-for rg-

A thousand suns have set in me,
a thousand birds drawn
by the deep impressions of hands
pressing earth; downward dog, to cobra,
handstand, staff position three breaths,
press back again into child’s pose,
the maps I used to find aviation
against you.

This river is wide.
The rivers, and thousands
of copper pennies thrown into ponds,
and the deep jade green forests
in the northwest,
the jade green hope,
I had to cross
to bear you.

The way it turns over
what the living love
into the silences
of sand.

I remove my steel bangles,
my tibetan ring, my jeweled
belly stone.

I remove the kohl from my eyes,
the red ruby poem lips,

I remove the gold from
the center of my forehead.

This is how my king requested me
and I request him.

A branch of cherry flowers binds
earth to what is beneath
the earth, that which can withstand
gravity and still bear the heaving
bloom.

What is it in me that crosses
this world ocean?

I shed words written
across quiet landscapes
only you and I have understood.

This poem reflects the nature
of how we feel. This crossword.
The unlinking of verse.

I fought for you.

I landed you.

We nuzzled deep into the budding earth.

We were hopeful

and we loved.

The earth takes us back.
The earth, the holy breath of earth,
takes me back.

In breathing thus:
I return from the underworld
minted, not holy, with the dirt
it takes to make new
flowers.

We wake from a long sleep.

Our feet still wet with dew drawn
by thick summer grasses, this art
of knowing, distilled,
constellated on the map
by which we find ourselves
connected.

Is this the unified field?

Our faces rubbed with the milk
of moons, hands together
white as wishbones, white
as the unpublished stillness
of night.

In the gold temple, they will continue
to bow through darkness.

You and I will see each other clear as
water on leaves.

Is this what they call the golden mean?
The alchemy of the philosopher’s stone?

Thoughts so big don’t make any sense.

We woke from a dream
because we wanted
to know what it was like to be real.

In memorandum:
a thousand lilac flowers
tremble, late summer, calling wolf,
call home.

Wet winds thrush through,
our hands and feet, collecting
river water, so cold,
is this the song,
the gods play lutes for?

And we were lost. Sound
so loud, the crashing of the waves,
king of the wavering ships,
king of the lighthouse, blinking.

Our faces pressed into the copper
of coins spent in decadent times,
when Rome was garlanded
by red flowers so rich
we couldn’t say their names.

And crowned, we are,
weeks later, the dust flowers,
the dusty hand laid on hand,
comma, apostrophe, end line,
break.

Water will only take shape
of the dream cup you place it in.

We swim like warrior fish,
our black inky capes
dazzling water,
it’s not the yes,
in saying it.

How we travel dark roads,
looking for windows where there are candles lit,
for the ink black doorway to open.

Sitting across from you, across the table
set with ivory, this flower, I picked for you,
a notebook, pen ready to leak

words as black as the night.

It’s not the yes, in saying it.

It’s not the black I write with to compose
the warrior fish.

It’s not the nodding and kneeling down
to the hymnal in agreement with god-

where the piano finds voice is inside
this home where we sit, you and I,
gazing the way our parents did,
it’s not that we would find
the meaning in
the breaking of bread.

It’s the dreaming in the dark gulch,
the calling forth,
our wet inky insides,
floating ever so quietly across it;

the sounds of the nightbirds fold themselves
beneath the heave and pull of night.

The sound of ink spreading it’s dark wings
beneath water:

we are trying to be strong.

We are trying to find the best way out.

(for rumi, my brave companion of the road)

I stop like this every day,
as the sun dips her hands
in it, this blue over mountains,

this blue over water. It’s like this
every day, the way you hold on
to it, the way you love it, is like
this small bird resting on an
apple branch outside my window,
dazzled like I am, by the quality of light,
rushing over it’s green wings,
rushing over it’s small heart,

This small bird dazzled
like I am, noting how brave it is
as it rushes over everything
to make it light.

You weren’t afraid were you?
You did such a good job making
everyone smile.

You know, I loved you as much then,
as I do now, and fold this
small pleasure inside of a box,
to find later, to look at later and remember,

as blue falls over the blue mountains,
as blue in my summer dress
changes with ever so lovely
your white passing clouds.

If you breathe in, and lift your right leg up,

foot resting on your inner thigh, knee pulled right

perpendicular to the earth,

and balance on the left;

if you raise your hands in prayer

and take them to the heart;

if you breathe deep, as if

going beneath sea water,

if you, bow your forehead down like the willow,

if you, like the dogwood,

are brash and bawdy in bloom,

if you, are heavy with the salty and sticky

syrup of the sandal tree,

would you give birth to it:

and exhale this thousand and one suns and moons,

your mouth a temple, your body the branches and silvery bark,

is it the sun that moves you,

or is it you who moves the sun?

draft one

We grew up.

Sleight of hand would make us
the imagined, the polaroid
of me laying side by side
with you, water logged.

Ceremony of smoke burned
and wished on. I was afraid
to breathe.

Ceremony of this yoke of
union. I did not dream of
leaving you alone.

It threaded me. Through the molasses
night. The water beating down.

Dead sail laid cross the shore,
so pretty now

and moon, it was you who cut
me, this gash of kindness,

unexpected downpour, I could
not describe it perfectly

and so I wept. Have you ever wept
because you were so happy?

It found you forsaken of bread
for birds, or things you had hoped
would be yours by now,

ask for nothing.

But trinkets you will wear around your neck
to remember.

To forgive yourself for being hungry,
and having bread,
and not sharing it with the hunger.

We’re driving on a backroad,
somewhere upstate, late night.
You were telling me the story
of a ghost of an old woman,
who appeared to travellers
on nights just like this.

We stop the car, waiting,
heads of magnolia bowing
nearby, heavy with spring:

we snap photos. I don’t remember
who it was, who was standing there
beside me then, who I was writing
so many poems to, calling you by name.
I don’t remember now,
the face, the songs playing on the radio,
how old we were, or why-

Does it matter how the memory came about?

Should the playwright choose to use
sense-memory to captivate her audience?

Is it a better way to help the audience
understand the memory of how it feels?

I don’t remember who it was who placed their hand
on my back and told me, no, this wouldn’t be the one,
no, this wouldn’t be the place, the memory to take
with you, but the warmth of his hand on my back,
and how it held me, the smell of those white flowers
giving in:

earlier, clementines sat on a wooden table,
ripe, the peel loosening from fruit.

We will half these. We will eat in silence,
admire the necklaces of birds trailing around
the necks of trees trying to find rest.
We will barely touch hands
as the sun sets.

I think it’s the space in between
that makes an artifact
so memorable not the memory
of the artifact itself.

after reading a headline about a murderer found, and then bumping into her family member over a cash counter buying coffee

It’s a haunting: how undecided one feels
about snow. Haunting how it
covers your shoulders and erases
lines between things.

So I am quiet as quiet does, silent with it
as silent does, while the birds come in flocks
mid-day, and I don’t have a camera to photograph,
just now, how beautiful it is.

It breaks my heart every day.

Someone pulls the trigger,
and gets written up in headlines
by the people who did not know her
the way her daughter did. But yet,
she killed a woman at midnight.
no one expected it would come from her.
Violence beyond what violence understands.

Does it come to us in neon?
Signs we have to design
to stop us late in the night
when we are walking alone with it-
this: lack of faith that requires
electricity. That requires some kind of
god to say…

Who writes the roadmap, of how it’s supposed to be,
how all of it makes sense, in the presence
of snowfall:

Is it silence and burials in silence? Things we
cannot take with us in death. Who will
tell the truth in the end?

And what about the love that carries us?

Is it just in, hearing the story, that stops you
on the roadside, to take note of it, to feel
sadness in, I wish my mother had understood me more,
or I wish someone was there to help me when I
pulled the trigger, I can’t believe I bought coffee and couldn’t
console the woman on line who said, I knew her, she’s my niece.
I have to fight to save her daughter.

And somehow, walking away with it, days later to say,

But I didn’t know her I’m so sorry, I…

I wish she had found a god, and

to say, I wish I had it: some kind of answer of token in:

the world offers it all to us: in snow.

in the dark, winter glossy,
tempting the silver on trees,
writing white on white,
disappearing, this ink:

what makes flowers bloom
on my grandmother’s hands,

she’d be proud of me, today.

And the pinprick of my manhattan,
and the way the tide of it,
rushes over you,

And the birds, line up when I sleep,
and I tumble and turn into them,
their glossy wings remind me it’s home.

Iris flowers on the roadside, and the
pepper wings of crows as they lift,
the mountain I curve into, late fall,
the swish of leaves in wind, I wished
I had showed you then, how beautiful,
all of it could be.