From the banal to the sacred

Emptying the Dishwasher

Rinse water collects

in bottoms-up coffee mugs

reflecting puddles from my past.

Remember this one

from the strawberry-blond student

who couldn’t spell

but painted glory

on a morning mug,

or these matching mugs

from my nieces

(we reserved for weekend coffee

in bed with books and snippets

of secrets from the past).

I unload two water bottles

from the kayak trip

(when snowy egrets

performed a sky-dance –

remember that),

a lid-less mason jar

that held botanical samples

for your latest illustration project,

glass dessert plates

from my grandmother,

casserole dishes from a sister-in-law

(who shops on QVC for stoneware

in the pattern she picked out for me –

guess that’s how it goes

if you’re wedding-less),

your flatware,

my stemware,

Tupperware with permanent spaghetti sauce stains.

Finally, I unload the three

handcrafted ceramic bowls –

terracotta clay, glazed

with lake-blue swoops

like feathered tracers

in a cloudless sky –

(a peace offering from my first partner

whose affair propelled me

into a studio apartment

with little to call my own –

she donated three straight-backed chairs as well –

triumvirate trinity of memory).

Sandy is dead now.

The chairs, long gone,

but the bowls serve us

stone-ground oatmeal

every morning.

Fern Frenzy

I hear fiddlehead

tunes unfurl and play

for the lady nestled

in bleeding hearts

while licorice adorns

large leaf maple

and sword clashes

with stinging nettle

for the maiden’s

delicate hand.

One rivulet murmurs

condolences to the common

cottonwood sapling bent

from January’s freezing rain

deer, dear and hart’s tongue

drape and drink beneath

the bulging branch

of a grand old white oak-

a swan’s neck curve

across my path-

years of storm survival

offer a graceful arch

for me to travel over

or under, my choice,

with the reminder

that I do not have to grow

straight and tall and thin

to be magnificent.

Volcanic Love Poem

Venus of the Cascades

Mellifluous mouth

which has not declared

Inanna – spring flow

has not declared

tidal fountains

rise high with blood

not declared

mountain and flood

resplendent rage

declared

Inanna

my face is dust

in your name

New Year Request

Lunar Appeal

     to Sumerian poet Enheduanna

Lady of the half light

moon priestess in a desert night

shine silver on Artemis sage

who roots and recovers

iron-red soil – once a mountain

under sea - now cinder cone

and hardened ash – a wasteland

that folds and faults

until time allows trust

and healing-juniper union

Let the world know

Lady of the half light

furious heart above ocean midnight

thunderous sighs and tectonic

calls for justice – illuminate

black waters that smack foam white

against pillow basalt –

beyond temperance your tempest

could destroy us all

unless we attend to whale cries

above the tidal dirge

It is time

on this obsidian eve

from the land of civilized kings -

lady of the half light

let the world know it is time

for all our moments of splendor

for all we call divine

to merge in a constant alluvial flow

with each prosaic day - wax bright

oh lady of the night

and let the world know it is time.

Solstice

Winter Solstice

On this, the longest night, 

I nearly utter, "Not yet, too soon, not now.” 

I'm not ready for the apocalypse of light, 

that asteroid of fire and life, 

to hurtle into my fine-grained silence 

to crystallize these course-grained words too soon.  

I haven't used up my dark days 

as well as I know I could.  

I haven't gone deep enough 

into wells of memory 

shadows, stones and core.  

I made friends with darkness, 

once I finally acceded 

to its purpose in my life,

once I learned to sink in - 

whether as a yield to accommodating sand 

or hard winter ground - I now allow gravity,

my weighty grave, the absence of light,

and I give in, give up to the depth, 

my spine relieved in darkness, 

packed in layers upon layers 

of self, sedimentary and cold.  

Once I discovered the value of humus, 

steamy black compost, 

how it feeds and readies me, 

I became fond of the smell of darkness

like the horse barns of my youth

piss and sweat 

leather and harvested grain. 

I no longer need to quilt darkness 

with the eternal promise

and anticipation of light. 

I like darkness as it is - 

coal, carboniferous rock, 

the furnaced compression 

of all that once lived.

“Love takes wing where calculation ends.” Belden Lane

Ruach

Is not love merely

the product of a calculating mind?

like the etching of hummingbird wings

on air – imagined and un-sensed –

or yesterday’s raindrops

beholden to memory,

but sure to come again –

transient yet consistent, persistent

rain – love, that four letter word

poets are warned against uttering,

where does it go

when the flame is blown out?

What is love without

our hands to strike

the match that lights the flame?

What is love without

our breath to stoke or extinguish?

Unemployment of Advent

This is the time of year for preparing the way, emptying ourselves, whittling the dead branches until the new emerges. This year I am unemployed and ostensibly free to "do advent right," but I'm struggling (because I'm struggling, trying too hard). 

"The teacher of emptiness teaches best by the negation of his own self-consciousness." ~ Beldane Lane

"As the ego sleeps, the heart remains vigilant. Indeed, the more self-outpouring we are, abandoning the ego and all its frenzied needs, the more truly we become ourselves, taken to the heart of our deepest being in God." -Saint Bonaventure

BonAVENTure...appropriate name for now, don't you think? 

These words came to me quickly:

Forget the self

that wanders through

a cold, empty house--

one clock ticking

one tap dripping

echoed footsteps

aimless in pursuit 

of purpose --

a need to be needed.

The phone rings, I answer, so easily distracted these days. Then I return to my journal determined to write a second stanza about letting go of the ego, sitting on hardwood floors and letting the heart hold vigilance -- one steady beat, one hot breath on the cold air until the new self, the true self knocks on the red door -- but the stanza with its frenzied forced extended metaphor and cliche advice came from the self the first stanza said to forget. Oi!

This emptiness in my work life is a challenge indeed. Each day it becomes more and more difficult to settle into the writing time I've so missed in the last eight years. I scramble at bit jobs, giving them way too much time and attention. I set self-help goals of exercise and healthy eating, financial conservancy and pseudo-intellectual Internet surfing.  My soul suffers. Anxiety and depression begin their annual leak in, like that dripping faucet. I grasp at old advent poems and thoughts, recycling insights.

All that should matter now is that the sugar water for the hummingbirds doesn't freeze and that the suet feeder is full and ready for the next mob of baby starlings and that the pen scratches the page at least once a day.

a Wendelise production

Trailing

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

After Smith Rock

Apophatic Desert

What is not basalt is bone

What is not bone is glare

All that is not glare is juniper thin air

I come here to empty –

stark end of ego –

refulgence of discomfort

I sweat. I burn. Oxygen deficit

There is no shade under scrub oak

no respite on rocky crag

What is not sage is cleft

What is not cleft is death

All that is not death is luminous end.

Walt Whitman 150 Poetry Contest Award Winner

"...there was a child went forth every day;
and the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;” ~ Walt Whitman

there is a deer in me

   so I am told

doe eyes, moist and wide

   tender listening eyes

alert, yet often avert

   acquaintance

a fragile fawn

   curled in a spotted C

along the edge

   of a forest-lined road

there is a deer in me

   of spindly grace, innocent

so I am told

   by a woman long ago

who caught me in her lusty headlights

   a stark and raucous invasion

a barbed wire intrusion

   on my leafy moon-lit life

she insisted I expose a downy side

   my underbelly to her, for her

to spy, to pet, to own, but she

   could not perceive

there is a deer in me

   only to be verged upon

with open palm and cautious step

   only a wish for possibility

of a nuzzle.  She did not distinguish

   she could not see the deer in me

wary and alarmed

   vigilant as the antlered buck

who knows exactly when to retreat.

Lenten Journey

Perimeter

Austerity begets ascent

acrimonious deserts

or mountain crests

horizon and apex

all challenge my inner edges

a luminal wilderness

white-bone simplicity

raw, stripped bare

belligerent and insistent on leanness

in disinterested deserts

on oxygen-thin peaks

I disrobe self-consciousness

and seize the undefined

Lake Chelan 2013

Winterfest: Fire and Ice

I am she, who pauses under a winter sky cluttered with stars,

ice-breathed Lady of the Lake, black-blue with mystery.

Night of the new year -- oaken night of chimney smoke spirals

Night of woolen sweaters and plaid blankets

Night of ice sculptures: coyote on Echo Ridge, blue-white

Scottish terrier, a tower of ice bricks with a bonfire heart

Night of cold hands wrapped round mugs of reassurance

yet still I wonder how the world ends, if, or when:

by desirous fire or icy hate?

But on this night, Chinese lanterns are aloft with flame,

hundreds of gold-red papery balloons

bear wishes, wishes, wishes, only wishes --

a constellation of wishes on this sliver-moon night --

this one night of fire and ice.

On Epiphany Sunday

Power?

-the wealth of poverty,

an empty abundance –

like one red Indian paintbrush

in the Bitteroots of Idaho

minute, nascent, humble,

callow amidst hoary wisdom.

Power is a yearning

for salty justice,

a cumulus hope,

a bent and tarnished star,

the imperfect grace

of fault lines in this terrain.

Scumbled Lines of Loving

she allowed herself to sink

and jell into heartbreak

like tar in a tin can

why ever

did she waste

all those years

on fire

when she knew

she would get singed

and burned

and burned again

it was the third degree

it was the end

until out of the ash

and rain

and sun baked summer

came a new foundation

built on forgetfulness

and sand

she scumbled the lines

of loving until memory

no longer pained her

On the way home from Rogue River

Fleeting

The moss is there, I believe,
on the north side of the Douglas fir,
I assume. I have to trust
it is there, believe it because,
traveling from the south,
I cannot see for sure
what is ahead. 

The old growth forest
whisks by like a Bev Doolittle painting--
those rows and rows of straight bare birch
with camouflaged appaloosa ponies.
Out of the corner of my eye
I catch brief possibilities
of wolves hidden in the woods,
or deer, or even nymphs and sprites
in the spaces between. 

A 4:00 p.m. sunlight
flicks like a strobe
and I am disoriented--
something about the past
being done, karmic overload
resolved, the Belladonna poison
of old loves expunged.

So what are these tears?
Muddy-brown regret for what is gone?
The past is grip-less,
yet the sage moss ahead,
invisible just seconds before,
is now at my back,
also behind me,
before I ever had a chance to touch it.  

Rogue River Realization

We have found ourselves through torrents of ash, smoldering memories, and waterfalls in the Siskiyou.  How long we have searched, strolled along paths, pine needles soft under foot, trillium by our side and wondered, “Where is the other side of my face? Where is my completeness, my motivator, my muse, my brush, my pen, my heart for making art again?”  Now, here, among towering Hemlock, we stand, shoulder to shoulder while the Rogue River spray over snags and boulders washes us clean, douses the flames of past pains and we smolder in a greenness, an emerald light of “Ahhh, finally.”

Triolet in Lithia Park

Glory clouds arise --
turbulent mountains of air.
Thru collisions of breath, we realize
glory clouds arise.
Ecstasy no longer disguised,
we collapse in reality, so rare.
Glory clouds arise --
turbulent mountains of air.

The road reaches every place, 

the short cut only one,

a hard space between  

the rock and a brick wall.

The short cut, only one

Oceanside cave opening.

The rock and a brick wall

yield to you, beach primrose.

Oceanside cave opening,

crashing waves of darkness

yield to you, beach primrose.

Wind and sand, like diamond cutters.

Crashing waves of darkness.

Who can resist the shortcut?

Wind and sand, like diamond cutters,

polish my hardened heart.

Who can resist the shortcut?

A cautious entry into the cave of unknowing.

Polish my hardened heart.

When we linger and kiss salty lips, together,

a cautious entry into the cave of unknowing:

finest grains of sand transform to glass art.

When we linger and kiss salty lips, together,

our road reaches every place.

A Haibun for the Morning After

I’ve made you dinner

my specialty casserole -
cheesy polenta.

The kitchen table hasn’t been cleared in a year; the hand-blown glass salt and pepper shaker I received last Christmas, never filled with spice.  You say nothing about the cobwebs in the corner; don’t even surreptitiously brush them away when my back is turned to pull the casserole from the oven.  I don’t notice the webs until the morning after when I’m re-arranging the table for one again,

perhaps the last time.
Between kisses and polenta
we said yes to us.

I recently read about a couple who got engaged eleven days after their first date.  We haven’t even dated three months; I’ve become a cliché lesbian bringing the U-Haul on the second date.  We each have our doubts, but I’m choosing to set mine aside and trust. “You could move in with me if you sell your house before we find one we both like.” 
“Really?”
Yes!

Still yes this morning
after.  Summer breezes, soft
clink of open blinds

against open windows.  Rightness reigns in the robin chatter. The long winter has finally ended.