RED RED RED

I was going through some old papers and I found this poem that I wrote 23 years ago. I changed it a bit although it reflects the woman that I was at 24 as well as the woman I am today.

I THINK that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer

Red Red Red

Intermingled,
our calloused hands weep.
Painfully, we wait for
time to erase the night
that we just endured.
We walk through
the dimly lit woods.

The dark envelopes us and
nature continues to plead
with her shadowed humor.
Internally, my ego convinces
me to walk until my heart
adjourns
and turns to leave
with the hazy moon.
One pair of human
hands continue
to turn counter clockwise.

Looking up to the kaleidoscope
of lost tree tops,
so much depends upon
the black shards of leaves.
I am a single one standing still,
so small as
our sapling love
fills my own heart with
a vivid dismay.

It is the small seeds of
love and hate.

THE TENTH PART

I tried to explain to my girls the concept of communication when I was their age. I told them that I would walk down the street to the drug store where the public pay phonebooth was to make a call to my girlfriend. I wanted privacy to talk about what ever was so important. You know...the land line in the kitchen did not stretch far enough away from curious ears. We laughed saying it was the 1980's cell phone. Maybe times have changed although I believe it is where you look to see how people communicate.

“Hello, hello. This is Romeo. Calling from a jackpot telephone.”
No Souvenirs by Melissa Etheridge

The Tenth Part

The metal accordion door closes; I’m breathing. I finger
the silver dime and drop it into the coin slot. Written directions
to make a call, our future connection is harder to read in the distance.

A melancholy dial tone, patience; she is truly there.
I hear the operator’s voice, sorry honey, a busy signal--
our human connection is twisted in the corded phone.

What once seemed a perfect balance, I hear, please try again.
Pay for who you talk to, leave behind regret and disappointment.
My past is trapped inside a phone booth of four transparent walls.

Standing solitary in a glass box of soaked emotion, phone
conversations carelessly coined and kissed, the plastic receiver is
feral in the ethereal night; the change clinks and time runs out.

WORDS FROM MY SOUL

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
Mohandas Gandhi

Words From My Soul

In the vast well of my heart,
tears fill arteries of
memories and upset.

In your sturdy way,
in weather tumultuous
you arrive and hold my heart.

I am beyond stirred
by the simple note
of your kind word,

they erupt inside me as
an effusion of emotions
swelling each stone.

You have helped me
forget and remember,
why my feet sink on this path,

and I feel your prayer fill me
and your blood lift me and
your heart nourish my unknowing,

as your tear of compassion
rolls down my cheek
and are absorbed in my heart.

PHI IS A MYSTERIOUS NUMBER

I came across this mannequin's face in the AIDS Thrift Store in Center City and the plugged in faces seemed to scream questions from their lips directly to my sense of poetry, hence the creation of art in a controversial way. I feel a poem coming on!

Never mix your women. Charles Jerningham

Phi is a Mysterious Number

Fighting for the front forum
the cracking open has started.
Just throw the fedora to the past
and find a glimpse into the
reflection of the multiple personalities
living inside each individual’s head.
Her heads, inside of heads,
slipping inside of heads, all demanding
a certain measure of face value.

She was wearing veneer glasses
yesterday,
propped onto a undiscerning nose. She was
seeing external faces with an internal tone.
Faces creeping up the catacomb of neural cords
patiently waiting for the front view--
hoarding faces, fighting faces,
sexual kitten, Marilyn Monroe.

Does she crave
the golden ratio of the face
as her Barbie pink vision
melts into June Cleaver, a witch
doctor, a cat fight,
a prostitute of position,
a sot smeared firewoman,
the old maid, Mother Teresa,
Amelia Earhart, Tokyo Rose,
a trophy wife, a calendar pin-up,
a butch, a femme, a lesbian,
a tomboy, lady luck, a virginal
bride with white lace draped
over her face, a genderless soldier
dying in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Choosing her own set of smoky eyes,
based on the dominant life she is living,
the facade of faces tenaciously battle
the many women that inhabit her existence.
Which one will be her mask to rule?
Which one is the average face
of the American woman?

YOU ARE CHERISHED

These faces belong to each of us as we are connected through the ribbons of time. And to each of my friends-- know we each belong to the other.

You Are Cherished

Inside my heart, there lives a place
ferocious as the ocean, loyal as the
land, gentle as endless oxygen, as
pure as a fragrant red rose blooming,
and there is where I know you as I

know inside of my soul;
I will be your roof in storms,
shoes for your bruised feet,
found breath under a turbulent sea,
and safety in the bones of ruins.

Inside my heart, you are my home.
For you and for me, simultaneously
balanced in the eternal worlds, connected
by invisible cords, faultless lips speak
no words, each word, trusted words to each.

I cherish you, as I know inside my heart,
I will be here for you and you for me.
We are sheltered on our spiritual path,
my breath flows over history to your lungs,
your blood inside the veins of my purpose.

ALMONDS IN THE ELEVATOR AT THE SEAVIEW INN

“Earthquakes move mountains. But so do imagination and ingenuity — when
matched with implementation."

Almonds in the Elevator at the Seaview Inn

We are where we are for a reason as I navigate,
traveling north up the coast from Virginia, August of 2011.
I cannot forget the dropped almonds in the elevator,
an odd touchstone of our journey as we left room 392.
We are where we are for a reason.

I push the round button reading star-1 until it glows white.
A tall man sharing our elevator stares into me,
eye to eye, (the first true elevator was invented in 1850.)
Side mirrors reflecting rippling pictures of our cab ride,
reliving an identical message, we are the same as ripples
in each layer of time. We all look down to the almonds,
a broken cluster of oily fruit, the same brown as the wood floor,
next to an inlay of a compass rose. We ride the dependable elevator,
which moves up and down between four historical floors in
a hotel established in 1914. I capture the 45 seconds
dive through the shaft, the suspension of our drop in
a shared pulley system in lieu of steps, we are all
locked in a conversation of the proper destination of an almond.
The bronzed doors open and quietly disappear into the pockets
of the lobby walls, perfectly fit layers. The man says,
”I will not forget the almonds in the elevator,” and we exit.

I won’t forget the concrete porch of Fred and Ethel’s
Lantern Light Tavern moving, magnitude 5.8, from the
shifting plates of our earth’s mantel, back and forth,
mirages of heat waves, a reverse faulting,
(the last quake in Virginia was in 1875,
leaving broken windows and fallen chimneys.)
The rippling cement is tricking the nature of reality;
our water glasses are trembling. Am I confused or
am I imagining as the hidden layers of the earth are colliding,
I think I am dying. I ask my daughter, “do you feel it?” I feel like

a lost ship deserted in a desert pining for its ocean, knowing
bone
dry
sand
is not my oxygen. It struck me,
the entire eastern shore is shifting, an earth quake, and
within 45 seconds the earth’s plates settle.
The ground is stable. Is it dependable?

Was the man who said he would not forget the almond on the elevator
wondering where the woman with the three children was while the earth trembled?
We are where we are for a reason.

DAUGHTER OF THE OCEAN

I found PEACE written on a wall in Philadelphia months ago and believe finding peace in the midst of chaos is truly for the one who can decipher it. In Daughter of the Ocean, I write of watching this elderly woman sleep in peace in an overly populated Starbucks and I ponder if she knows something we do not. She sleeps among the company of strangers is a defining line for her and how peace is somehow mixed into the air we breath or the visions our universe offers us.

Daughter of the Ocean

A year to the day in August, for the second time
I recognize an elderly Indian woman’s abode.
She is honored in an over-sized brown leather chair
at Starbucks on Ocean Drive, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Warm jeweled skin, silvery hair feathered
with black streaks pulled to a quiet coiled
bun, a straight cane propped beside her;
she sleeps among the company of strangers.

No hissing espresso maker, no release of steam,
no calling of orders touch her sense of peace.
The stillness is what she breaths in at the coffee
house, a silky blanket of noise in the midst of chaos.

She appears anesthetized as racing nerves surround her.
The eager retire in beds where she departs through a third eye.
A bed, lying prone, a husband and wife converse of
growing kids and lists of plans to mantle their time alone.

A bed obsolete to a place of love, a sanctuary where music,
high definition television, and internet infiltrate intimacy.
A bed shy to the relationship it holds, life’s trumpeting words
filling the empty space, lectures litigating long forgotten devotions.

The time passes with ripened understanding; the Indian woman
belongs in the coffee shop more than the tired relationship of
communication. She prays to a trillion stars, intently listening internally,
not contemplating opinions, her chest rhythmically rising and falling.

She meditate back through the culture of her mantra--
the elderly in loll, a husband in a bed of denial,
a wife frozen in missionary, a woman standing alone in society,
a naive girl who is beginning her lessons, the birth of her bequeath.

Today, a statuesque Indian goddess balances the notes of Vedas
against her recycled paper coffee cup, a circle with neither
start nor end, neither male nor female, an eternal peace. It is
what most seek-- what lies between the crust and core of being.

HER EMOTIONAL CAPACITY IS ZERO

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. Ursula K. Le Guin

Her Emotional Capacity is Zero

Breathing, she slips away into her dark,
into the place where she doesn’t feel,
rare colorful times flood the streets laughing, she
is walking; she thinks like the inside of a rock,
one could say that is her concrete history,
the silent heart spread on the earth.
Once, war used a rock as a weapon,
to build a fortress, to cause a lesion.
A rock turned into a tombstone marking
the beginning of an end to a person, and
lilies were placed on a grave to transcend death,
and a part of her died as she remembers her history.
A rock to her is the foundation of church,
the intimacy of being, the sacrifice of words,
the bond of a crystalline friendship, and core meaning.
She slips away to a place where
laughter is eroded, trust is the talc on a face,
where cries of ancient bricks are heard and
haunt her insides cursing her far away ashen eyes.
She slips away into the closing of today with an iron
burden, taking hundreds of hands to bury a story;
she slips away, she slips away.

HE PLAYED FOOTBALL ONCE, #76

The oddity of a football floating up to me as I ponder on the dock of the bay is a sign. I can't ignore the idea the universe is continuously sending clues for us to pay attention to directions, truths, choices, and messages from the spirits.

When each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.
The Alchemist

He Played Football Once, #76

Fate leads me to the dead-end
of Fern Street. I am drawn to the
morning sun as it glistens off the bay;
I climb the wood railing and sit.

Oddly, a football floats towards
me and remains as my buddy,
bobbing back and forth causing a tiny
wake inside me, whispering some lyrical music
docked on the lacing of its play.

Questions arrive
of tactics, of patience,
of teamwork, of challenge,
of water left under a bridge,
of death, of life, of forgiveness,
of change. The ripples leave one answer,
nothing remains the same.

I feel the sun on my shoulders,
my breath filled with summer salt,
the warmth comforts my heart;
I bow my head and thank Sunday
for blessing me with chance.

There is something solid about the
wood railing my hands grasp,
I imagine
the black undercurrent of life
which can leave a paralyzed pain,
the peace of seeing what was,
feeling what cannot be seen,
and the freedom of white seagull wings.

The ominous brown football still dances,
for what seems like hours, misplaced in water,
on the moving bay in front of me.
My father still lives in my veins, I internalize.
We say hello and exchange only what
the past can remember or a hand can hold.
I find patience for the next passing sign.

THE LONG SONG OF JULY

Counting on the balance of the tides, the moon, and the sun, we are blessed. Thank God for my July.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. T.S.Elliot

The Long Song of July

The sunrise gave me chills today;
the sun was kissing my face goodbye.
It’s Friday; I habitually pray.
It’s my last Friday in July.
Every 823 years,
my birthday is 8-23,
it is auspicious,
I believe. Life happens—
5 Fridays,
5 Saturdays,
5 Sundays in July.

My kids, flying kites,
jumping from pilings into the bay, back flips,
crabs biting tiny feet,
ankle bracelets,
beach combing collecting shells, or
dead horseshoe crabs named Mr. Shoe.
Dance parties turning zumba,
bike rides flying into adventures,
writing song lyrics, poetry, prose,
catching crabs, drinking beers,
eating lobsters and soft ice cream,
watching my 20th sunrise on Sunday with you.
Wave jumping, wave diving, boogie boarding,
belly laughing,
loving, oh so easy to love you,
formal dress equals bikini.
Ruby Jersey tomatoes and mac and cheese,
150’s exercise program, 2 minute plank,
showers outside in the rain,
sometimes under the stars;
how can I ever shower indoors?
Dolphins dancing, fish jumping
friends visiting,
sun setting, church bells ringing,
bong, bong, bong, I’ve so enjoyed the bells,
fine bottles of red wine,
sandy feet, sandy sheets,full moon,
gritty teeth, ocean owns salty hair, not a care,
front porch lounging, ocean breeze blowing.
I miss you with my body and soul.

THE BETTY CROCKER LIFE

I have been writing for the month of July at a beach house that is decorated in the original decor of the 50's. I could not help but think of the history that a kitchen table has seen, felt, and fed. Between swimming and cooking for my family, I wrote a poem for the past living in the present.

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title” Virginia Woolf

The Betty Crocker Life

On the margins,
written in #2 lead pencil
or blue ballpoint ink
cursive words form a second life
in The Big Red cook book. An icon
gifted from a mother to her wedded daughter
sometime in 1950 or was it '51? Notes
combined with cheery all-American recipes,
on the pages unfolds a family's history.

There was a baby boy born March of 1950.
The exact date of a son or a brother written
in the corner, a keystone in the arch
of freedom. Cloth diapers, next is war.

Kennedy was assassinated on 10/22,
a rainy Friday afternoon; there are
stains on the page for double pie crust.
Are they tear drops or fingertips of Crisco oil?
There are no faint hearts written upon
the burnished cook book paper.

The price of bread, the price of love,
the price of gas all noted on the column
where the meatloaf with mashed recipe is.
Lists of errands, phone numbers, dates
of deaths and births, measurements for
a vanilla cake with the exact baking time,
August 8th was the day the neighbor gave it.

What is hidden on the pages of a solitary
life? The history of the past, the mechanics
of two hands cooking in a kitchen,
momma’s words helping a soldier march
through the fields and one day he will go home
and on and on the words and numbers go,
and soon we will all go home.

White holidays and a questioning family,
the traditional brown gravy spills on embroidered
linen, mother’s wrinkled hand trembles and she stares
looking for responses to a thousand questions
hidden somewhere in the margins; a dictation
of her life mixed into misery’s crippled step
trying to make the basis for an old time recipe for
her family’s Sunday dinner in the 21 century.

SUN, SAND, AND MOON

Faith... Have faith in the dances that you cherish as the moments move on.

“All lovers live by longing, and endure; summon a vision and declare it pure”
Theodore Roethke

Sun, Sand, and Moon

I confess to the calling as I am awakened from my dreams,
our iridescent morning is tiptoeing to the ocean’s consistent edge.

The awaiting vivaciousness of the eastern burgeoning sun;
the calm and steadfastness of the western moon settling.

Both are breathing just beyond the reach of my fingertips,
a polar parallel of tangerine cerise and pale fairuza.

Teasing, distracting, solemnly forgiving, a full lotus closing just as
the silver piercing arrives, they don't realize that each is chasing the other.

Simultaneously, the untamed are face to face in each other’s sky,
sharing the same heavens, the revolving pearl and the sun’s arriving heart.

An aching love affair wrapped in a beautiful symmetry. The sun
asks the moon to press his white face upon their eclipsed lips and kiss.

She is saturating his opal mind with a heated drawling shine
until his fullness is weak and waning and falling back into darkness.

Two universes share the lapis sky for only a short time. Their
interlude, their burden of knowing the fate of the other will fade,

only trying to get closer to one another’s destiny, an endless attraction,
the clockwise orbit of their love will never allow them to unite.

Two lovers meet at sunrise for a dance upon the beach
only having to separate when the silent internal music ends.

The pound in my chest ceases momentarily consummating my faith.
Confessing to me, when this day is over, night will start again.

ODE TO MY BEACH

Ahhh... Summer vacation at the beach.

If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.
Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama

Ode to My Beach

I am watching the sun burst
through the nighttime blanket, pink and
sliver scales dancing over the ocean.

I am rising with the tides, days like blinks,
and study the constancy of ocean waves
moistening the rising auspicious heat.

I am digging my toes in the hot sand
and find later in the evening the cool
refined crystals feel like grains of silk.

I am walking in the summer rain,
holding my daughter's hands, and
we each feel and give the same peace.

I am swinging on the aged porch swing,
knowing how I have come home to
breath in the settled air of my life.

I am creating my future with words
and know it is not cloudy anymore
in the four chambers of my heart.

THE SPANISH BEE KEEPER AND ME

Like a tattoo forever on your flesh, connecting souls can leave the same mark. Each of us has our own way of remembering what our lives have blessed us with.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence. Jean Paul

Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Pablo Neruda

The Spanish Bee Keeper and Me

Yesterday we were crawling into a tent
under a blanket of heavy stars,
a dew soaked field and
the sounds of the night drumming
in our hearts, telling us
to pull each other closer,
to lock our breath,
to synchronize our heartbeats. In the heat,
me pretending he wasn't leaving,
he whispered that I was beautiful, and
my body is a map of my life. All in
a night we didn't want to end.

A kiss, an embrace and no promises--
only hopes and dreams and ink marks my
memories of the dusty Georgia road.
The wind of our motorcycle ride vibrating
another line of history across my flesh.
Our sensual dip in the sacred river of time,
a fire he started with a rock and a knife
to illuminate the beginning of our endless night.
I got a Spanish bee tattoo kissing my
shoulder. He is the only bee keeper
enduringly etched onto my heart.

The morning sun, the stolen night,
we said good-bye, but we meant
see you later on the island or
on the farm, or on the road.
I told him I’d miss him.
He told me he loved me.
Firmly planted
on his bike, he left the tattoo shop.
I watched him drive away with
one last kiss on my lips and
his angelic totem hovering over a red poppy.
Pain lingering on my artistic witness, I
felt a loss, a tenderness
I had forgotten I possessed all leaving
my heart sinking more than I imagined.
I ask, is anything permanent?
Nothing but besos y flores
spoken by a Spanish bee.

THE MOON'S BRIEF SHADOW

Life has given me many windows to look out of and there I contemplated my life. Ultimately I believe we all have a responsibility to try and make our lives worth living and worth remembering.

I don’t know what I can do, still I know I’ve got to try. –Pocahontas

The Moon’s Brief Shadow

She takes it as her
work to excuse the night right
when it is darkest before the
burgeoning sun enfolds the moon.
She has a choice, yet it is her limitation.
Shakespeare enters her thoughts--
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Staring out her
wood-framed window, she finds
her breath nourishing yet bereft.
She looks inside and thinks
in one death there is a new life.
It is her daily weakness
to understand her life’s strengths.

Her hair is looped around her ear.
The irises are pressed in her mind.
The smooth cream of her alto life
matches the sheen of her skin.
She is drawn to the garden and
walks through another doorway
flooded with the morning sun,
so much closer to the fresh air.

And she weaves her fingers together
and counts the clap boards of
the one wall of her view.
The four-sided silver shed knows
the weathered wood is from some
other time still standing firm and tall.
She never forgets the
mingling and learning of
the scars her soul holds.
A plank a year, and soon gray hair, she
measures how she has lived.

Together, she and the yellow heat stare
into her complicated soul,
warming her sweetness and vulnerabilities
many white winters have hidden.
Impulsively she takes her slip off
and lies in the morning sun,
feeling the dew of the green grass.

Life demands pulse, she thinks
mixed in her mind's quietude,
row after row, year after year;
constantly a tale that requires
a mirrored truth.

We are simply one in some way-
the mercies of many lives hidden.
And there in the yard of blades,
she becomes un-tethered
from the earth's illusions and
with her hands, writes
the words of her mouth.

THE REASURGENT EYE OF THE DOUBLE HULLED SHIP

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.
Ernest Dimnet

The Resurgent Eye of the Double Hulled Ship

Pensively, a thickness sits dormant,
rides motionless,
floats sea level, a silvery sheen
passing through decades,
latent through Presidents and
quiescent seas.
Seasons of war's ammunition filling
black-holes regurgitating
bright bands of tears,
thick oil spills.
A Surf Scoter suffers held
captive by blue rubber gloved hands
despondently washing away a
suffocating catastrophic tragedy.

With miles between, voices like lead are
all affected by one grinding misalignment.
She was just a child watching death.
And like the family craves order, the water
finds a systematic sensibility causing chaos
which cannot exist within.
Time after time there is perfection in a breath.

HEAVENLY TIGER LILYS

Where ever our fathers are let us say happy fathers day to them.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost

Heavenly Tiger Lilly

Is a monk’s ennui the
path from the cave
where one can
find enlightenment?

Or through the experience
of sifting through the soil
one’s calloused
feet have walked upon.

A cacophony of universes
settle into
an ingrained harmony
overshadowing the birth of
each piece of his omen.

Can we see into the
portentous rankle of
others and slowly
strip away the outside
escapism?

I am consumed
and enveloped
in my fate of our
crossing paths and

in my omen, I am
enlightened in the dark
and exposed in the
golden cup of a tiger lily.

NOT MY FIRST RODEO

My poem was inspired by the most beautifully written words of my dear friend Darla. She has etched her initials into our earth and hearts and continues to share her abundance with each of us. Serendipitously, the moon we all share was full last night and smiled on each of us.

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”
Ayn Rand

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived. Willa Cather

Not My First Rodeo

They called on Jan to harvest.
They called on me to help.
We called upon the skies to
give rain to our humus.
My windshield wipers push
the water from my view and
I turned down the dirt driveway,
splashing through puddles
towards the red farmhouse,
my body burning for something.

We sit on the porch, he and I.
He found bees producing honey
in need of a keeper.
He found a revolution
that he could be a part of.
I found an earth worth knowing.
I found a place I can call home.
We watch the rain fall in sheets,
and breath in the earth as
she releases her warm musk,
and we know her tears feed
the pregnant fields.
By 8 pm the skies
turn universally clear.

We quickly change into
our dirty farm clothes;
screen door slamming
on the way out.
Check list in hand,
we start harvesting,
racing against
the last of day.

In field 7, we
pull 15 lbs of golden beets
from the moist ground--
each tuber beautiful,
each destiny distinct.
A wicker basket on my hip,
my pants wet
from the rain soaked greens,
caressing my ankles. I
feel planted and ripe.

The light of sunset is coming
closer and closer
to departing for the night;
my basket is overflowing,
on to field 1.

My fingers grasp the top
of a head of green cabbage,
water droplets falling down
my rough palm.
The round body, full and firm,
and so much more than the seed
I remember
planting just months before.
I cradle it in my hands.

I look up at the moonlit sky,
memorizing the last strands of
orange and pink
barely visible above the tree-line.
I receive an overwhelming sensation
that everything is one.
Every step I’ve taken,
every breath I’ve exhaled,
each seed I've planted,
each birth I've witnessed
made peace in my state of bliss.

The falling dark ends our harvest and
we collapse into our porch chairs,
and raise our glasses in success,
in elation of truth and abundance.
Our eyes meet.
No toast uttered.

The stars start to peer out
from behind the departing storm clouds.
La luna is keeping us company;
our conversation lingers and slowly
begins to fade into the physical night.

His strong arms and baby-
soft skin under my fingers.
Our eyes, our bodies,
our spirits
connecting in every way
that our souls could dream.
The cool air caressing our skin
with the moon as our witness
leaving my heart as
full as la luna.

MY NEXT LIFE

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
Marcus Aurelius

Fascinated by the fate of our lives, I have to wonder who has charge of our destiny, which leads me to the Greek heritage of the Fates and their divine mission on the earth which also inspired my poem, My Next Life. I found Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis determines the length of the thread, and Atropos cuts the thread when the proper time has come for death.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. Khalil Gibran

My Next Life

When I close my eyes, I see you born into my tapestry.
Clotho has begun to spin the thread of my destiny.

When I smell your ivory skin, it is your perfume that
intoxicates me; the first creation of you controls me.

When natures wind blows the locks of my hair,
I feel the graze of your fingertips across my flesh.

I want to sketch your nude body and memorize
the curves, dividing the earth from the goddess.

Only seconds determine the confidence of my
devotion, as Lachesis measures our simple fate.

When the heat of my breath escapes my lungs,
it is the words of your heart whispering to me.

The taste of your time loses me in a storm of need—
blending us into a sheet of lightening enflaming the sky.

And in my devotion, I feel the white clouds on my back,
a woven allegory of jealousy’s want. My path is a

painting of truth which cannot be altered as Atropos
cuts my life from yours in the determined night.

PRECIPICE OF CHOICE

Is it our choice or is it someone elses that we take to our hearts? Do we take care of our own actions in the face of false action? These questions define our existence whether we make a decision or not.

In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Precipice of Choice

Waiting through the night at
the fire-company, anticipating
the alarm to sound, red fills the
thick night air somewhere.
The rationalists are sound asleep
in their single beds,
the alarmists just vacillate.
People are burning to death
through the soles of their feet,
stumbling with
no ambivalence, just defined by
what they crave.
Others find false action in
a white cloud of smoke
bellowing from the burnt pork.
A surrendering to life,
the people and the pig, and
the acquiescence of life.
The squandering of time,
the fire and the distance, and
then the reality to an instant.
Time has become the obstacle
to the addiction and the
question is the addiction.
It was a blatant set of morals
charred into an oasis of souls
all mortared into a stone wall.
This is where the mood
is going to change.

IT ONLY TAKES ONE TO KNOW

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.
Billie Holiday

It Only Takes One to Know

I wish I didn’t know
what it was like to kiss you.
To invite your lips
with my eyes and
my scent softly, gently.
Magically two
mouths join freely.

I wish I didn’t know
your lips as I know mine.
The softness of your
silent words, and
the individual
delicate lines of flesh
that cross my lips.
Timeless pursed prints
owned only by
your garnet lips.

I wish I didn’t know
your kiss which radiates life
from our breath, trembling in
between our heart beats,
pulling us across the verdant
meadows of spring.

I wish I didn’t know
our passionate kiss
which erupts
and crashes like a waterfall,
searching the unknown and slipping
back into a soft kiss.

I wish I didn’t know a kiss.
A forgiven kiss,
a kiss of infatuation,
a kiss of love,
a blessed kiss of birth,
a kiss filled with
a salty goodbye,
leaving me rudderless, as
our kiss is capable of
parting the seas.

THE QUIVERING FLIGHT

I feel the need to explore the inner working of nature and some how compare that idea to the inner workings of life. Life is a journey of a thousand miracles and I pray that I don't miss one. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? William Shakespeare may have said it best.

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
H. G. Wells

The Quivering Flight

An onion of boundaries,
an alluvial plane covering a heart,
dark leagues of an ocean,
a thousand petals of a rose
unfolding,

peeling, pounding,
submerging,
falling deeper into
the density of blood.

From air and nothingness,
a soul has plunged into life,
fine lines have been
born from salt.

Undressed beyond flesh,
aged as rock,
swathed in questions,
and a body emerges
from a primordial mix

of seeds and oceans
and unrolling songs.
A hummingbird flies
through veins of lies
siphoning truth and
turning sterility to love.

SCALES ON A PLAYGROUND

Life is a balance between holding on and letting go. I am constantly pondering which to do. To me it is similar to the childhood ride of the teeter totter. Life goes up and down no matter what your age.

There is a place like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger. –The Mad Hatter

Scales on the Playground

Come ride with me;
are we the same?
A balance of nature
some would say, it’s
like the moon is teasing
earth’s gravity.
Up and down,
up and down.

A child’s ride or
emotional scale?
It’s made of wood,
sometimes metal;
it’s a teeter totter.
Up and down,
up and down.

Rocket ships
and Tinkerbell,
pushing up
through the yellow
summer air, falling into
a blue magic world.
Up and down,
up and down,

and then a crashing jolt
and up again.
Keds create puffs of
dry brown dirt, bare legs
dangle, white
knuckles grip
the drivers handle
contemplating life and
down you go.

And up again, and
down again.
Is it all fair; capture
your companion.
With bent knees
you stare and laugh,
fake control and up you
go again.
Up and down,
here and gone.

LADIES AND....

Ladies and ladies rooms is all I will say--I know we have all felt this way. I will let my poem speak for itself.

I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.
Dorothy Parker

Ladies and…

I locked myself in a
pre-fabricated necessity where
lack of sealing exists;
I am peeing in the ladies
powder room and being a
bit voyeuristic.
I watch with one stalking eye
through the one eighth inch of
a crack, as I execute
my personal dealings, I
contemplate the acts that we
all are doing anonymously.

I observe a blond meticulously
putting on her berry lipstick;
the mirror reflects wrinkles
only she can see. I thought lines
on the face equaled experience.
I think she sees it differently.

A demure woman looks away
from the reflection in the mirror
as if she doesn't care and
lets the warm water and soap wash
her secrets away. She is not
a conversationalist in the all-
women’s hide-away.

The blonde's shiney lipstick is finished
and she turns for one more glance
checking on the tone of her ass.
I know
she thinks it is sagging
by her discriminating glance.

And then she hikes up her right cheek,
a natural ritual, a comforting dance and
she finishes with the push of the palm
into her stomach, smooths down her dress
and spins on her tip-toes no less,
and heads for the exit.

Does this make you thinner?
and any younger? Turn back the clocks of time?
I wonder. Or is it simply healthy for the self-esteem?
to block the effects of life.

I look for white squares of tissue from
the metal dispense to get my business
behind me and yet the ways of women
continue.

I cock my head lower and see
the demure hand washer mesmerized
by the final dance of
her counter partner.
She turns off the water and pulls out
too many paper towels,
she is lost somewhere in her trance.

She fumbles in her purse for
support and finds original Chapstick.
She leans on the counter, glamorously
and applies.
She pushes up her B cup breasts
and turns to check the rest.
She is startled by my fiddling,
and she starts speed walking
right out of there. I ask,
who can be normal?
in a place like this, with mirrors on
every wall.

Now I am alone, I flush and
slide the metal lock and open the door.
I admire the universal house of
four pink stalls in a row.
I head for the counter,
inspecting the splashy condition,
I do a little washing and wiping and then look into
the mirror.

I could use a little lipstick, maybe buy
a Victoria Secret push up, I know a part time
job at the gym as a spinning instructor would
do the trick and
all I can do is smile discreetly in the reflection
of the mirror at another woman who came through.

My internal monologue turns to many unanswered
questions, small talk that equals silence.
My sorority sister still acts like a stranger even
in our house of gossip.
I am giving it up. Leaving it to one of life’s
unsolved mysteries,
and head back to the party to discuss you.

THE COUNTESS WITH HER WHIP

Whether she, he, or beast, one notices a woman in a fine pair of heels. I wrote, The Countess with Her Whip, because when I slip my feet into a high, high pair of heels, I like the way it feels. I don't do it for YOU, I do it for me. Heels are one of the forgotten pleasures that says more than nice legs!

“You put high heels on and you change” - Manolo Blahnik

The Countess with Her Whip

I don’t wear high heels for YOU—
I choose to wear them to own my
balanced position on a three inch heel,
which is six inches combined. I am
suggesting my seductive gate,
allowing me to just stroll
right above your opinion.
Those heels YOU gaze at have
been following me
since Hellenic times.
I have been waiting, just
waiting, for my adorned foot to slip
into my soft leather shoe that
erects my attitude. It fosters my
female emancipation. It
demands I put on high, high heels.
And my feet slip in, snug and fit,
and I stand and I feel my calves
pump up with fertility and
my pointy heels dig in and I
can’t deny the phallic nature.

I don’t wear high heels for YOU.
I have on stilettos and I know my
heels are glancing up at my Achilles,
strongly cupping my calf and I know
YOU are looking at my shoes as you walk
behind me, and YOU are mesmerized
by the red soles glimmering.
Impervious to the slings and arrows,
words and accusations,
desires and images--
I don’t wear high heels for YOU,
darling, I wear
armored patent leather stilettos,
black stilettos that make my
aesthetics sleek and pleasing,
slender and toned, like
I am walking on a perfect quest
to own my powerful womanhood.

Well, okay...
perhaps fifty percent of me
might wear high heels for YOU.

WHAT LEADS YOU TO YOUR PATH ?

“I am my own woman.” Evita Perón

What Leads You to Your Path?

Pace,
a woman understands
her nature--
tracks of black and orange
mix between day and night.
A woman masters her stride.

Birth,
a woman puts all
questions to heart,
nurtures and protects
through to the moment
of balance.
It is a life of focused concern
which will not cease.

Truth,
a woman knows,
is theoretical,
yet her definition is concrete.
As a women, she forfeits
herself for what she
loves.

A woman says nothing;
she does not have to.

BETWEEN THE LINES

Lately, I have come across many stories of older people sharing or passing on a life time of love letters, which have been held dear and secret from their children or dear friends. A letter can hold a thousand words, express a thousand passions, or portray a thousand reasons to love in a single line. Have you saved a history of your loves in letters?

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. Jean-Jacques Rousseau”

Between the Lines

I find
our night sleeps
lightly, my one curled
body denies me comfort;
my hand wanders
over the soft curves
of my pillow case.

I find
a surprise sharing my bed,
close to my cheek.
I trace it with my fingertips,
a rectangular shape,
intentionally placed,
among my white bed sheets.

I find
your tender face
and remember
the warmth of your skin
as your gentle breath
once filled me.

The intimacy of four corners
of firm paper, us two
divided by
the questions of the world;
quotes of harmony fill
my veins and slip into yours.
The pearled moon and
I are sharing you;

my nervous hand slips inside
my white case,
skims over goose feathers
and knows where you rest,
each fold of you,
each delicate line of you.
I pull you to
my kissed lips, and then
clasp you to my chest,
my hands cradle your
anticipated
penned paper; I hesitate.

What if I dream of
a love letter written to
my heart?
I hold you there in the dark
and breathe in your
parchment scent.

Your words pressed against
my skin,
my beating poetry, your
paper and my flesh intertwined,
like ivy growing,
winding itself
around the vine
next to it.

What might your sly
words say to me?
Slowly as I lay with the
illuminating dark,
I open you, and
my eyes are owned
by your will.

“I want to be next to you;
I am next to you.”

ON THE WAY

Let the passion of your wings fill your lungs. Tracy Greenlee

"Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life"
— Pablo Neruda

On the Way

I cannot stop
the magnolia heat of
a Carolina morning; I
thirst for salt the sun craves--
your white velvet flower
opens for me, giving me
a droplet of sweet dew
leaving me with
aromatic honey that
fills the warm air.

I hear a fountain and
turn to see water
spraying over a statue
of violet bare breast,
crystalline confetti falling
onto a steamy afternoon,
my mysterious night lies
in the fate of the
coming dark.

I run into the
shade of your
sultry mountains,
the curving wet earth
filled with a cool
seduction underfoot,
tree bark touches
bare back leaving scratches
of crimson and love.

The wild play of shadows
palpates my pounding breath,
a landscape of you,
a time with secrets,
a glimmer of connection
allows me to continue
touching the tiny unashamed
flowers growing.

GRAVEYARDS AND AIRPLANES

I can still feel the smooth marble or the crumbling tomb stone under my youthful fingers as I ran through the ancient graveyard. I can remember looking into the vandalized dark boxes that once held the deceased, and thinking where did their bones go? Memories of our minds, some clear and timeless and others clouded like the night, seem to define the spaces of our existence.

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. ~Pierce Harris

Graveyards and Airplanes

A dense memory
of pure white clouds once was
drawn by blue crayola crayons
on construction paper.
Flying in and out of
of a girl’s fairytale life;

a worried hand with
a flesh colored band-aide
wrapped tightly around
her index finger knows
of life and death. She pretends
to know how to draw the 3 cotton ball
cumulous outside her Delta airplane
window.

On the ground,
memory plays in an old graveyard
behind her house.
Children
lying silently still on the granite box
tombs where weathered names
from the 1800’s were
replaced with their own
prone bodies. It was a game;
a grown-up game of life.

Like angels,
the clouds floated by,
a silver solitary airplane as their guide.
Her eyes the only movement known
to a young soul as she waited to be
found, found in peace.

HIBISCUS WATER

Non action is action. No decision is decision. Water seeks its level. It is in the simplicity of our acts that we see life with clarity. It is in nature that we can learn the truth.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. ~Henry David Thoreau

Hibiscus Water

Consistently,
arriving as a rippling river,
with a furrowed field near by,
a falling leaf whispers its descent
through the clear sapphire sky.

Hibiscus-colored water
touches a sturdy trunk
continuously curling underground.
“You will have to stand
as I continue to flow,”
the water intuitively knows.

The marrow of the trunk
is firmly grounded in its earth
to ponder and contemplate;
her burrowed roots creep and
drink the water’s life.

Sparrows of songs muse and
crimson fragrance fills the air,
caramel reed and moss stone
exhale and lay completely bare.

The gold of hibiscus water continues
its journey along the river's veins,
gracefully bending, and moving
around polished rock and deep caverns.

Drops of water fall back into place,
as a blue crane takes flight,
and the water knows like the bird
it is simply the flow of life.

THE SHOT ABOVE HIS LEFT EYE

Standing on my third floor almost ten years ago, when I was nine months pregnant with my third child, I questioned everything that I believed was filled with gravity.

When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,
There arises the recognition of ugliness.
When they all know the good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil. Lao-tzu

The Shot Above His Left Eye

The face of terror was shot in the head and
as each flashing memory oozed from his skull,
an anonymous American face is still dead.

“Obama got Osama” thundered through the crowd,
infused with life and then withdrawn.
On some level, people don’t know what to do.

Cars sit in long lines of traffic continuously honking--
at first in frustration, but eventually in celebration,
New York City, ground zero, ten years later.

The operation that killed Osama bin Laden was
designed to prove he was captured, dead or alive;
on some level, people don’t know what to do.

He was killed by U.S. forces in a mansion north
of Islamabad, Pakistan. An enormously significant
moment in the fight against al Qaeda terrorism.

The mastermind of the worst terrorist
attacks on American soil was killed.
On some level, people don’t know what to do.

On many levels, I don’t know what to do.

CENTURIES OF A GIRL'S DOLL

Locked inside the the imagination of a young girls mind, a doll comes to life with a name, and as that girl grows the doll becomes hollow once again. My grandmother gave me her porcelain doll which her father gave to her when she was a small child. Over the last hundred years this doll has touched the lives of four generations of women. My grandmother's doll, Elizabeth, is still just a little girl from Germany.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old. Billie Holiday

Centuries of a Girl's Doll

Blessed are her
porcelain bones
and veins made of string
and her black ringlet hair
held together with
rusty hairpins, her
cherry-parted lips,
a silent enigmatic smile,
sitting on the top
of an immaculately made bed;
her linen eyelet apron with
stained brown spots
collecting minutes of
loneliness, waiting
in perfect perfection
while locked behind
forgotten time.
She is forever just
a girl.

ATTRACTED TO ROYAL NECTAR

May I quote myself: Know who you are and there you will find yourself.

“Independence - is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes” Mark Twain

Attracted to Royal Nectar

In escalating silence, Madame was significantly bold,
waiting, waiting, obsessing,
on crimson heart beats and blossoming love.

Intended for permanence, her passion jets in, guided
by the wind and wraps her gossamer wings around a
hummingbird’s fluttering heart, leaving her

astounded.

Emerald feathers flush in solemn crucifixion,
her nature leads her, her wings of age define her,
and her hovering pain equals the weight of her tears.

Wings perfectly folded, two black pools stare, refraining
an urge to preen, and search for purple and yellow and
red nectar flowers, an undeniable urge to be her,

unfortunately.

Blue trails of wake crash into passions chest petrifying
the truth that secretly exists, a surprising vortex
of feelings like impressionistic paintings

suspended between the wood and the air
solidifying a hummingbird’s plea and un papillion’s
desires. The two question where their next sip of nectar lives.

THE TRACK OF THE CORNFIELD

The memories of childhood can sometimes flood into our conscious world and I ask myself, why? Why do all of the sudden we remember something we have not thought about in decades? Is it a lesson that has implanted itself in our minds? That we need for our futures? Does that make life an arranged journey? So many questions and I have come up with this one answer for me, so I can write poetry!

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”
Albert Einstein

The Tracks of the Cornfield

Mesmerizing cornfields
in Maryland,
open car windows,
we drove on
traffic free roads until rising
in the distance was a diner,
The Paper Moon Kitchen,
which shared the dry
over-farmed, forgotten earth--
the soft brutality of life.
I was a kid, 12 or so
years of precious life,
1 harvest or so after
my father’s death.

Through tall August grass,
the creamy brown
kind that tickles your legs
as you skip through it,
sat a deserted and dented
black freight train cart;
an insignificant tombstone
standing solitary in a
neighboring field.

Sitting at the square table,
blue checkered curtains,
the grownups talk in code.
The 5 of us are released with
legs in full throttle,
stinging blades of dried grass
slapping any bare flesh;
we approach the carcass
of forgotten locomotion,
leaving tears far behind us.

We descend upon our train cart
climbing inside, on top
like a congregation
of cawing crows.
We talked of trips to freedom as a
dry summer breeze came through
the broken bare windows;

I stare and pray for my freedom
as I imagine my leather luggage
stored in the outside compartment,
and how my train was moving
into my future
I asked the conductor,
“How long is this trip to somewhere?”
as I fixed my bonnet and
straightened my plaid skirt
while sitting on a dusty wood
floor of the shell of a cart.

The dry air moved through
a train that did not travel,
like the stillness of a
storming summer heat.
I see the reality of
the steal in a weathered train,
the cracking erosion of red paint
snippets of our lives,
home to times wrinkles,
a memory of a passing life.

The sun starts to set in rays of
burnt orange and caramelized yellow;
a mother’s call is carried by the wind.
We all climb back into the
paneled station wagon and leave.
Many see nothing but a train,
a myriad of images
with emotion stuck on them
and if you chose to ride your life for
someone else, you pass your own.

A HIDDEN MIRACLE

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,there they return again. Ecclesiastes 1:7

I love the way the world works whether it is the omnipotent spiritual nature or the earthly steadiness of life. I believe with each breath, we have the opportunity for change, with each step we have a choice to move forward, and with each life time the blessing to learn. Taking all of our experiences and blending them into a balance of holding on and letting go with a bit of prayer to aide us might be called life.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. Pablo Picasso

A Hidden Miracle

We pray as the used
amniotic world splashes to the floor,
shiny blue squares under foot,
a soul emerges from another Cosmos.
A blooming red bud,
rivers turned to blood,
a new born, the first growing breath,
a wrinkled chin pushes to heaven,
saying goodbye,
with every thought we pray.

And with every thought
we pray--
pray for the blend of gods,
the black spotted sky of birds,
green grasses growing out
of cracked cement in the ghetto,
tiny spiders spinning webs,
weaving patterns of our invisible soul,
our slow rotating earth communing
with your beating heart,
pounding steady inside creation,
reverberating inside the cowhide drum,
universal ribbons connecting our
prayer reeds rising in a wet marsh.
With every thought we pray.

We pray as a mother prays for purity
in life’s first bloom of birth;
silence enters, holy waters touch,
as she holds her own exhausted lungs,
and her tears blend into seas,
the salt of times many oceans.
A school of fish swim into
the dark underworld, alone.
We exist and then we are gone.
The perfection of life.
We pray and begin again.

FINGERS FALL ON KEYS AND THEN ON ME

Let it be said: I seek the muse and pray she is in love with me.-- Tracy Greenlee

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. -:-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fingers Fall on Keys and Then on Me

Long, bony fingers play sideways
pounding fear into white keys,
soft black keys speak seduction,
notes flowing mysteriously,
eerily different to me,
melodies pushing into me,
coaxing me to fix love.
It will break your heart, if you still have one

A wooden piano bench supports a
black cotton shirt, a second skin to
a composer’s curling shoulders,
slowly the piano player is
slipping into the metronome of self.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.

Your tune of truth, reversing rest,
your neck bows, lips part, time flows,
words ribbon, foot drums, eyes glazed,
and your fingers and back and soul
evolve into a broken love song.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.

You are possessed by the song;
you are solitary in the stone room.
Your solo spotlight is burning, rearranging
over and over again as your psyche plays.
You flip the music sheets like years,
you play rhythms to suit your moods.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.

And my Halcyon days sway in and out,
inside love and contemplation and still I wait,
until you try and hearken back to another time.
It will break your heart, if you still have one.
When you try and find me,
it will bring you heart, if you still want one.

THE WALKABOUT GENTLEMAN

Happy Birthday to my dear friend Linda and my new friend Chris.

Through our walkabouts in life, may we always find the answers to mysteries and love in friendships. May we find the one thing that brings us happiness and let it lead us on the unknown path to our truth. This poem is the description of a man seeking the mysteries in a life we may not all see. The life of a man.

“I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
Robert Frost

The Walkabout Gentleman

On the train, wet lips whisper seductively,
a muffled whistle is consumed by the wind.

Eyes watch crowds of barren trees standing
in winter woods, waiting for spring it seems.

The pristine hotel, “Good Evening Sir,” neutral
hallways slowly collide, pushing the gentleman

into time and memory. Boots hunger for the crisp
city streets, a red light shines, there is pause;

what does the gentleman take in? What does
he leave alone or contemplate? He is drawn to

a white sheer curtain in a second story window,
blue jazz, fighting, rituals, lovers, and stories.

It is his midnight walkabout luring him and
teaching him the intricacies of his fertile mind.

He turns down West 20th, a diner winks “Open”,
a movie of sorts called the secret life of a man.

It is a sporadic interruption from his daily life;
it is a customary walk of an aborigine’s heroic life.

A horn screams from a yellow taxi cab, a manhole
spits steam, a tall woman is wandering, he is on foot

alone. It is the walkabout he chooses to fade into,
the gripping songline of his need for experience.

Why do any of us go for a walkabout through an
unknown wilderness like it is our inner most home?

PARK BENCH

All my life I have had the fortunate habit of staring. I am fascinated by the way people interact, how they dress, what their mannerisms are, their eclectic personalities, and how intrinsically different and yet the same we all are. Do some staring today and see what you can learn about yourself and the person you are staring at.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. Flannery O'Connor

Park Bench

On a dedicated park bench
I watched a man just stare,
Staring into the air,
staring into colored leaves
memorizing something unseen,
staring around the barren branches,
staring into moving water,
where the fallen leaf once was
floating. He was staring.

Today I found my self
on a cement step staring.
Not at the trees or
their magnificent colored leaves,
not the brown brittle oak leaf
shaking like an aged hand
falling quietly to its end,
not at the creek that effortlessly
flows. I was staring.

I was staring inside myself
Watching my heart beat,
With my staring eyes open
feeling the coarse of my hair,
I was staring inside my being
Asking it for answers to questions
that I hoped age would answer.
I was staring at my tattered soul
wondering what went wrong
And what I think I found out is
we all stare.

I was staring like people I watched,
and realized we all have questions,
we all have sadness and loneliness,
or a broken heart that is bleeding
staring brings silence in solace,
sometimes tears running like rivers
or colors of unwanted choices or
a moment of discarded emptiness.
We all were sitting and staring
waiting for our answers.

DEMOLISHED HOME

The story starts at home. Even though the structure may not withstand the rigors of time, the energy of home is locked within our hearts, and that is where the story begins. The ghost of this Susquehanna house still lives inside my mind as someone's home every time I drive by.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost

Demolished Home

Last night,

I drove down Susquehanna
and your hazy road shivered,
as I recalled, where your lonely
dignity once stood proud.

Palpable white and silver stones piled
near, lingering echoes of crashing memories,
mortared phantom dust settling on
a disappearing silent home.

A child playing hopscotch on a
hot sidewalk,
ice-cream dripping, making patterns
of splintered star bursts,
red and yellow tulips,
cracking the green earth,
blessing your door step:
all vanishing in one day.

And in the moonlight,
searching the arc of your site,
a bony tree waves goodbye
and I bless your vacant
graveyard.

BLENDING

I have learned about the power that lives inside of me by the way the season change, by the way the world changes, and by the way I change. I know that power is a matter of my mind, a matter of my soul, and a matter of my strength. I trust a feeling of peace in my heart because it comes from honoring my womanhood.

Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water! Eleanor Roosevelt

Blending

Every morning, about this time,
a church resting about a mile from here,
rings their bells. A lawn of
apple trees, heavy with fruit,
bless the manicured grass.
Colliding pregnant clouds
mosaic the rich blue of the sky.

The church structured from
gray rectangular bricks,
planks of hard wood,
a black medieval door, a steeple
housing the flared dome of vertical music,
all equally rich in their tone,
know nothing is permanent.

When it's breezy, as it is this morning,
I can hear the echo of the bells,
a practiced toll
whispering your name in my body,
allowing me to believe in
the beauty of the universe.

I am drinking red wine in bed,
knowing the breeze this morning,
with you--
sharing the dance of church bells
feeling the damp changing air
warm, kind mottled earth,
visiting my square window.

Under the white sheets,
the downy-soft cream of feathers,
I watch you,
as you
slowly, as to not miss the silky bouquet
of swaying berries drawn to your lips, and
shimmering tendrils worship
your regal purple cheek bones,
laying in lassitude, I am
struck by being a woman.

TWO BODIES

Touch the intimate quietness of your heart and in that moment, find peace.

"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Two Bodies

Come lay with me
on mirrored sheets
of time,
cotton worn thin from weight and oil.
Come lay with me
and blend your body into
the warm core of mine,
come lay with me and
quiet the squalls
of screaming words.
Skin to skin,
two breaths,
nursing baby,
red grape into wine,
water soaking into earth,
a blanket stealing a chill—
come lay with me
and make me forget,
forget my troubles of the day.

THE SECRET FEMME OF PARIS

Through my research of Paris in the 1930's, I found the nocturnal pleasures of Paris luring me to want to learn more about it. A whole universe lived under the cover of darkness, a shower of violet sparks. Could the mysteries of another way of life be devoured simply by reading about it or does it have to be lived to truly understand it? Is it out of necessity or out of want?

“The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” Agnes De Mille

The Secret Femme of Paris

Is it night time yet, kiss curl?
devourer of the dark,
gray smoke spiraling,
scavenger doves
picking at the cobble
stone streets,
white breasts skimming
black tuxedos,
enchanting beguine.

A towering gas lamp
illuminates
a beehive of artists and
bohemians,
buzzing and proclaiming
Parisian mysteries--
dance halls and cafes,
blood-red lights
reigning Joan of Arc.

Flowing incense from far away,
surreal portraits,
cubism countries,
impressionistic policies,
loves’ debauchery,
poetic prophesies
of a frenzied city spinning
in a tornado of coquetry.

Is it morning yet, naiad ?
The naked silence of drunken bodies
mirrors the sumptuous
sacrifice to the Sapphic alter,
offering
a warm cayenne current
rippling to a slow
fidelity of affairs.