the line

You
disarm me with your Sangre de Cristo attentions
divine connection
threaded in azure across miles & miles & miles
knowing comes without beckoning
forgiveness vessel'd in some seasoned understanding
hanging as it does here upon the cusp of summer
hanging as it does upon the memory of your hands
beauty locked in the acceptance of distance
to the
horizon line
disarmed?
perhaps not so much
tender comes the high plains light
and
easy the moments

hello sweet night

awaiting the necromancy of the thunderstorms ....

how acutely i feel.....

when i was very small, i would stand on my little bed at night for hours & hours - gazing out my bedroom window at the world as it was - i could see our street, davis avenue in gering, i could see our neighbors house, and the side yard between.  our neighbor's had a daughter named brenda, and i would think about brenda and what it as like in her head. 

i would worry about brenda. 

i would gaze out at the sky and think about all the hurt & pain in the world.  lonely children, hurt & lost animals, the long forgotten causes & missions of long, forgotten people.  i would pray back then, for all that hurt to go away; to be replaced by sunlight, hope & love.

we moved to north platte and i had a beautiful pink & purple bedroom, a french provencal canopy bed over which another window peered out into the world.  i would kneel on my very girly pink bed, and pressing my elbows into the glass,  again feel - NOT merely imagine, but FEEL the world's hurt.  animal & human alike.  they were all the same - same despair, same loneliness and pain. 

by this time, i stopped praying, and just 

hoped. hard.

friendships were felt easily too.  every nuance, every slight, every joy - every moment that was true & perfect like we were gods, happening to land here on earth for 

some brief lifetime.

some moments shone with a timeless brilliance, as if placed under a bell-jar.

sitting on slames brothers bunk-bed, singing along to yellow brick road, eating brownies laced with weed.

all of our little gang, playing down on the river with the sun shining hot, and the taste of june on your tongue.

that night across from the party, laying amongst garden & grass: discovering sex, discovering him & a part of myself.

release under stars and the smell of grass mingled with the smell of us ...

i was home.

i think every moment is like that.  standing apart from the rest, each is perfect in it's chaos and possibility.

time, of course, sometimes was just time.  rolling along with it's own agenda, careening & dashing around the barriers & walls people put up to shield themselves from the truth.

pure, golden moments though raged on always.....

when i was 8 months pregnant, we ran over a rattlesnake on the way to golden from boulder - i cried for 2 hours about that snake.

i felt that snake. 

touching daisy's bristly little red hair as it stood up on her month old head, i could feel every hurt, every pulse of life & hope and it terrified me.

everyday news was approached with caution, and fortitude as sometimes the details were too grim, the reality to harsh to bare ..... or so i thought.

heartbreak & unhappiness, pain & loneliness  -  as i age, they seem to be countered with a measure of wisdom, hope, trust & well,  love.

.... biting into an apple = you anticipate the taste, the feel of the skin upon your lips and your mouth might salivate a bit, yet you hesitate becuase the cold against your teeth will be shocking & hurt.  your eyes shut as you sink your teeth into the flesh,  the juice trickling down over your open lips - it is bracingly chill and your a mess

really, but 

that apple is tart, crisp and filled 

with an early summer hope.

New Moon in Gemini

tenderness comes at the end of May
petal'd visceral pink, helped along by the tiny pull of tiny things
fluttered ants of forgiveness
purchased at such a cost ....
yet, how familiar the scar tissue now
tight & full
restrictive
unyielding
how we learn to bend despite
to feel contentment despite
to love through to the other side
to open and not be defined by the brokenness
but
to define
by
the
fragility & lightness of being
so alive
so pink
at the end of May

two o'clock in May

Maxfield Parrish
whirling dervish
of mustard seed
and
monarchs
as
moments resurface
tiled
and
tempered
in goblets of grace
darkness to sunlight outline of days
vinca vine trailing along the clay brick
noticed by no one
it's tendrils it lays
circular, intricate patterns abound
wind whips through boughs
as
love tattoos the ground
trails; whirly-gig-maple-pods ... twigs and wood-green
tell the tale of all the gray space between
surrender to no one
surrender the fight
surrender the hollow
of
white-birch
in
moonlight ...
illustrate these wind-swept hours
perceive beyond this swirling morning haze;
color the space

darken the line
with
mustard seeds

and 

monarchs
to
define these nearly summer days

shelter

shelter of blue & salmon sky
shelter of questions
and
the thunder of why
shelter of wounds as deep as lore
shelter on white & rocky shores
arms raised fierce into the night
as wind whips the artifice of light
lean to the heart of those you know
lean to the salve of bowers rain-glow
spring shelters expectations true
awaken to a day
electric alice blue

higgs boson

I have this strange attachment to things
it has been there always
as if I could recognize some part of myself buried deep within
the downy fluff of a stuffed rabbit,
 or
along the fragile pastern & cannon of a 3 inch glass horse
something 
and
I have this strange knack of losing things I didn't know were of value;
my grandmother's quilt forgotten in a kappa delt house
a naked rabbit clock tucked behind a forgotten somewhere,
a spanish guitar left behind somewhere,
an austrian crystal necklace of tiny glass shells & flowers - the first spurge in a new town,
a picture my mother embroidered, over 50 years ago now, of a deer with a fawn, forgotten in a corner of a severed family branch
somewhere
is tucked a painting of dragons & orbs--still in its thin black frame
"I keep your picture
Up on the wall
It hides the messy stain
That's lying there
So don't you ask me to give it back"
well, I digress and you're beginning to get the picture
just recently I realized a green tufted footstool of my grandfathers is missing
not where it has been for 8 years
just gone
it is more than obvious to me that we leave pieces of ourselves with those
we love at every coming together and at every parting
but
it is the pieces that exist there in the inorganic ... the inanimate that stun me
the pieces of myself I have scattered to the corners & shadowlands
into hands I know not
the piece of me that dwells somewhere I can't see
is anything truly inorganic
are we not everywhere
in tiny glass flowers, in the soft forgiveness of a quilt,
and the pastern & cannon of horses ?
tufted, missing, fragility .... found & connected .

petricor

sometimes it's easy to abandon all musings

on
cosmic folly & rolling hills
to take up a fist of soil & work the earth thru the passing of the hours
to battle amongst those who can look sky ward and see no stars

see no force there

but blue
to rumble along ignorant of ardor & fascination & truth
merely to delude oneself into thinking that this is how it should be;
hard work and sleep make up the days 

habit follows habit follows habit 
follows
into the yellow chalk-outlined box of tomorrow
until 

something slips,
something tilts ....
into a particle of possibility
perhaps it is a smell on the wind
a song on the radio while strolling thru the frozen foods looking for 

bright green peas and razberries
something awakens in the pit of your chest
the bone of your thighs

the spaces in your heart 

the burn stirs
and you hope and want and yearn and breathe
in
him .
.... and 
all events and passions and senses
collide to entice you to rattle the bars of your cage

to stomp and shout and
mark your scent upon the piece of 

sky & earth
that calls you
home 

peacock april

This
is what it feels like when air hits the bone
the bite, the chill snap
exposed venous structures laddered to purposeful presence
vulnerability freely given
turtle oil pressed against the beveled edge
strick the match
count the # of days . . .
hands 
taken
named
released  . . . snap!