every question

only north facing shadow pockets still cradle snow now
hope's eager trembling made flesh
looks like daffodils plump emerald leaves
only 2 inches high when it snowed again
and again
now at 4 inches they have decided to make a run for it
their elongated swelling explains how
crumpled yellow satin, bunched and morphing,
is gathering everything it has to fling itself
(how opening is like a leap and a freefall)
and uncurl into this decidedly uncertain world.
it is the answer, the same answer everywhere
to almost every question i ask.
the river, slamming our april fools snow down into the valley,
agrees.
guttural cooing to and fro,
the tree hidden bard owls repeat it.
teenagers strut in sudden april tee shirts,
they know too.
spring hopes eternal.
and the world answers every question i pose
straight from the senses of babes
now now now now now.

a few haikus revealing self

this moment right now
is all i really know well
so please don't miss it.

*****************
hardscrabble farm kid
my blood runs thick with forests
that never get felled.

*****************
song of me wild flung
also soft in the shower
even mice can hear.

valentine sugar

stepping out under the sky
on the morning of loves noticing
(as if only this day is)
out of nowhere from winter's den
the sun is a warming stream
of valentine gold, slathered torrid
all over this banquet of snow.

last night
a team of only ten degrees cracked their wind whip
now my front door is a narnian wardrobe
i step through
immediately too hot in my jacket,
ratcheted to stillness two strides out the door -
listen....
the hunkered ice beasts
two months worth of stubborn
and tearing the snug off the roof,
are trinkling and lithe,
dripping songs into the gutter
which my ears barely believe
orpheus' xylophone ballad
sound balm of liquid water moving
through such long white expanse of ice
almost as heady
as the newly arrived mud patch,
two palms worth of wet earth
smelling like everything it is possible to miss.

the maple trees stretch and pulse
their sweet antifreeze jostling up
pushing last night's dream skinward
(i walked through all our woods touching trees
each of them with holes of fountaining sap)
so today is the obvious morning
to tip tap the old metal spouts
just like generations
of bright tired new england farmers
sliding on sled runners behind heaving horses
to bring that sugared blood home.

let's seize this february thaw moment
and boil the ice right out of it
until all that is left is a jar of simple riches.
we know
the fierce fight of february will return
but for a moment, agape thawed the world
and i have the candied proof.

this new burrow is surprise laden -

discoveries by the hour.

the floor creaks here especially

and look at this very small key

left in the back corner of a closet.

we are unfurling each other,

this old house and i.

today i noticed

the sun reaches the bony winter lilac by mid afternoon

before ducking behind the neighbors barn,

glowing it's strong ridgeline an even hotter red.

we are humbly unpacking our hearts into this place,

invigorated and undone.

i find my grandmother's script in front pages of my books

and turn to a dangling tremble -

we pull gut memories from cardboard boxes

hoping we are enough,

unpacking casually as if everything were new or normal

but we know it's not, we know everything is old

and goes backward as much as forth.

i wish i had portraits to hang

of every person who has called this home

since some wide hands in 1850 visioned and made it,

or a long lilt of voices recorded

each of them stating their name and something that

they ever so love.

now

checking in one last time on the night,

standing with the dogs on our 3 foot pack of snow

in -5 degree crisp and under such startling whirl of starfire

serenaded by a yip howl chorus of coyotes,

i imagine what plants will find us

bursting from every nook around the house

when the snow pack finally melts,

floods the basement and moves on,

bright coded messages sent

from decades hence.

a sharp remembering

I.
you don't have to teach me
i said
once two hands are on,
and my fingers close around
the scuffed, oil honed snath
curving
into angled reaping lance
i am gone, can't hear you anyway

II.
in the morning we are quiet as harvest begins
gruff greetings as each arrives
animals provisioned, cow milked
get ready for a long day now
that the sunrise has boiled over
from all that madness
into a bend of pure blue,
and the dew has all returned to heaven.

now even the birds have begun
attending to everyday chores.

check your blade for sharp up against the sun
any dull bit, too wide to splice light,
will glint and sparkle and needs attending.
your back stays straight, arms as well
arc your torso a stiff hip twist
follow the elliptic side to side
with every full swing
as if your pelvis were the earth.

III.
i go in and out of believing in human past lives,
sometimes ancient antiquity
is tirelessly thronging with my people,
my blood kinned to so many of history's helices,
that i rest confidently cradled
in the long learning journey i ride.

the rest of the time it is obvious
that mostly i have been dirt, tree limbs, stones.
and that is that, beautifully.

until i pick up a scythe. or a sickle.
and then god plucks me,
the ground cracks and swallows me
and with instantaneous precision
drops me directly onto a sweat painted field
into the metered beat of swinging tools
the whole farm full out to help.
metal flying close to the ground
without knocking rocks
grain sundered into swaths
braced to be banded
and stacked in stooks.

i am content here
as regular as breathing
as familiar as the smell of my bed
reaping by hand
the wedded cells of sky earth and water
united in biological matrimony
a million times over
in each golden stalk, each budded head of wheat
that sways in the rosy acreage
as one breathing thing
which we have come to bow, fell, level
and lay down to dry
for a snowy night's worth of bread.

rush of air

you take it for granted,
just a regular sweet motion,
waves lapping on a lakeshore
aura light blue, you don't even notice.

until there is a jagged tear
or the timing goes all wrong,
breath too slow, too quick
startling the birds from the trees.

like if you lose your pregnancy
in an 8 hour rush of blood
all by yourself on a long road trip
soaking through five pairs of pants,
pooling the seat into a red lagoon of despair
and your air comes in a panicked rush inoutinoutinout
trembling all your appendages for lack of oxygen,
transforming everything into the wrong world of crimson.
but there is nowhere to stop -
you can only
slow your lungs into the draft of a warrior,
and drive.

breath is the umbilical to spirit they say,
which is how we know
that your body is part of every god
since breath is umbilical also
to your very earthly life.

best to notice it
while everything is right in the world.

waiting

anticipation's letter came right on time
vaulted me sideways
clickety clack track wise
into a hurried suitcase jumble,
don't even know what is in it
(all the wrong clothes, a smooth red stone,
two napkin poems and a wind's worth of autumn leaves)
cancel everything
and off to the station
to wait
for a whir of metal to wild me away.

now paused,
i am jetsam on a leaping wave, forth and back
between a nimble rise into
the nectarine taste fuzz on her almost cheek
and the visceral return clunk
to this echoing room, someone's cigarette dank jacket,
the blue news hum stare of wayward strangers.
but, wait for it....
another minute and gone again,
lifted all the way to cirrus clouds -
on a wing of future touch
belly butterflies fly in formation,
eagerness drinking deep
of this
train station limbo
between very right here
and oh so soon.

snow angels

it always begins with place now
the soft light of morning through the steam of my tea
or how whirling flings of a hundred starlings
undulate as one being, lifting from a sugar maple
flashing a dark breaker of wings against autumn's crimson,
both particle and wave.

looking backwards it is comical and horrifying
how it always began with me then
usually the middle and the end as well.
in particular there was that shout of a poem
four long columns on purple paper
asserting in the first line 'i am an amazon!'
like a raucous caricature of what i hoped to become
which i could not yet embody with quiet elegance.

i proudly photocopied that piece
and stomped around town taping it up anonymously
hoping to pique the curiosity of the world,
quite oblivious to the wind dried salt on her seaswim hair
or how the ocean crashing
was as loud as anything on the street
if you listened with the right frequency.

embarrassment eases into relief
that i have grown more into the fabric of things,
am on the inside looking into, pointing out
rather than coaxing eyes to look my way.
now it is all about
the bold silver of jupiter playing consort to the moon
or how the glinting red efts come sinuous walking
suddenly everywhere after the rains come.

i can just say thank you to that 20 year old self
for shaking the snow globe reeling
so that it could all come gently to a blanketing rest
and pile up to insulate the house of me.

so that now i can crunch out in the full moon winter
crying out in wonder
at the sparkling white bed of mystery
laid out for our angel wings.

today, i am curled a logarithmic spiral

sinking towards my interior

pulling memories, dreamings, a few regrets,

a small hurricane, some watermelon seeds

and a model of the expanding universe

(made from 3 jillion smears of silver frosting)

into my garden of rebirth,

cultivating my soil on low hum speed.

i am not bright, not emanating

until you come by, splashing me with your whir of light

grinning me out of my private depths

with that cherry wide glitter of love

until my nautilus revs like a motorbike

and i start giving off a gentle shimmer,

holy union of my core smolder and your winged gloss.

they say this is the nature of starbirth

how clouds of everything ever possible

hang in dark whirls,

quietly generating all that gods will ever claim

unseen

until you look with the right wavelength,

and see their coreshine scatters the blaze of nearby stars

until you see how noticing

makes all the difference.

all the summer’s drought of rain

slants down now in autumn sheaves

crashing off umbrella edges,

transforming this huge window to a vertical pool.

having been around and around the world,

this water is now temporarily destined

for boston harbor’s chilly swash

before lifting off again.

i move in this city as a stranger, gawking

like i have been transported to a movie set,

the people, buildings, cars half real, half roger rabbit.

jaw slack, it comes inside me

rapid fire sense-landscape tumbling, ever new

even though i still don’t really believe in it,

still certain i am walking in toon town.

it helps when i see it’s creature-ness lumbering,

transportation of nourishment down asphalt arteries

thrum of city breathing in breathing out

we are just organelles that wear raincoats

vital little energy generators.

and, rushing off to do our jobs, help this animal live.

the dark sodden evening lights up with

golden squares stacked in stories

behind which people move --

mystery of a red sweatshirt flash goes by,

now some people are eating dinner,

here somebody plays a trumpet that i can’t hear.

the roiling life of this city, and the key to it’s mad magic,

is in tiny secret motions of cellular beings

playing out behind infinite window stages.

i can’t tell if i long to unravel them all

or whether the greater joy

is to marvel, revel

in the pregnancy of collective veiled mystery.

i am a visitor here, but everywhere is the same –

our tiny flashes combine into a great coordinated light.

we live protected if we are lucky,

wrapped snug in some cytoplasm or other,

looking out at the rain.