After Brief Parting

They slip easily into familiar patterns
Of complaint, of petition and casual affection.
I am still aching empty.
Fill me with your strongest grasp
Affirm that I didn't lose my place
In line when I stepped out of your sight.

When we fall into familiar patterns
(I sit here, you lean there)
When we read or play or eat
I am not fully convinced that I belong.
Then you give a secret and dime's worth
Of your sparking, wild hopes--

I see that your home is at my center.
With you, I am complete.
Your echoing faces hint at your relief
That nothing changes when we wave good-bye.
We belong together and your hands fit in mine.
Your hopes set off wildfire joy in me.

Nightingale

My wings are clipped and my throat is tight.
When terrors fever in my brain
And I wake weeping in the night
There is your hush and your swish of movement.
Lullaby songs brush through the tendrils of my hair
and your whispers force my thoughts away.
Before I can wake fully, an adult whose cheeks flush
at the thought of that imaginary monster death,
when my body stills and my breath is deep,
you are there, rescuing me with your voice.
You sing on, until I fall back into sleep.

Bare-foot in the Kitchen

I am flecked with the juice of pomegranates,
Bare-footed and listening to the poetry of ages
Read by men I will never meet.


This day is a clear one,
To my mind and my eyes.
I see so much today and I am happy.


I am grateful for the gift of rare days.
Peace is so flitting in these chaos times,
But I pad the nest anyway.


Strings and cloth scraps here.
This side needs extra down.
I cover the sharp sticks of life.


There are still years before I will launch them
As a mother eagle with her young.
They will soar higher than I, I tell my heart.


Today, it has been time and sight.
An eagle's sharp vision, by heaven, has been the gift
And my arms will, cradling, enfold it.

Patronage

I came here to quiet my mind.
Pages of words, here, form a babbling brook.
It weaves in and out of the shelves
Puddling around the repurposed catalog bureau.

I sit in a chair.
I sit by the window
in the room for quiet reading.
This was the forbidden zone.

Now that I am Adult
And can keep myself still
I have a front row pass
Adjacent to the man clearing, quietly, his throat.

Refraction

Your wide brown eyes shatter behind the crystal
Refracting purple and bright
Dimensions grow slowly inside you
It is in the dark and in the stillness
And you won't let me in.

Sometimes, in the sunlight,
Color comes out in the filaments of your hair
I get a glimpse through your joy
I can see through the dance
When you think that I'm not looking.

Clock hands sweep in arcs
Your shoes don't fit
Your voice holds tones I haven't heard
The heart in your chest, oh that heart
Is a hidden cache.

Dangle the key before my eyes
I won't flinch when the prism
Bends the light to hit me full in the face.
Show me the key hole. Turn the key
To the treasure you are.

In Storage

"She's come home from the city"
They think and nod their sleepy-town heads.

Between houses with my family,
We hang our hats with my dusty-violet grandma,
Resting our young-kid chaos
Into her lonely, still solitude.

I know this is the place I sprouted,
The place I learned reading, love and distrust,
But I find that my feet can't reach the ground.
They refuse to be planted.

So, here the five of us wait
For the green light
For the great thumbs-up
For the yellow-brick road to light up
And lead us to where we are meant to be.
You can only go forward
To home.

By the River

We talked of the terrain of countries to where we'd been
While the children dug their toes in the mud.
The river flowed faster tonight
After thunder ripped through the air.
My mind filled with Nevada desert at night
The sky so pierced with light
I could feel my soul rise to meet it.
The air so clean, like breathing holiness.
I long for the pause of different places,
Where the terrain takes my hand and points:
"Look! Do you see?"

I travel this unfathomable earth.
I wander and take my love with me.
Love follows me around like a unwound yoyo,
Jolting and leaping over the stones on the ground.
It gathers moss, yet carries me.
My eyes fill with words and I, too,
Feel them galloping across the field toward me.
I will race with the wind.
I will challenge that river.
Skipping rocks off the surface,
I will write of the water's secrets.