January

Thinking about it, I
tend to sprinkle

seeds, gardening weeding, 

writing cooking and all the 

other ways of trying to leave
something of

me behind, so that I am part of the

past that is to come.

I shake a couple of cookery-covered 

fingers’ bits of flour,
spice, onto the floor, 

rubbing my hands together

anticipating the relish of spring’s dirt, 

coming soon, recalling how I 

squish lupine and peony pods for later

planting, trying to tell about all of this 

rich messiness in the words
stored up in memory, while 

trying to figure out the hardiness 

to brim the coming storms.

I may never do all the things I

said I’d do, may never tick 

some certain devilments 

off the master list

off the list

but I can try like bloody hell.

Now night time signals that it 

settles in new ways, 

they’re vibrant,

those interstitials

and along the paisley of

the way the world looks to me

there is latitude for new

imaginings at every sinew I can 

think about, my own

Our own

just the wilding

all of it, our own, for us

looking at the moon out there tonight

it seems we are expecting storm, but 

I say that we’ve been in it
and it speaks to us 

tho all it asks is that
we stay the course 

Hinge

I get up to let the dog out
And a feeling of balance and
Insight just settles for
A brief moment and my
Body lifts away from terra firma,
Snow-covered and slippery,
As I watch some snowflakes
Sift down in the lumens of the
Porch light
Pinwheeling, slow and lovely,
And I turn back into space lit
By candles, waiting for him to
Wake from a rough day, each
Brand new, and
We go on.

An old composition last night

So I have need of

Darkness and the wind, it

Comes up, and

At first I want

To not like it,

I ask or 

Rather wonder

If I’m looking in all the wrong

Interstitials 

Being, thinking

Never to be young or old,

Just discard the context, what’s 

Important is that 

I devise solutions, the work-arounds to the 

Demands of crisis

And the more I go

Into those worlds, the more 

I seem to fly,

Noting that while 

My feet are on terra firma,

Balanced and so forth, 

I tip as I reach into determination, up 

To and in to some unfamiliar places 

Truest to say, all I’ve thought about

For some weeks now is light,

And I’ve hacked down trees,

Run from forest, gasped at those 

Beautiful sentries crowding out the sky.

I am looking for the light, but 

My prairie senses

About all of this mean

Absolutely nothing, 

Because if I can’t find the light,

That right light,

No opening spaces matter. 

I suppose it’s time to remove

The soft-needled, unadorned 

Christmas evergreen, hosting strings

Of small white lights, that’s all, so

Time to take it 

To the newly-building berm between

Our place and Bobby’s fields,

A way to signal ourselves into this earth, 

Compost into whatever comes and 

Likely as not in spring 

Bobby’s fields will continue to bloom

In long western light, the one 

Beginning as a bathing sun

Waking me this last morning

I was asleep and far away in to

The death of a Grand

Mother

As I turned to settle,

Unearthly light, pink crimson blinding

Sunrise glowing light

Burned up from Cayuga on my east, and 

Slipped along, upgrading from the 

Water’s lake-banks to the fields, then 

Slipping as the morning glazed

Old fascia windows.

It lasted only seconds

All things jumble now

And I sleep and move,

According

To the

Light, and finding 

That without the dark,

Nothing means one thing. 

Then wind. 

Steadying into New Year

The weeping and fear 

Dissipate, 

And the tethers of 

My own life

Grow shorter, longer, shortening, 

In some concert with what is, and 

I think to myself that  

In this life 

Crisis hits hard as a boxer

In the ring, 

I see, though I might not wish to, that 

I am in a long-haul fight towards 

Unknown and 

My mojo hammers on me, 

Buck up, you. 

T told me, in an elemental

Wisdom, that P must be 

Who he is, and that filled my heart,

Essence of passage and struggle,

Real as stars, and there was clarity

And then, like a selfish dreamer,

The light of this new year and my

Impulses woke me

And I said to myself, 

In angst and near-delirium 

You are who you are as well, woman,

You want the fire, you want the heat, and 

You too want the

Light