mass in the mudroom

The ritual of coming inside from the cold.

 

We unzip the outer jacket- it’s like a prayer. The ratcheting sound tickling my ear drums, the slide-click-slide-click reveal between finger and thumb. To feel the rush of warmth escaping, like some secret flock of doves taking to the air. 

 

This overcoat, this shell person, and its patient hanger waiting. Smooth feel of wood, sleek metal hook. Made so exactly for what it does. How perfectly it rests on that round bar, how it sits! See how these things sit. They are not nothing, these things, they so profoundly be.

 

Those angled corners of the hanger, that slide with such satisfaction into the arms. Just the right balance. I adjust the collar, like I am tucking it into bed, hanging up the robe, the costume, the piece that makes the play. And the clink as hook meets bar, how neatly it sits with all the other characters, waiting their turn. The right weather, the right activity. Alert, ready.

 

This doffing is like a mass, the turning, bending, grasping, placing.

 

All these resting things, all of them. 

 

The kettle, the lamp, the scissors in the jar. The faucet, the railing, and oh the shoes (who become feet with simple lacing).

 

Oh these humble objects, see them radiate beneficence. See them lean in as they wait. 

a crow

A crow, flying across the true-blue sky,
   has paint-brush wing tips
      wet with ink.

 

With each deliberate beat

   a cool, wet line is left.

      Not on the sky,

 

but under the skin of my 

   chest- the gasping benediction-

      flight’s calligraphy.

tokens in my path

I find tokens along my path,

Almost any time I ask for them.

Feathers, pretty stones, 

The wing of a luna moth.

I had always thought of them as 

Affirmations, a thumbs-up 

From the universe, reassurance

Of Big Magic.

But here, walking with a tender

Spine and raw hip, fearful

Of what they mean: Lyme,

neutropenia, some bizarre recurrence-

I realize: these tokens, perhaps

They are not gifts themselves

But signposts, pointing 

To the act which made them.

A feather in the path came

From a molt, perhaps, a letting go.

Or, something more painful – a crow’s

Feather, maybe, ripped out while being mobbed.

The luna moth wing is no pretty present,

But tearing death.

The loosing of the body, the

Release of form. 

The tokens in my path are not 

Gifts – the gift is the work they point to.

It has been said so many times:

That which keeps us from God,

Is also our path back.

when you are grieving

When you are grieving do not search for four-leaf clovers, little charms that might staunch the flow and ease the pain. Little grass-strewn stars that might say, ‘we’ve made a mistake; your fate was meant for another.’ When you are grieving you have to drag your chains, scrape your knuckles, sit in the biting ants. 

No one wants to do this.

Sit and the sting will pull the wretched out of you. Seek no shade and the beating sun will burn your hope, and your fear of losing it. 

Do not chatter or explain, speak with the heart to someone who also knows about the clovers.

Someone who won’t offer you a cool drink or a key or salve or saving, someone who will look you in the eyes while your heart bleeds.

If it is only you abide in what comes, and weep perhaps to the hidden clovers.

siren thrush

This morning the thrush's song
beckoned me into the woods,
my own kindly siren.

I knew Circe's warning,
the coming destruction. But
I went gladly, without
lashing or waxed ears.

Her voice pulled me along
the path,
to my demise. And indeed

I was thrashed against the
rocks of my grief, wrecked
on the sharp edges of my sorrow.

The hull of my Self was torn
apart- there was I lost,
among reeds and mud and
willows.

That which rose to leave
   (for rise it did)
the woods was Nothing. A
resonant casing, a blessed ship
of sound-

the leaves, the brook, the robin.

Over the path back bent
hemlocks, their knowing
arms, feathery fingers nodding
   softly-
      home,

home.

haiku from martin's brook

meltwater rushing,
the roaring din of its voice.
still, how still the rocks.

the crabapple

How do I explain,

when I watch the branch of a crabapple

nodding in the gentle breeze,

that I feel it through the window.

Her twigs and leathery leaves

play across my cheek, just here.

Please, this is no metaphor;

understand that the air is my

body, and also the tree.

The eyes of myself are watching

my thin, branching arm

bob in the wind, my own breath.

By understand I mean 

stand under, which 

only your body can do.

If your fingers are (and they are) 

the wind, tell me- whose

cheek? whose feathers?

What craggy mountaintop

would you feel, suddenly,

like iron on your lips?