north task

Start with Spanish Moss, a generous clump.
This is your wand/feather fan. You’ll be glad to have it.

You know where to go. First and last step is listening.

As you enter, brush the foreheads of the moss-covered cousins as you pass them. Bow before entry, first at the door, then at what you know to be the sanctuary.

Bow to the stone people. There is a seat waiting for you. Take it.

Put the Spanish moss on top of your head. Not a peep from you.

You can’t still the voice in your head. It is making little assignments even now, or rehearsing speeches, or making up recipes, or witty poems—listen to everything but that.

Every cousin around you is calling its name in your ear. Every auntie is baking delights for you in the spent grass and rotting leaves beneath you.

Turn away from your own thinking. YOU have already thought 90% of this yesterday, and the day before. Turn, then, and let wind be your lover. Let it kiss every pore. Lean into the tree behind you—it knows all the secrets and then some.

Notice the mysteries of the scat by your foot. Shh. Quiet. There is something we have to tell you.

here’s the catch: this will save you, but only if you don’t expect it to. Sometimes a breath is just a breath. Sometimes it is as lonely as a siloh.

better than anything I finally made it to that door the door that was there all along the door that’s not even a door the door into the density ~ this door opens easily but getting to it is a whole other story It was as if there were leagues of vast nothingness to cross, but instead it was simply more than I could bear; a weight keeping me from going anywhere anchoring me from the inside, a weight both hallowed and unnameable Only to shift, this grey fierceness, and without warning cloaking something else, some other terrain where my life travels and must... taking hold like a fever, startling the viscera, lighting the pit of the stomach Something about it that begs for seeing into but also waves off any interest, too mild friendliness ~ it says, 'only speak to me if you can stand the most tender part of you becoming alight, awake, and awed in agitation' When that is so, the door opens ~ or dissolves ~ all on its own, the fervor calls out the very substance of its undoing, no show, no thanks, especially no trace leaving the unembellished, that, which is better than anything

September 30, 2010 9:03 PM

Heading back to bed on the equinox

With the light at my back,
slowly the black of your room
begins to take shape...
the curve of a curtain,
the slant of that lamp,
soft edge of your bed.

I wait, and watch, and wait,
as my midnight eyes adjust,
reluctant to rush to your side.
It's too soon for me to know
your apartment in the dark.

Then you give a start,
rolling over with a charming murmur.
"A glass of water," I explain,
though I know you're not awake.

Spilled drink, skinned shins,
broken bric-a-brac —
there's little to be gained from
stumbling about in the dark.
Yet isn't that what we've been doing?

We hold tight to one another in the night,
hand to hip, nose to nape,
knee tucked neatly inside knee.
But what do you really know of me,
a mystery perhaps as dangerous
as I appear, looming
in this Victorian doorway.

Yet it's you, tiny you,
that I see as a threat,
a sighing silhouette guilty
of inexplicable crime:
trust, unearned, falls asleep
on my chest week after week.

My clothes, my keys,
I could just leave...
yet there you sleep and dream and breathe
with me upon your threshold.
I wait, and watch, and wait.

And at last, yes, I step
carefully, consciously, into your room,
unsure of my footing, unsure of the way,
but continuing to seek our equilibrium.
Our days grow shorter, my dear,
the year grows dark —
will you meet me completely
in autumn and still
retain the faint outline of yourself?

this window, this ground, this being

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
the window that lives
in the flesh and
pulse of my
energy
is a
torus
of energy
that opens out
only after condensing
and tightening around the
pure narrow stream of expansive
isness carrying the touch that is awake
to itself beyond any frequency of identity
that can change or contort the very aliveness

that is that simply is that is that is that simply is

so tight that only that which is empty full empty
moves through a kind of feed zone where the
cognitive semblance of what is perceived
has only the breath of the breath as a
ride to its own ecstatic turning in
to itself and back again all in
the very same moment
as the torus itself,
the inner and
outer curve
of space
being
space
being
opening
and closing
outward inward
spreading narrowing
arching out concaving in
the delight of movement as itself
no other not needing any identity but
this augmentation of harmonic dissonance
freedom pure freedom clear of intention clear
choiceless such as beauty itself rises from and cries

this one this all open out condense in penetrate emerge

such that blooming dying birthing arriving surrenders
and tempers the form through this window into itself
sourcing itself feeding itself through and through
as through and through attenuating its very
nature back into itself as the essence
that it will once again arise from
returning to itself returning
as both the rising and
the falling tastes
the measure of
the other
as the
other
falls
against
the rise and
rises against the
fall of spread open
wings, wings which taper
as they lift touching air to space
space to air to alight only to fall again
to the ground of beingness, this ground here
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

equinox: aquarium

when the doorway becomes a gaping gulf
and i, upturned, go swimming down into the gully of
my life,
i swim past fish bellies
synchronously gliding,
my life an aquarium blue.

i don't know the names of the beings
whose arms sprinkle guidance daily—
i sense their immensity,
incomprehensible.

this aquarium, this room
seems to hold my world
but at the season's doorway,
i sense greater presence:
the expanse beyond
invisible glass
that contains, protects, constrains me.

perhaps the wheel of time—equinox and solstice—
marks out the equipoise of knowing this space and sensing beyond.

are these time's doorways into ocean?


Scooter Cascadia

Inaugural Prompt: Autumnal Equinox 2010 - A Doorway Into Balance

For this inaugural prompt of our creative time together, during this time of change to autumn, we are invited to write about balance: how is this time of year a doorway? Stand in a doorway to write the first words of your poem.

NASA's blue doorway