What if I am like bird
wondrous and unbound
In stillness or in flight
at home in endless life?

TRUE BIRD POEM

It's like that thing that thing with the bird,
salt on a bird's tail thing, the wanting,
yearning, reaching of the soul towards
what speaks in song, what moves like idea.
As if held in hand, if felt, if known, bird
could make it all okay. This risen kin,
at home in endless air, if it were possible
to hold it, to feel it, the softness that it must be,
warmer more alive up close than imagined,
Would make it all okay would make it feel
safe would make it good would make it good
enough. But like bird, that thingless thing
to make me okay make me safe make
me good, It flies more quickly than thought
so before I mark its shape or
weight or how it moves it is gone.
And I am left, empty hands
like barren nests, not grasping
what is salt, what is bird,
what can be known and held.
How do birds know the way home,
where their sky begins and ends?
Does this thing wait with me for birds,
truth alive in breath released.
Is it drawn to tears, to broken glass?

Or will it rest with me if I am still?

Journal from Vedanta Center, Olema, Ca.

Lots of dust particles visible in the last light of this spring day. Bits of me, some of them. Silvery remnants of the ones who rested here before me. Bits of me today, bits of me yesterday or the day before. My complete DNA code floats off through the open door out to the meadow, up to the sky, down into the mole holes, snake holes, rabbit warrens. Now I am everywhere over and under this land. Bits of me settle into the meadow. Stories of my original plan, what I was meant to become, what I am, glitter and glide in front of me, lifted by currents of air filtered through me. With breath exhaled, I send them off.

Animals will sleep on my DNA tonight. Will I know its journeys? As I become part of a quail's nest, a deer’s bed, will I feel blacksnake curl around me in her deep home? My proteins become fertilizer as those bits scatter over the meadow to feed tiny roots of ruffled blue flowers there. So little to give this beloved garden of earth that lavishly gives me life.

What is/was me goes into the earth and connects with what is/was something else. Bits of the stories of me co-mingle with the stories of snake, deer, root, leaf and through combining are transmuted. We breathe each other. We exhale each other. As I am woven into leaf and root, what grows there? What do we become?

Does that little speck of me add anything of value to the world outside this door? It’s small a reminder of the changing, temporary nature of the world of form and of the eternal connectedness that is the nature of Source. Source continuously moves, creates, transmutes, uses everything, excludes nothing, embracing transforming, using even motes of dust.

May my hopes, dreams and love be planted in this sacred soil. May the imprint of me, recorded in the microscopic spiral code that predicted me, soar, settle and mingle harmoniously
here. May the earth be blessed by me tonight.

Reality Check

As my temple of enchantment falls
I will not seek those things
of shape and velocity
that called my name before.
Inward, turning, I relinquish
form and motion.

Waters do not ripple.
Winds do not roar.

Stilled, silenced, I release
frayed maps of space and time.
Worlds arise, dazzle, disappear.

I do not wait on them
but on what remains.
Living light reveals the song
of my true signature.

Razor Blades and Bathtubs

Razor blades. He leaves them lying around everywhere all the time. I cannot stand to see them and I cannot make myself touch them to put them somewhere out of my sight. Right up there on the kitchen counter tonight. Silver, single-edged but no less ugly and chilling than the double edged blue-black one my mother used.

Washing dishes, trying to look at the beautiful tidal creek outside, I can’t stop seeing it. Something white crusted on it. Did he put it there so I would wash it? I’m not really looking at it but can’t stop knowing it’s there and the pictures start up in my head every time, even though I’m looking out the window at birds, trees, setting sun reflected in dark green water and then it starts to look like a bathtub, not a creek. The water inside, that blue water picture inside my head with brown clouds in it and the water outside with streaks of sunset stretched across it get mixed up.

I know it’s not real, the bathtub with striped blue-brown water and my mother laughing and crying all at once but I feel heavy, like too much gravity has been switched on in my house, even though I know it’s a beautiful creek not a bathtub and on the counter in front of me it’s just a razor blade my husband uses for work. He never even cuts his finger with it. No one cuts themselves with this razor blade so close to me.

It looks big, much bigger than I rationally know it is. I am angry that my husband would leave such a mean, dangerous object lying right in front of me. It’s been there all day and I have not looked directly at it until now. The razor blade seems almost like a living thing to me, as if it knows I am afraid of it, afraid to move it, as if to look at it is to look into it. Like it knows what it really is and is just waiting for me to recognize it. When I look at it more, I can smell the water. Not salty oily mud water from the creek. The bathwater with so much of my mother’s blood in it.

I pick up another dish, deliberately inhaling almond scented soap; focus on clean clear water streaming from the tap. It’s only a razor blade my husband used to scrape putty onto the wall to repair a spot where it leaked in the last storm. No reason for my heart to hurt, no sirens, no blood anywhere. Not like the movie that runs through me each time I see one of those ugly things.

The first thing I noticed when I got home early from school was sounds coming from the bathroom. Sounds like laughing and crying struck together that made me run and then stop still before I opened the door. Long, skinny, threads of sound I had never heard anyone make before. I knew I didn’t want to open the door. But I did.

Before I saw, I smelled the water. The animal in me smelled it, knew it was bad before I saw. There was so much blood in the water in the bathtub where my mother sat, wearing her prettiest summer nightgown even though it was December. I remember thinking that was the oddest thing, not that she was covered in blood, which I didn’t even register was blood. I just knew it was wrong; the picture was wrong and bad. But mostly it was the confused alarm sound, the smell and why would she be in the bathtub with her summer nightgown on that made me so dizzy I stumbled through the doorway.

“Oh, pumpkin”, she said, “don’t come in here. I’m a mess.” A pale, dreamy voice. Then, I understood the blood and the meaning of everything imploded. Dark, light, here, there, up, down, me, you, it all collapsed inside. The thing was lying beside the bathtub, blue-black in a puddle of pink. Shiny sharp rectangle. So small, the thing that did this to my mother.

Artists buy them to cut canvas for their paintings. Editing rooms used to be littered with them. Razor blades are handy for opening shrink wrap packaging on CDs. Housepainters rely on them for scraping splatters off window panes. In the bathtub, most women only use them for shaving their legs. Helpful objects. Razor blades are small, useful tools.

The sun is just memory now. Roosting birds are stilled in their evening nests. Over black cellophane water, a new moon rises like a sharp silver smile. All the dishes are done. I’ll ask my husband to put away that little thing on the counter, make sure the doors are locked and put out the porch light. Everyone’s in; my family is safe for the night. Outside, dark water pulled by a new moon, flows out to sea.

We Long to Awaken

What’s that you carry in the tangled bag?
It’s a kitten I rescued from a bridge.
Why does it rattle and hiss?
Wake up, you are dreaming.

Why have you not brought water for so long?
The well is broken and cannot be repaired.
How, then, shall we live?
Wake up, wake up.


Our table is barren. All doors slammed shut.

We were both so thirsty.
But we could not drink.
We both were starved.
But we would not feast.



Though all wells are broken,
beneath earth and stones, water lives.
Wake up.

MONSTER

Its mouth opens, raining fire and chaos, talking
story of everything everywhere that has broken.
It tells my story, like in a dream showing
lost things. I see tidal waves, leaning trees,
small birds, tea parties and blood.

In Its kissing I inhale flames. Pyramids
rise inside me, burning blessing blaming.
Sounds, like swift animals running through infernos
rush forth forming words that sear and shape.
Sins of Omission are just as harsh Sins of Omission
are just as vile Sins of Omission cut just as deep.

Just like Monster I prayed for love.

Monster lays me on a bright altar
crowned by crystal wands.
It draws ashes from my voice
It breathes Supernovabreath
of now now now. Galaxies inside me
melt running smoking rivers
from eyes, mouth, hands, feet.

Monster cracks the code along my spine
pulling bitter roots from stagnant pools.
Monster splits my tears
to probe their injured hearts.
Its eyes glimmer like angels
before and after The Fall.
Trembling, I surrender.

I prayed to be loved I am subsumed.

Monster does not shake. Monster does not cry.
Monster stings and coos
Oh beautiful beautiful beautiful All.
Monster longs for more.

FEAR

Sweet sage offers herself to cleanse, to clear,
to repair our shattered home
but fear rambles in every room.

It makes beds of remembered conversations
twisted, wound through with lies.
It weaves sharp nests lined with broken vows.

Fear pulls me down and coils round me
tighter than a lover could do. It whispers
nothing will ever be enough.

My breath is so small mirrors cannot find me.

At 3AM fear demands to be fed.
Before sunrise fear wants cash
for earthquakes
for floods
for coups and revolutions
or just in case.

Fear drinks chocolate syrup and coughs loudly.
It litters. It shops. It worships illusion.
It eats potato chips and quotes soap operas.
Fear carries concealed weapons.

Fear prances before me on the freeway, it sings
I am so much prettier than prayers
I am prettier than salvation
I am pretty at the end or beginning
I am prettier than fantasy or hope
I am prettier than God
LOOKATMELOOKATMELOOKATMELOOKATMELOOKATME