Don’t kiss me. I am weary –
Death will kiss me.

Days of gnawing tedium endured
With the winter snow.
Why, oh why should you
Be better than the one I chose?

Okay, I hear the sarcasm in this poem and the implication that the only true freedom is death. I was drinking myself to death. I wanted to die, not obviously by my hand, but surreptitiously, so I might be able to include others in the killing and blame; obliquely, “they” led me to this…all those who would not claim me as their number one love and concern. (Can you tell I’m working on Step 4?) Well, Akhmatova has a poem for that, too.
Page 99. Ironically, the lover who introduced me to Akhmatova, also introduced me to the pain of ultimate exclusion, returning to her husband, introducing me to the bitter cheap penny side of her love.

To the Muse

The Muse, my sister, looked into my face,
Her glance was bright and clear,
And she took away the golden ring,
The first springtime gift.

Muse! You see how happy they all are,
Girls, wives, widows…
Better to perish on the wheel,
But not these chains.

I know: yes, no, even I must tear off
The delicate daisy petals.
Everyone on earth is destined to feel
The torments of love.

I keep the candle burning in the window till dawn
And I don’t long for anyone,
But I don’t want, don’t want, don’t want
To know how they kiss each other.

Page 99. The tears of loss brewed again, trouncing on this morning’s hunger pains. Ten years gone by and still I cry on to page 99; “a blissful bird” has not yet “sang his fill/About the way we define our love.” And yet, I am finally able to say that I DO want again. I am willing to drain out that blanket of inebriation that kept me from feeling pain OR joy. I am willing to confess honestly, my needs and my manipulations.

It is 2:15 and I still haven’t eaten, still in my pajamas, still a bit dry-mouthed from the fear of exposure and the fear of rejection that I feel certain will come from these Step 4 admissions and from putting off what I think others expect me to do today. But I am the poet and I am the lover and maybe today, October 31st, I should not wear any other costume. – the independent Girl Scout, the dutiful daughter, the empathetic healer, the conscientious teacher, the stone butch, the housekeeper, the even keeled grownup, the overly generous friend…Just me today. The tears have cleansed me, readied me for the banal, the laundry. Thank you, Akhmatova. Thank you, Karen.

Frienemies

Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
-David Rakoff

Nathan, at one of the outlying tables,
his feet tangled up in the disk jockey's cables,
surveyed the room as unseen as a ghost
while he mulled over what he might say for his toast.
That the couple had asked him for this benediction
seemed at odds with them parking him here by the kitchen.
That he turned up at all was still a surprise,
and not just to him, it was there in the eyes
of the guests who had seen the mirage and drew near
and then covered their shock with a "Nathan, you're here.."
and then, silence, they had nothing to say beyond that.
A few of the braver souls lingered to chat.
They all knew...
It was neither a secret nor mystery
that he and the couple had quite an odd history.
Their bonds were a tangle of friendship and sex.
Josh, his best pal once, and Patty, his ex.

For awhile he could barely go out in the city
without being a punchline or object of pity.
"Poor Nathan" had virtually become his new name.
And so he showed up, just to show he was game,
though, his invite was late, a forgotten addendum.
For Nate, there could be no more clear referendum
that he need but endure through this evening and then
He would likely not see Josh and Patty again.
Josh's sister was speaking, a princess in peach.
Nathan dug in his pocket to study his speech.
He'd pored over bartlets for couplets to filch,
he'd stayed up until three, still came up with zilch,
except for instructions he'd underscored twice,
just two words in length and those words were: "Be Nice"

Too often, he thought, our emotions and betray us
and reason departs once we're up on the dais.
He'd witnessed uncomfortable moments where others had lost their way quickly,
where sisters and brothers had gotten too prickly,
and peppered their babbling
with stories of benders,or lesbian dabbling,
or spot-on impressions of mothers-in-law,
which, True, Nathan thought, always garnered guffaws
but the price seemed too high, with the laughs seldom cloaking
hostility masquerading as joking.
No, he'd swallow his rage and he'd bank all his fire,
he knew that in his case, the bar was set higher.
Folks were just waiting for him to erupt.
They'd be hungry for blood even though they had supped.
They'd want tears or some other unsightly reaction
and Nathan would not give them that satisfaction.
Though Patty, a harlot, and Josh was a lout,
At least Nathan knew what he'd not talk about.
"I won't wish them divorce, that they wither and sicken
or tonight that they choke on their salmon or chicken.
I won't mention that time when the cottage lost power
in that storm on the cape and they left for an hour.
And they thought it was just the cleverest ruse
to pretend it took that long to reset the fuse.
Or that time Josh advised me with so much insistence
that I should grant Patty a little more distance.
That the worst I could do was to hamper and crowd her
that if Patty felt stifled, she'd just take a powder.
That a plant needs its space just as much as its water.
and that I shouldn't give Patty that ring that I bought her.
Which, in retrospect only elicits a 'Gosh,
I hardly deserved a friend like you, Josh'.

No, I won't spill those beans or make myself foolish
to satisfy appetites venal and ghoulish.
I will not be the blot on this hellish affair."
And with that, Nathan pushed out and rose from his chair.
and just by the tapping of knife against crystal,
all eyes turned his way, like he'd fired off a pistol.
"Mmmhmm, Joshua, Patricia, dear family and friends,
A few words, if you will, before everything ends.
You've promised to honor, to love and obey.
We've quaffed our champagne and been cleansed by sorbet,
all in endorsement of your ‘hers and his-dom’.
So now let me add my two cents worth of wisdom.
I was racking my brain sitting here at this table,
until I remembered this suitable fable
that gets at a truth, though it may well distort us,
so herewith the tale of the scorpion and tortoise:
The scorpion was hamstrung, his tail all aquiver;
just how would he manage to get across the river?
“The water’s so deep,” he observed with a sigh,
which pricked at the ears of the tortoise nearby.
“Well why don’t you swim?” asked the slow-moving fellow,
“unless you’re afraid. I mean, what are you, yellow?”
“It isn’t a matter of fear or of whim,”
said the scorpion,
“but that i don’t know how to swim.”
“Ah, forgive me. I didn’t mean to be glib when
i said that. I figured you were an amphibian.”
“No offense taken,” the scorpion replied,
“but how about you help me to reach the far side?
You swim like a dream, and you have what I lack.
Let’s say you take me across on your back?”
“I’m really not sure that’s the best thing to do,”
said the tortoise, “now that i see that it’s you.
You’ve a less than ideal reputation preceding:
there’s talk of your victims all poisoned and bleeding.
You’re the scorpion — and how can I say this — but, well,
I just don’t feel safe with you riding my shell.”
The scorpion replied, “What would killing you prove?
We’d both drown, so tell me: how would that behoove
me to basically die at my very own hand
when all I desire is to be on dry land?”
The tortoise considered the scorpion’s defense.
When he gave it some thought, it made perfect sense.
The niggling voice in his mind he ignored,
and he swam to the bank and called out: “Climb aboard!”
But just a few moments from when they set sail,
the scorpion lashed out with his venomous tail.
The tortoise too late understood that he’d blundered
when he felt his flesh stabbed and his carapace sundered.
As he fought for his life, he said, “tell me why
you have done this! For now we will surely both die!”
“I don’t know!” cried the scorpion. “You never should trust
a creature like me because poison I must!
I’d claim some remorse or at least some compunction,
but I just can’t help it; my form is my function.
You thought I’d behave like my cousin, the crab,
but unlike him, it is but my nature to stab.”
The tortoise expired with one final quiver.
And then both of them sank, swallowed up by the river.
The tortoise was wrong to ignore all his doubts —
because in the end, friends, our natures will out.
So: what can we learn from their watery ends?
Is there some lesson on how to be friends?
I think what it means is that central to living
a life that is good is a life that’s forgiving.
We’re creatures of contact, regardless of whether
we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.
Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more —
since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore.
So we make ourselves open while knowing full well
it’s essentially saying, “please, come pierce my shell.”

Breitenbush Labyrinth

Grasshopper in the Rain

Before you enter the stone labyrinth you ask, “What’s next?”
With palms pressed together in prayer
you step in; step by intentional step
toward the first curve, the next bend.

Eyes to the ground, you repeat, “What’s next?”
A new job, a move, the laundry?
Stay focused, breathe one foot in front
of the other. Breathe, “What’s next?”

A row of cairns piled along the stone wall,
worries piled among weeds,
and a penny placed purposefully heads up.

That northwest rain pelts your head
and the Breitenbush River tumults past,
a raging river of want, you are
afraid of the rain, a reminder of what’s next:

winter depression, isolation, loneliness.
Stay focused, breathe, one heavy foot
in front of the other, “What’s next?”
The calm center of the labyrinth

and an alter of plastic Mary’s,
more pennies
and Queen Anne’s Lace.

On your return from center, a grasshopper
springs across your path, portending
both scourge and abundance. “Take a chance,”
she chirps with tympanic rubbing.

“Get off your haunches and move. Trust
the inner voice.” How is it she appears
in this shivering rain? A grasshopper
is sunshine and warmth,

but in this moment, this now,
there is only river flow, cloud release,
and the question,

“What’s next?” A grasshopper never
leaps backwards, so you press your heel
into rain-soaked loam, then the ball
of your foot rolls to the first toe, weight

shifts, anxiety shifts, your mind shifts
into another step forward, palms open.
You look up through droplets on your lashes
and realize that what’s next is simply now.

Saturday Night

There's No Getting Over the Loss

Rain strokes the nape of her neck,
trickles down the furrow of her spine,
washing her clean of mourning.
Rain is her boy child, grown only in spirit,
his first smile caresses her wet cheek.

She baths in a night pool, weak with wonder.
Sword ferns and zebra grass sway.
Rain is the poplar, re-seeding. Rain
upon her bare shoulder, she blinks away
heavy droplets, eyelash kisses of relief,

and opens her body to remembering.

Sunday Morning

Wet web of morning
a delicate greeting
from the space between.
We do not oppose the weaving
nor protest the capture
of last night's tears,
glistening in today's
un-foretold light.

Confessions

Don't kick my shadow

such a shady story

in the bright light of day

elongated like an El Greco painting

pained in purple gray

or stumped into secrecy

my shadow

is as much a part of me

as the detail you see

in the face

facing you

in all honesty

Sentry Dream

Unbridled chestnut

mare. Forehead to forehead, we

press in reunion.

Then she comforts me with her head in my lap

as I stroke her long neck and the cleft between her breasts.

What I Lost

Spirit of Spirits

With my lover, the barefoot bandit, I lost

that wretched gift of time,

swallowing only a liquid limbo

until the fog of inebriation cloaked

that wretched gift of time,

and I, soused and insouciant,

until the fog of inebriation cloaked

wanton wanting with languorous longing.

And I, soused and insouciant,

embodied a poverty of spirit,

wanton wanting with languorous longing,

my soul, yes, but this glass, never empty.

Embodied in a poverty of spirit,

sweet grapes, divine:

my soul, yes, but this glass, never empty,

a timelessness without bitter absolute.

Sweet grapes, divine:

nourish me that I might become full,

a timelessness without bitter absolute,

fermented in celestial firmament.

nourish me that I might become full,

quenched and clean, my barefoot lover,

fermented in celestial firmament.

But with this masked bandit, I cannot see,

quenched and clean, my barefoot lover,

the blurred delusion of naked surrender.

But with this masked bandit, I cannot see

adorned thieves who break in and steal

the blurred delusion of naked surrender.

I am still clothed in want and need

while adorned thieves break in and steal.

Oh, but they cannot triumph over the undressed poor.

I am still clothed in want and need,

so more quickly ensnared, I

cannot triumph over the undressed poor

who live un-seized by desire.

So more quickly ensnared, I

am defeated at the vine by the ones

who live un-seized by desire.

With my lover, Barefoot Bandit, I lost.

August 11 Feast Day to St. Claire of Assisi

Goodnight Chiara

Last night I knelt at her feet.

Straw poked and scratched my knees.

I couldn’t see.

With palms pressed together at my lips,

I blew in three hot breaths

then placed my hands on the top of her feet ---

just as she had taught me.

Are you warm enough?

Was all I asked. I wanted to ask,

How many miles did you walk?

Did your soles crack and split in winter?

Did you ever wish, just once, for someone else

to bathe your feet?

I shifted, inching quietly on my knees.

I couldn’t see,

but I knew the distance of her leg

and rested when I reached her hip.

The twin bones, palpable in the dark,

ridged through her robe like rocky cliffs

above cypress trees and the sea.

I placed my hands,

palms flat in the cave of her belly,

fingertips toward the moon ---

just as she had taught me.

Are you hungry?

Was all I asked. I wanted to ask

Are you sorry about the babies you never had?

How red was your blood when you bled?

Was it clear, like almost ripe tomatoes

or black scarlet?

I slid one hand to rest on her sparrow ribs.

The other hand

under

between straw and robe

to hold the sacred bone ---

just as she had taught me.

Are you comfortable?

I asked as my hip tingled with sleep,

and straw poked and scratched my wrist.

  

Did you really sing for Christ

or did you sing for the sensation of your lungs

open,

your mouth open

so wide.

Your throat wide.

Wide enough to reach the darkness inside.

Wide enough for a scream?

Are you thirsty?

Did you ever want to scream?

Stand in the center of the silent sisters

and scream.

What are we doing?

We could be feasting in our fathers’ houses

or dancing in olive groves.

What are we doing?

Barren bellies to the ground,

forehead against cold stone,

when we could be touching

not just in sickness,

touching in health,

touching

in love.

Don’t you miss touching in love?

Dawn. The crucifix on the wall

swollen in the early shadows,

larger than it really was.

I shifted to sit at her head

and put her hair in my hands ---

just as she had taught me.

Fingertips on the memory place,

I asked

Do you miss life before Francis?

Chiara?

Was all I asked.

Chiara, can you hear me?

Her lips opened

slight.

One light puff.

Yes,

she whispered.

Yes.

from 1999

Demi Mondes de la Port

Who are you?

Soiled doves.

   Snapping black eyes, but

      otherwise,

            Un-

            certain

            features

Faceless maidens in the Palace of Sweets.

Who are you?

Destitute doves.

   Dining on apothecary ethers,

      sulfur spermacides

            Cat-

            nip

            cure!

Miss ~

Carry you back to the crib,

   Bleeding, but certain

            who

            you

            are.

Naughty ladies

With red-light inclinations

            you

            are

Miss Lily, Miss Rose, and Madame Marie

            Satisfaction

            guaranteed!

More abandon

A Bandon: Finding Liberation

I pace the edge between begin and end

beyond the tether of self created.

I am not afraid to move.

I am afraid of standing still,

utterly still in this gray silence --

this 2:00 a.m. space

where the crow has long since cawed away

the busyness of a day --

where my purpose of being

is not yet linked to memory or knowing.

Absolute stillness, before the morning dove

has begun her lament,

I am awake,

whirling in the space between --

vertigo of the soul.

East opens beyond the sun

and west, an ocean abyss,

I am direction-less.

North and south,

a fading filament.

In this center threshold,

this 2:00 a.m. space, I am

at the same time,

both leaving and left behind.

Self and other.

I desert and am deserted,

defined in my defining.

I am both form and motion,

noun and verb,

I abandon and am abandoned.

To surrender

A Bandon: Finding Fibonacci

To be in my power, I must now yield,

relinquish my claim to the all knowing,

my fight for self-reliance; I must spin

with abandon in a wildflower field,

spin like a mad child until dizzy and glowing

with emptiness and trust. I must forfeit

my ego, concede to sunflower revealed,

to swallowtail on my shoulder, fleeting.

I must lay down sovereignty and submit

                to the moral order of pinecones.

Sensual Abundance of Summer

Watermelon 

You know
what summer
tastes like-the pink flesh
of a generous earth,
this rounded life
fully ripe, fully flavored.
How could you be ashamed
at the tug of desire?
The world has opened itself to you,
season after season.
What is summer's sweetness
but an invitation to respond?
There is only one way
to eat a watermelon.
Bury your face
in the wetness
of that rosy slab
and bite.

-Lynn Ungar from Blessing the Bread 

Summer observation

An Ornamental Friendship

To stroll among them is immense:

Himalayan blue and Blood red poppies,

their stems tangled like lovers’ legs,

in fecund nearness, remembrance of ease.

And yet, such a trembling distance

as if the poverty of winter froze

their roots while the whorl of stamen

reveals black eyes, slow to apologize.

The bees’ gossipy buzz stifles

promises of garden resurrection,

one ardent opiate of spring.

Their message: summer has begun and some

cerulean petals lie still,

crumpled in jaded testicular buds,

their 7-pointed stars hanging

down toward fertile ground, as some blushing

persistent petals mark their place

in the sun, briefly, then lie flat

before falling away, uncut,

into fantasies of eternal sleep. 

In Response to JJ's paintings

Re-entry

I peer up from the bottom of the sea

and see a watercolor fantasy

through slivers of a blue moon.

“Be still in lavender streaks of sleep tonight,”

the Buddha winks.  “Tomorrow you will see.”

I’m feeling teal today,

my tongue a Phoenix flame,

a fuchsia pyre of words unspoken.

My poise of mind lost, hidden deep

like a crystal scepter in a galaxy of rage.

Once I was cut into three,

A patch of bad, a swirling orange crush.

I held on and wailed, “Don’t go.  Don’t go!”

until my burgundy heart bled black and I sunk

to the bottom of the sea.

But today I rise from an absence of color,

surface to body surf on an ocean path.

Untitled solar flares greet me.

I squint and sway to a conch shell refrain,

the sound of infinity.

The Buddha grins

because although three black squares

once divided Heaven and Earth,

today has turned metallious gold

with a boundary-less horizon.

“Look, I see you,” the Buddha laughs.

“Can you see?”  An inestimable burst,

unbound spectrum, fields of color and swirl,

 “I see you.  Can you see? That’s you

in the resplendent prisms of love and letting go.”

What lies beyond?

Beyond Time

There is a future, lined

on the back of her sundrenched hand,

but she cannot read its then or now or then.

Her time, uncharted in this emerald light

of one summer afternoon, late,

a hiatus between lavender sachets

and honeybees who settle in for long sucking

while the rope hammock sways away 

each moment to shadowed slants beyond 

beyond that poem, unfinished, there is time,

unparsed but for the comma added

then deleted or the ‘burning act’

revised to ‘bitter and burning’,

but for cuts that remain unscarred

and wine glasses never emptied. That poem balances

unwritten, never danced to bed, to climax,

that poem, her time, suspends like a champagne bubble

on crystal’s lip, never to release, never to be tongued.

A collective poem from Sitka writing workshop

Twelve Steps to Surrender at Sitka

1. 1)      First, sit under the trickster pole ~ raven atop coyote, who wraps his tail around a ceder bowl, the center of the universe. Don’t be fooled.
2. 2)      Drink deeply.  Drink slightly succulent spring beauties. Drink raindrops from roadside lupine.
3. 3)      Salute the sword fern.
4. 4)      Stitch a lichen blanket and curl up like fern fronds.
5. 5)      Speak only star-lit speeches and
6. 6)      trust the magical varnish of time.
7. 7)      Interview the maple; count her many rings.
8. 8)      Listen for the imaginary ring of the bell-shaped salal.
9. 9)      Listen again to drum beats and down pours.
10. 10)   Silence that perverse pride and
11. 11)   lightly pepper all love poems with the profane.
12. 12)   Trust the moving pen as you write through the old temple of green.

Words collected by Wendy Thompson, May 30, 2010