I lose time,
cannot sleep until deep morning.
The rats in the walls wander
like dogs in chains.
A cat on the roof pounces,
an animal squeals
like a rabbit.
There are no rabbits.
My gemstoned anxieties
worn everyday
as pierced earrings,
ordinary things,
with a "not good enough" gleam.
Words leave my tongue
axially off, wobbled.
A broken rib, collar, or rim,
are remnant anger, or hypocrisy,
held in.
As a woman I must sense
be vigilant
of all things that define my surroundings.
Why was I "gifted" a candled insight
that illuminates but never warms,
a warning, not a companion?
Will I find, too late,
I’ve fled
some part of myself
I might have saved?
I love the independence and grace of solitude in urban and rural places.
To see and meet the world on your own! To me, this is one of the great
joys in life. For most women, this experience is indeed hard to achieve,
one we have had to train for mentally, spiritually, and physically in
a far, far different way than men.
We know also it will be a cyclical battle, one repeatedly fought throughout life.
It's not easy, this new life.
I've been searching for
3 years reprieve but I'm offered days,
paid one by one.
I'm left a bit unfit from this, and the cold.
A barking dog at night delights me,
as do playground voices of children,
gulls shrieking, animated conversations,
and cars grunting up this hill.
Here's the clank and whine of the iron gate
next to my house that's opened and shut.
What comes next?
I do not know.
Did I ever?
Binaries of Tikum Olam
or more, with polyphonic overtones.
Sing, Anne Marie.
Bring Eliana's ashes here.
It's twenty-twentyone's end.
Charlemagne Palestine's bejewelled
notes
aren't
alone,
knows
Pauline Oliveros
has an accordion.
pigeon or dove's gone feral
as did jonah
swallowed by wildness
and waterbeasts
both men islands at sea
abecaderian he
altered, zealot, not
without violence
his learning,
his poems
Iona
there where
refuge and raid met
he set stone to bone and paper
wrote gods and liturgy
into Latin.
This dove of death in life, peace in prayer
there where stones remembered,
a wake and its night soil
left for the rest of us.
_______________________________________________________________
Altus *prosator, *vetustus
dierum et ingenitus
erat absque origine
primordii et *crepidine
est et erit in sæcula
sæculorum infinita;
cui est unigenitus
Xristus et sanctus spiritus
coæternus in gloria
deitatis perpetua.
Non tres deos *depropimus
sed unum Deum dicimus,
salva fide in personis
tribus gloriosissimis.
High creator, Ancient
of Days, and unbegotten,
who was without origin
at the beginning and foundation,
who was and shall be in infinite
ages of ages;
to whom was only begotten
Christ, and the Holy Ghost,
co-eternal in the everlasting
glory of Godhood.
We do not propose three gods,
but we speak of one God,
saving faith in three
most glorious Persons.
Papagaias?
Não, senhora pombos. Porto não tem papagaios.
Ele ergue os olhos.
Não papagaios, senhora. Apenas pássaros estranhos que eu não conheço.
Não papagaios?
Não papagaios .
Was it an r, full sailed,
or an m sinking below the waves?
Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru, cover continents with eyes, ears, and mouths.
Salt at the door. What for?
Where is that word for something? Anorexic recall.
Ondol, onsen, earth and water.
On a warm floor, dreams remain, and sleep keeps them company.
Steaming pools admit fugitives, drown downed ares and ems .
saw in the mind, this bluntness of date -
1543 - when three sailors were blown off course.
The fourth, Shizaru Xavier, arrives,
survives as a worn stone and shadows.
You go first. No, algo.
Mallows brought on ships, and other seeds of weed.
Thirty-three weeds,
seeds growing where they're unwanted.
Unzen admonishment.
Sizaru Xavier earlier, instead, dead
on Shangchuan.
なにか.
Waves separating us. Divisions of sounds,
salt surrounding homes, and fish.
Dishes of salt
turn to seas in the rain.
António Mota, Francisco Zeimoto and António Peixoto
(also presumably Fernão Mendes Pinto)
(random selection on a cold moring)
Pine Shade
A hedge
of a thousand trees
standing in the cold
The green haze so deep and dense
it keeps out the light
Don't blame me
for staying alone
with my door shut
The guidepost
always stood open
for anyone who passed
1
Spent camellias
and five lichens
2
persimmons
and
Araujia sericifera,
cruel vine,
moth plant,
bladderflower
3
cool rooms
common mallow
goosefoot
4
black mustard
rosemary
fennel
5
marigold
fields
a dusky dog
6
Flax-leaves
daphne
yellow fleabane
7
soon
Field Fumitory
Fumaria agraria
Fumária dos campos
8
now
Common Morning Glory
Ipomoea indica
Glória da manhã
9
autumn squill
(Cila de outubro)
spindled groundsel
10
Black Nightshade
Solanum nigrum
Erva moira
year round
11
and
Corn Spurrey
Spergula arvensis
Cassamelo
12
saw
navelwort
(out of season)
Rain seeps through the skylight.
A centipede I found
turns round upon itself and
dies.
Outside,
wet oranges ripen
on trees.
1
deus vêtudo etu nem o vez
god knows you and you don't even see it
2
Sim a em órbita dualas causam caos cultural
Yes dual orbits cause cultural chaos
Dappled light, and trout.
Ants spilling sand onto brick.
Thick trees.
Cars throbbing
with
bass frequencies.
Where are they?
I am searching for them.
Dogs.
I'm above the sea,
sitting on a stone bench.
Masks on the ground.
I wear mine outdoors.
Sickness is again spreading.
I find dead birds,
kill carpenter bees.
Children die,
buildings collapse,
villages wash away.
None of these are signs.
Not one, none.
Planes
plow rows of sound,
like birds in bushes,
and as hidden.
No dogs.
Cicadas have brought heat,
and with heat,
aspects of elevation.
Still no dogs.
Dog days have passed.
We remain high,
dragonflies
darning through
cool cloudless blue.
Up here,
in the returning chill,
evening caws.
But no dogs.
Where the dogs are
I think of as lapses in consciousness,
warnings -
the world's next sedition.
Listen.
A bark?
Long shadows now.
Colder.
Dark.
Just out of eyesight,
legged shades,
dissembling,
move closer.
1
Stones
chinked with clumps of string -
walls reminded remember.
2
Birds singing
in spring bring
soulful overflow.
3
Father's land
isn't what you're thinking.
Ho!
Know swamp and field,
are America's gardens,
yield
last hickories
and snakes
4
Mother's
pies were
shale crusted
thick creeks,
with apple shores.
Cannot think of a park, a lark, a person,
as a single cell
or a book
as insular bacterium.
What is one,
or
more?
her, brindled pup, and he, night's Labrador
we three speechless
like the sun midday
above the orange trees
Common and folk
are atavistic words
bloated with hurt
I never wanted them to have.
That might be a lie.
Once very drunk,
I mimicked a working class accent,
stung three of the nicest people I'd ever met.
They forgave me,
and shunned me,
the desperate, rejected lover,
jealous,
bullied,
and miserable.
To master the chaos of oneself. (Nietzsche)
I haven't the youse of my mother, or her knife and fork dinner duet. I lack the soft "ya" of my sisters, their mother hen togetherness, their Mom-spooned vowel melodies, and their fork and knife right-handedness. I wanted to be like them, safe in their language, united, fearless - quick thinking, fast talking, voweled together, deft of hand.
I've been led instead to use the word "you" like a desert bird, standing on one utensil, unbalanced.
Lift a fork, lower the knife.
I think slowly, with the deliberation I need to follow through sounds, not drop silverware.
When I open my mouth, the oh sound doesn't ah, remains round.
I believe mother felt disappointment in my vowels. She knew I knew I'd move words away from her someday.
Her forethought.
Mother knew what lay below the sounds I'd choose, words I'd lose.
What, she wondered, will she keep?
Didn't weep, mother, for me, but set a table place, in case my singular, my alone, drove me home.
aranha
barata
centopéia
Noites quando você caça
iludindo as estrelas.
Eu
a
grande corpa
cheio de água
flutuando ao sol
com olhos fracos
incapaz de entender
seu medo da luz.
____________________
spider
cockroachhouse centipede
Nights when you hunt,
eluding the stars.
I am
a
big body
full of water
floating in the sun
with weak eyes
unable to understand
your fear of light.
First,
the
color,
after black,
and
an estuary.
Then too many people,
too few wildflowers,
broken tiles.
She, steeply ascending
after dark,
looks up.
Planets there
where
invisible
cat's eyes
azulejo glow green under lamplight.
Second,
color after morning,
and tidal.
Emptied streets.
Fresh blood splats
and camomile.
Wealth isn't measured by old stones,
but in morning glories
and ripening apples.
Third,
the color
midday over
a garden,
and falling.
Steps.
I keep count.
the colors of.
the colors of.
we have no agreement to meet
but we do
as
some nights
wandering into lit rooms
she pauses staring,
starting when I'm startled but
she never runs. Turning and walking away
she's resigned to my presence.
I've become part of her
search for food.
I like this mouse
and cannot fault her for
her bravery
or desperation.
She arrived just in time
for my final days in this home,
around the time my anxiety was highest,
waiting for a visa.
I think of her as a companion,
searching
as we both are
for something
to sustain us.
boneset
comfrey
dead nettle
crysanthemums seeping through the baseboard
don't let the dogs near tansy, foxglove
common valerian's
pure white,
as the goat's beard,
now skeletal,
rises
aloft
far from
soft
wild phlox,
still
sweet.
At phlox feet,
creeping bellwort,
returning.
Learning that the
New England aster,
purple haloes
bursting through,
mark the
pin cherry's brutal death
earlier this year.
Clearly,
hedge bindweed
has its
heart set on
calico aster.
Slowing
bees
lay stunned
under
goldenrod
rigida and canadensis
as an autumnal
spiderwort of
bluest blue
cursively
creeps
into
the cooling night
lined out hymnody
Gaelic Back singing
Isle of Lewis Free Church
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S3XDunMj2Y
grommet
(grumbles)
__________________
reisenmeer
(clear skies)
______________________
Gestaltblatt
(leaf seas)
______________________
1
I passed a dilapidated Victorian, grime-smeared, sprayed with graffiti.
The street level shop windows were boarded, the upper windows broken. I approached the building and touched it lightly. The entire building crumbled into a fine and beautiful dust.
Trees, growing in dirt squares surrounded by sidewalk, began to snicker.
2
Mozart's Ah Tutti Contenti
from the Marriage of Figaro,
finely spun!
A pond appeared
where turtles sung.
Maria Robusti
What would you have thought
of a still damp drawing of a pregnant mare?
Lifting your eyes, as I did,
would you have felt
a shiver of recognition, a sudden nearness
to that long-dead artist?
Would you have left Rouffignac
with that graceful image
embedded in your bones?
This is for you, my dear
who in that year
could have filled your
umeployment forms out
in ancient greek
or very poetic French.
It was frustrating to watch you
write letter after letter
seeking work
when you had enough work
(filled the rest of your days).
What really were you after
but a little money to get by on?
You told me then, and I hear you now, say the future has no hold on us,
we're too close to the present, and we gain nothing from desire,
however enticing, without this god damn struggle just to stay alive,
to create.
1
of chicory, and a vision
snow blown from a tree
fruit blossoms falling
it's a cherry tree, too
2
near a dark lake
deer have eaten
all the hyacinth -
their spring asparagus
3
pileated woodpeckers
over a foot high
are eating suet
an arm's length away
4
I am able to see tiny creatures
feeding on my skin
molting exoskeletons
or
5
a cornfield
lit by thousands
of tiny abdomens
january 21st
Dad had his operation last night. The doctors found tumors in his colon, lesions in his
large and small intestines, skin tumors, bone cancer. His body's crumbling. The cancers will reach a large organ, the brain, in months not years.
We send flowers with sweet smelling lilies. Mary and Maureen cry a lot. Paula thank god she's so damn efficient and fair, clear thinking.
Dad did it. He lived long enough to take care of mother.
Hope Dad lives to see spring, Paula says.
march 4th
Dad's in very recent chemo
may give him unhoped-for months
Mare and maureen there
and Mom comes home
lots of busy
wears mom and dad out
a good thing
a long straight sleep rare for them these days
the guilt
have we done enough?
as many answers as family
but I suspect
always in the negative
cannot be otherwise
living through dying is full of surprises
love. separation.
bittersweet ordinary.
april 17
warm spring smell
trees prickly with roundthorned buds
we've overwintered another year here
today we walk to the river
downy woodpecker, nuthatches, geese
and lovesick gulls
holding hands
I know we
are formed first by love -
his patience, suffering
shuts me up
a lucky woman
to have such a graceful partner
savor joy
it is not forever
1
goldfinch
flew through
strewn tansy
2
august heat
completes
swallow-altering
air
3
female finch's
lament
hawk-quickened
spent
Women held you
as you passed
from one world to another
on pale iron beds
white as moons
in rooms of skin
and tulips.
You, purpling between sheets,
breathing first
a cry
or
at the end
a sigh
of transcendence.
Then
again
swear
where
we,
prose or poemed,
regenerate,
composted
into
love.
God's names.
Mother's.
Sacrifice.
Lust.
Cussed into and out of us -
because
we weren't
we are never
enough.
(undated 2017)
pour place pathos pursuit plague
plague.
die ewige Wiederkehr (des Gleichen) [Nietzsche]
the endless return of the same
ataraxia - a state of serene (inner) calmness [Epictitus]
καταστηματικός - (katastēmatikós)
The term 'ataraxia' is used in Epicurean philosophy to refer to a type of katastematic pleasure that is engendered by a complete freedom from mental disturbances and worries.
the pleasure of equilibrium and balance
_______________________________
ancient thought on conservation or matter [Epicurus. Lucretius]
"seeds" generate things, things are composed of invisibly small particles which
seemed to argue against Zeno's paradox that "you cannot deconstruct anything
beyond a certain point"
modus tollens
the rule of logic stating that if a conditional statement (“if p then q ”) is accepted, and the consequent does not hold ( not-q ), then the negation of the antecedent ( not-p ) can be inferred.
if P, then Q, But not -Q, therefore not -P
are the number of atomic shapes infinite?
review Epicurean
12 26
There is no reason to fear what isn't
or what is going to happen
13 25
is there?
14 24
light is so many darks
is
infinite
is, is
15 23
there is no formula for happiness
16 22
carving out a niche
a channel
a cove
17 21
illum...
an unintellig...
wor...
is
18 20
light came from the horizon I knew
19 19
the direction was up
20 18
eyes dim as the illness progresses
21 17
death is not an illness
22 16
terminus
that mysterious illuminata that
23 15
survivor of myth
24 14
my daughter my son
and their children's children
have eyes
25 13
what will they see?
26 12
thirty-four generations ago
you placed a mirror
27 11
in my grave
and it's still there
28 10
shooting stars showers and
twenty-eight
29 9
even the first lens was lit here
30 8
distance?
forward
backward
an illusion
31 7
evolving around a fiery star
32 6
in the distance?
surely you see
33 5
lights don't clock
but age
34 4
age ago
and again
and afterward
often all at once
35 3 you
too
you too!
36 2
read
forward backward
up and down
37 1
direct your gaze to the stars
12.4.86
to remember: the idea of place:
the twilight landscape w/ dreams/ experiences
I think my heart is in the art of painting "lies',
in mingling myths and real events with
the sky and the land.
Stars as moving spirits in the sky,
Ingrid Washinawatoc's red sign
in the sky, twins the fog over
the wall, the white blurred sun in the sky.
You must keep the painting fresh,
learn the way to stow and return, start fresh
each thing. many moments paintings
seem to have lives of their own.
12.9.86
sometimes you need the cool greenness of this land
as surely as you need bread and water. you need to
hear the land, no matter the muffling it takes in a city park.
sometimes I want to cry out loud, curse my foggy brain.
I've tried too hard to fit in, not take life seriously,
but life is a beautiful, serious to me. I want to
live awake, not in this dulled state where true things slip
slowly and quietly away. There is a fencing feeling.a pent up sorrow
for lost things too early, far too early in life. What good is health
if your heart is not in living?
Have to pray a long, long way to hear my voice clear again.
4.30. 87
THE FIRES OF BELTANE - green, purple, red in the night sky
BADLANDS - S. Dak. fossils of 3-toed horses, saber-toothed cats, a type of camel no larger than a dog
in a land now sparsely populated by rock wrens and coyotes.
MYTH
To the Yuki (N. Cal tribe), the creator was Taikómol, the solitude walker
The Plains view of the buffalo reminds me of Aaron and Moses and the Mt. of God.
5.5.87
I feel as if was caught up in a tangled net, the sum of my mixed emotions for those I loved.
(childhood)
green things making food by eating the sun
Seek a philosophy that grows out of the lives of......
8.29.87
things to remember:
the small orange butterfly in the green, green grass
sound of raking leaves
the trees
3:00 and fog is coming in, greying (above).
The lower things still very bright and clear.
-fog-
- yellow light, clear blue sky, earlier 2 kinds of cloud
- saw a striped cat in the middle of Laguna Honda lawn
pounce on s/t unseen.
- remembrance and the eye - vision w/ spirit
8.31.87
3 - a sphere the wind a wave
Q: Does this recurrent preoccupation w/ a
spiritual significance in nos. bespeak
my Catholic background? Or is it
s/t found in most religions, a basic desire
to join 2 disparate mental processes?
9.14.87
the trees remember
Bonaventure
1 LUX: "light in itself"
motion and inner earth energy =
"minerals" (genes) + "seeds" of life
2 LUMEN: "light that travels through
space, borne by a transparent medium"
3 COLOR + 4 SPLENDOR: c = "light
of terrestial bodies", s = "luminous bodies"
both reflective light
idea of "deeper significance in ordinary things...AN
INDEFINITE FEELING WHICH MAY BE CALLED UP
AT ANY MOMENT."
Saint Paul
VIDEMUS NUNC PER SPECULUM IN AENIGMATE, TUNC AUTEM FACIE
AD FACIEM.
We see through a glass darkly, but then face to the face.
theophany - a visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god
hylomorphism - the doctrine that physical objects result from the combination of matter and form.
undated 1987, 1988
My dad, he wanted to sing beautiful songs for a living, he wanted to dream.
Instead he helped Grandpa, a mean man, and often groaned in his sleep.
Why so hard to follow your calling and still love your family?
My friend Julie used to drive out to meadows and run naked, alone, through them.
I used to think it mad but now no more mad than seeking special hills
or seeing a bird in a man, as other friends do. We each need to plant our peace
in a part of the land, a reassurance of our mutual wonder and respect.
There is a kind of resistance, a wrestling that thanklessly conspires
to create you in a different way.
1.21.88
Last night (beach)
early eve - 121.88 (1.22.88)
exceptional mils weather,
warm, lite wind. (sand bar)
Twilight. clds [clouds], rooftop
reflected in dark pool, trees
8.8.89
light coming out of the darkeness - an idea of "touch"
(please touch) of an art that reaches yet remains at rest
(solitude) quietly accessible, truthful.
Language of the interior (the eye) is moved by thought,
thought is the form of thing removed from sight
and remembered.
This is a way to cull s/t essential in painting.
This is a partial path. Always the sense of the nature
of the object remains, reminding the painter of her role.
10.8.92
On rocks:
in them, traces of exhilaration,
movements betraying their glacial origin.
Standing stones, human-laid, are also
marked by arrested movement.
The "stillness" of stone:
a kind of necessary touch,
we humans need to place things w/in
the impermanence that surrounds us.
November 17 1996
what she wishes for is a prayer
that hasn not lost its power to
consume the spiritin god's fire-
she longs for the separation to end
but realizes the futility of her dream.
I had a dream last night.
Looking down and across a white-capped sea, I saw a pod of whales
ALL OF A DIFFERENCE
belugas, great blue, barnacled, humpback,
breaching, spouting, singing.
Today I saw a stuccoed wall that appeared to show the worn
labor of a thousand handprints.
compassion for all living things
suffering is real and ever-present
life is
(whether or not we are aware of it)
following a course through life that is full and right...
How small I seem when I read the poets and naturalists,
and yet as vital to all as the smallest creature....
2004
Die Prinzen
Hamlet
Medina Azahara
Einstürzende Neubauten
Collapsing new buildings
we are inundated
you call out but the waters have stilled your voice
you are between flood and sky, and your world sinks around you
you climb to the highest place,
but nothing will save you from the rising waters
1 Dec 2007
entanglements
In my darker moments, there is no Holy Family of humanity,
only isolation, injury, insensitivity .
A lover's word, a husband's kiss, does not unite but accents
the loneliness of the soul. It's worse to anticipate,
then one excites one-sided expectations. better to
return to the slow painful practice of disallusion,
better to make the supreme effort to love all but not one better others.
Will detachment surrender to joy?
21 March 2011
bright day, dry
when is being remembered, as dark and light...
it's so many things...
i n t e r f e r e n c e
ghosts dirt memory the body
h o r i z o n s h o r e (s e a)
s h i f t to
b a n k (r i v e r)
g r a s s l e d g e (c u l v e r t)
l i n e s w a v e
d i r e c t i o n o f f l o w
t i l l e d e a r t h
what is this, stilled?
liquid solid air
an exercise in breath
breath: let go, distill
______________
enten glements (arrangements)
d i a m o n d s u t r a
7. 24. 2017
as a child
afraid of the dark
Rikyu black
perhaps even blackness
or an extract of blackness
can survive the walls of our rooms
To witness blackness
my be the closest we can come to the preent,
that is
"to a pure limit between the past and the present"
わび -
"depth" of the object
the material it is made from becomes secondary
to the image the completed object presents to the eye"
(Lafayette DeMente)
tanka
poetry writing contributes to self-discipline...appreciation
of the beauty of nature and life... finally tranquility."
(ibid.)
Bear Butte
cloth string tobacco prayer -
american windhorses
Deganahwida
the great white pine
a canoe of white stone
Gernika
lumo, oak
these trees - oak ash pine fig
5 pure lights
Yggdrasil
green ash tree - 9 worlds
the fates (Norns) place a rooster each morning atop Yggrasil.
It's bragging wakes humans and gods.
The Norns water Yggrasil daily.
An eagle and a dragon have their emnity enflamed by a
gossiping squirrel (sladder egern)
Lif a man and Liftraser a woman
will hide in the branches of Yggdrasil during Ragnarock.
emerging after to repopulate the world.
Huginn and Munin - will they survive Ragnarock?
AHIMSA
SATYAGRAHA
ADUMBRATIVE
what is sun, sky
but the present I sublimated?
Between us and them
a light apparent
(non-binding, not blinding).
Life lived in gratitude isn't absolution.
Warm sun, wind - my graces.
Once wandress (wondrous),
the cypress, the funeral tree's
among the
first unfound.
Altered lives grounded in pilgrimage.
seis stemmed,
are that char, that chair outside, laid earth, dirt.
Of all dictions, the done one wins,
Bogged in, begin
by loving all who they were.
Sing among western mesas
among dry places.
Shout, we are here
to raze museums!
to praise libraries!
The libraries
That is where the there is, the theys are also,
the we, youse
and me.
1
I thought of your wax feet
while eating turmeric and cauliflower.
These hollow feet speak
as books, looking earthward,
then when placed upon a wall,
their golden hollows
whisper in mother tongues.
2
A legacy arrives -
you at 63,
and me, now 63 too.
It's taken 7 years
to draw this circle
and close it, love.
today all the boughs
and sticks
pitched overboard
unstored, unstoried.
Believe in Bamboo,
sharpened, burnt,
hurt.
I couldn't understand,
yet I persisted.
"While minds create things, things also create minds..." 136
what they left became buried in talcum fine loess., crushed rock dust blown from
advancing glaciers hundreds of kilometers away 146
Kindred, Sykes
In 1970, a Japanese robotics researcher named Masahiro Mori posited a complex phenomenon known as the uncanny valley. His basic theory was that we respond positively to a robot as it becomes more human in look but only up to a certain point. And then suddenly, we are strongly repelled by it.
What does it mean to create, become part of, a functional multi-cultural me?
My world is small, with big silences. My world is noisy, a city-dwelling diaspora of people, plants, and animals.
I am not rich. In America, I am poor, more so in money than spirit.
The color of my skin sometimes staves me. There's plenty of pre-judging to go around. "They should have killed you all in the war." Which one? " You're not...." Fill in the blank. " Go home!" Pull apart a genetic history. Where is the singular root place I should return to?
Living together with you, me, are the pieces of us. Just look around. We're fractured, crystallized, beautifully dark, resplendent.
Notes, stanzas, loosed music.
I take up space for better and worse, a source of emissions. Am I soluable? I don't want to be.
Silences. Then the witness sounds of red winged black birds, the robin's reaching into first light, the ever present calls of cardinals, the beating of hearts, the breathing of trees.
How to distinguish a muskrat from a beaver kit swimming in the river - two tales, two bodies in water.
When I was young, I was altered, left my body to survive. I've lived a lifetime of
putting my soul back into this aging flesh. Failure is a part of love.
Above, below, around me, ghosts remain, unreconciled.
How many tales does it take to make us whole again?
I cannot swim well. The love of my life sunk, couldn't float. We flunked a life lesson, needed a boat.
In Wisconsin, the ark is a canoe, I wrote. The boat of both the best and the worst, of those first, and remainders like me, who put to sea, found themselves here, alive, but wounded and wound into others.
I'd like to be on friendlier terms with the sea, that transported multi-cultural me, which extends still, to the horizon, and into families.
Silences can be navigational, hold a boat afloat.
Between quiet, I write notes from the voyage. Record songs.