follow

follow the love,

go now with no

thought of consequences

follow the love

like the scent of baking bread

in a craggy wilderness

or music rising like dust

on the abandoned air in streets

emptied by war

follow the love

that points to you

among the multitudes and says,

“that’s the one I want!”

the compass handed down to you

is broken, an inheritance

of wandering and want

bury it in the sand and follow now

day and night to the edge of yourself—

then jump!

This Great Love is Enough

Enough.

Why leave your reaching lover in bed

to sit in the dust hitting rocks

with a sweaty hammer?

Why abandon this present palace

love has built for you to make

a nest in brambles?

What crimes do you imagine

you committed to deserve this

thirsty exile apart? 

Think. Open. Return. 

To Retrain an Egg

Of all the ways to avoid living, 

perfect discipline is the most admired.

                                  —James Richardson

When you apply force

to retrain an egg

that will not

sit up straight

in the carton—or, worse yet,

that delights in the altered states

of wobbly rolling

on the open counter,

freefall looming every second—

things end badly.

Life gone out.

Perfection fled.

But then,

how else will you

bring them to market

properly dressed for 

an orderly transaction?

How else will the consumer

get his money’s worth?

How will the unbroken horse

carry the general into battle?

The simple answer

is far from easy:

Not.

The Garment of Our Becoming

The sun is the eye of a needle

and the trailing day is a thread

through the heart of

my life and yours

so that each sunset draws us

into new closeness

a tighter weave than

we have known before

and the garment of our becoming

is worn in turns each night

while we sleep, by angels

longing to be us.

To See

To see new sky

gathered in the

mud-rimmed basket

where mama robin placed it

in the keeping of

burnished cliffs

much older than life

to see,

you’ve got to run the

gooseberry gauntlet,

a trial by

dancing daggers,

you’ve got to

trust your feet

to shifting talus

loyal to no one,

you’ve got to

put both hands on

the watching rock

and lean in

face to face,

far in,

one eye forward,

to see.

Looking at Snapshots on Mother's Day

Like this one—

fading family portrait, sixties style,

Mother, Father, Sister, Brother

in front of the fireplace.

Neil and Buzz had not yet proved

to the world that gravity,

the ultimate bully,

was not so tough after all.

That’s me, of course,

crew cut, cow lick, shirt tails tucked in,

a third grader’s leaning eagerness

to please.

But that smile is cut out and pasted

over a fact you’d never see

if you didn’t know

where to look.

That day, portrait day,

I had spent every eternal moment since dawn

tumbling down steep hills,

gravity’s newest plaything.

Freeze frame:

me pinned to my spinning bed,

the only thing left between my small body

and the dark center of the earth.

Next one:

cold porcelain hears my confession

of mortality, done to symbolic death

by viral marauders.

To see the point in speaking of such things

on a scrubbed and bright Mother’s Day,

like making a rude noise at a proper

Ladies Luncheon,

then look closely, just here:

See, my mother’s arm around my waist,

her hand placed gently across

my smoldering stomach

to say “I am here, I am here.”

It’s a detail in the snapshot that is

easy to miss, unless you

know where to look.

Grace in the Grass

Stand here beside me now

where the trail slides between

mountain and creek.

Close your eyes and please

tell me the difference

between the sound of

water tripping on stones

to our left, melted snow

trying out new feet,

and the sound of 

Bristlecone Pines

up the hillside on our right,

combing tangles from

the toddling spring wind

as it passes.

Any ideas?

If you’d like an 

even bigger challenge,

teach me the difference

between all of this and

God’s sweet voice,

the sound of grace

rolling in the grass,

purring.

not brand new

The man at the 

hardware store 

tells me,

brand new, 

the thing I need

will cost an amount

greater than 

the smudged sum

in my checkbook,

but I live in

Machine World

with rules I

cannot ignore,

to wit: disrepair 

is not an option,

which is why

today I trace

the topography

in this junkyard,

and follow an

outcropping of

consumer sediment

which the woman

in the shack by the gate

told me might contain

the fossil I seek –

not brand new—

it’s a sad stratigraphy

of discarded dreams

and relic prosperity,

mounded moraine

deposited here by

the endless freeze

and thaw gripping

the material world:

a window sill

air conditioner

stripped of copper,

an assortment of hub caps

made for cars long ago

thrown into the lake of fire,

a Maytag washer

rusting behind the

wizard’s curtain,

and a hundred other things

I hold into sunlight

at every possible angle

before tossing them back

to finish their journey

to the sea

without me.

Prayer Beads

The snow on the ground

is crusted and hard.

The deer mouse leaves

no track on the

fossilized remains of

winter in retreat.

It is spring,

and I move

along a dark archipelago

of emerging earth,

floating islands 

in a white sea,

strung together

like prayer beads

in praise of fire and 

the returning sun.

Ice melts.

Sky blue deepens.

The wheel turns and

then seed factories

hire back the local spirits

furloughed in the

depths of December.

I step carefully

to protect the hope

pushing upward

on my feet.