The Slip

Soft mud along the riverbank
and last storm’s snow still clinging, too.
Here where three realms touch and part,
gold slips in between the blue.

Waters rush beneath the ice,
sometimes creak and seeping through
to see the sun low on the hills
where gold slips in between the blue.

Although the tree limbs shiver bare
and still there’s frost that would be dew,
the deep roots waken at the touch
when gold slips in between the blue.

And on the river’s surface gleams
this winter’s silver growing old
and mixed with sky-reflected blues
the lace of spring’s slip edged in gold.

Written

I am alone within —
I am alone within this —
I am alone within this white
landscape, the invention of
silence itself,
and no one
attempts to speak,
as I brace against the wide space
with my words — not my words, no
— I am alone with these
words that belong to my
family and our dead, belong to others —
we have made them together, like trees
or stones that the rain has made, and the pressure
of gravity and sunlight, just
as indirectly, just as accidental
— wasn’t the word for mama first
just the lipping of a babe for breast? I heard
that somewhere once, I think — I am
alone within this winter of echoing
valleys, truly alone in this absence before
the beautiful empty page.
For a time, at least.
Tumbling cold, dark stones over in my hands,
weighing each one, turning it
on its edge or laying it aside — this
is not quite right, they are not stones but like
twigs broken from the trees, still alive, still
alive —
as though some large eye will see their blotted lines
against the snow and dale
as it passes overhead, and read the message there:
though it will likely be no cry for help,
and I will have long since gone again.

Self-Becoming: Fire and Ice

Become what you are, he tells me, but what he means
is become fire, become what happens to everyone
else. I am worn out with longing, and fire changes
everything into itself, leaping along the ropes
we’ve thrown over sun and moon, eating through them
until, filament by filament, they unravel into fire themselves
and fall. Then the sun and moon are free, and so,
he must think, will I be. Do I know better?
Evening drops down early into a white swarm that reaches
to every horizon, uncanny obscurity whistling through the dark
cracks of the trees’ limbs on the hillside, sparse and tangled
above barren, icy ground, and what the winter knows
I know now, too: that the sun runs in watercolor
rose and gold across a papery blue above the whine
and whimpering winds of storm, and there across the way
the moon is shaking off the silvery dust of the earth
and rising slow, like the first secret thought of what skin
only a lover’s eyes might know. And would I become
fire for this, crawling on my belly towards heaven,
making war against my longing for the sake of being free?
But I am languishing these days, like water under ground
that changes — become what I am! and what is that? —
according to what is given: now only a slick of ice
between layers of mud, now nestled deep in the churning warm
salt tides of the ocean, now something else, a jagged fern
of frost that will be dew, now whipped into a frenzy
that tears me even from my shattered crystal bones.
I am in the storm, or in the roots of trees, or in the blood
and wet breath of panting intimacy groping in the dark
for something more than merely what I am —
for what I love, and would not turn to ash.

Turning to Face Her

I am so utterly conscious
of where my hands are,
how my fingers press
against my lips, lips pursed
and my cheeks burning a little
with concentration.
The speaker speaks — that’s
what he does — and his words
are dire and passionate and
sometimes I wonder if
anyone is surprised by them
anymore or if, like me, they
know this, know it already
in their cluttered minds, the truth
of culture winding down,
of illusion wearing thin
as we turn away from politicians
who cannot save us, corporations
who cannot save us, preachers
and pastors who cannot
save us — turn away
from all this noise that would have us
bound and groveling on weeping
faces. “Resistance,” he says,
“is never done in the abstract.”
And I write, Beauty
is always concrete.
in my notebook, turning my mind
towards this reality, these particulars
of form and limit and sensuous detail
rubbing one another raw, the utmost
gasp of life a working in the lungs.
There is peace-making and the role
of beauty, the fires of awen
pouring down to illuminate —
everything — everything is connected —
everything turns on this simple
knowledge. What beauty does —
what art does, what makes the World
Song piercing and clear — is
resistance. And this is peace,
friends, when in community we listen
to the longing and we push,
and work, and carve from Spirit
the empty, hard-edged vessels of love
— our mouths are open
and, singing, in pours sunlight,
flame and water, everything at once.

Bring the Fire Down

Move through the hills unrolling
dense and shifting green below the night,
touch earth — between justice
and mercy, between nakedness and warfare,
between all that you would not do
and all you have done, unknowing —
move through the water to the streambed,
move through the mountains to the heat,
move through the empty sky, crying.
To touch the slick, smooth rocks wet
with life and blood and water;
to walk the land; to kiss the deep
echoing heart of the offering well.
Move your compassion. Move your peace.
Move slow and solemn in darkness
and do not be afraid, though their power
burns to brightness, busy, churning
life upon life, grinding colors from their bones
to paint their eyes — move, you beauty,
move, you simple world. Reach up
with your remembering. Reach up with your
longing. Reach up with your being
and your making and your singing
strength into the storm; reach up with all
the detail of the in-between, the tragic
and the torn; reach up to touch the sacred
flame exalting in the midnight earth,
reach up to touch the sun as she is rising;
reach up to show your hands are empty;
reach up to leap your dance on holy ground,
the hills unrolling, the whole earth breathing
— reach up your love, and bring the fire down.

Dig In

Dander in a dried-scalp sky,
and on the walk, white mold,
the rotting winter
landscape going stale.
In my stomach, scarcity
tightens a fist on the future.

They say somewhere beneath
the obvious there are snowdrops
and crocuses, gathering up
their skirts around their knees
and getting ready to spring,
little eager women sunning

themselves on the bare ground.
The animal in my skin grits
its teeth and sucks in hard
the muscle-slicing edge of air.
A wince, it’s snowing again —
dig in — the trees agree.

Meditation, Two

Exalted, you reside within the apple,
small student of the real that rests
enfolded in the skin of my dark
eyes. There are echoes of you here

within me, within my mind, resounding
music like a sensual fire of curves
and tongues suspended in airy blue.
Goddess, you are the Sun of my thoughts

sinking through the rasping wind
of my overturned breath. I imagine
your face, and see a Flame! Sweet
waters pour across the earth: you

are the river meeting the ocean
at the dawn horizon, golden serpents
rocking on the waves where your feet
have left ripples. You make all things

bright and full of being, Brigid,
you sing the resonance of awen
in my heart, your residence
unfurling in strands of silent creation.