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

Manna from below

This poem reminds me of our interdependence with All.  Our hunger, our thirst, our fear of scarcity and empty bellies, empty souls require faith to be filled.

A Woman Feeding Gulls

by David Wagoner

They cry out at the sight of her and come flying
Over the tidal flats from miles away,
Sideslipping and wheeling
In sloping gray-and-white interwoven spirals
Whose center is her
And the daily bread she casts downwind on the water
While rising to spread her arms
Like wings for the calling of still more gulls around her,
Their cries intermingling at the end of daylight
With the sudden abundance
Of this bread returning after the hungry night
And the famine of morning
And the endlessly hungry opening and closing
Of wings and arms and shore and the turning sky.

Loss

"Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap, but on the contrary he keeps it empty, and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain."
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison

Kindness

How is it one cannot trust another's kindness?  As my sister shared with me, "every human being is a combination of kind, mean, accepting and judgmental. It's called being human. Mother Teresa said something to the effect that she did what she did to make up for the Hitler in her heart! That you choose to behave kindly and keep other behaviors in check is a good thing."  Seems to me that you could trust a kind person more for protecting you from the cruelty of others and the mean-spirited thoughts in her own bleeding heart.  Wouldn't one be a greater friend by protecting you from your own cruel defensiveness?  Why wouldn't one trust that as a good thing?  I have a smart sister.  It is NEVER my intention to hurt others.

God...Need I say more?

Lenten Journey

I spent the first week of Lent looking for "answers" from Jan Richardson's Prayer Paintbook. She has since taken a break from blogging to live life: buy a house, get married, be in love. And I have not stepped up to seek my own answers. Why? Because really, it's about the question, not the answer. An answer stops the seeking then we stagnate and die. Enjoy this amazing poem from Mary Oliver about the mystery. Also, if you want another more active source for Lenten exploration, I have found www.abbeyofthearts.com to be inspiring.

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

–Mary Oliver, Evidence