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 

Moving Through This

I was thinking about lavender 

How depending on the light

It deepens violet 

Into fields where I have been 

But often can’t

Quite adequately recall, 

The pictures in my mind’s eye bracing

Or is it bracketing  

One grove after another, 

One grove into another, 

Other times the color shifting 

Subtle as it 

Fades, as it

Pulls my eye to 

Horizon. 

Let what seeks you find you 

I think about that 

I begin to understand it.

Let all seeking find you;  

Paths with newness 

Never contemplated, 

Pushed away, haze obscuring 

Such connections always 

Waiting, although 

I fear to look to

Find them. They may find me.

i don’t do this 

I say to myself 

Slow down, you move too fast

Now, breathe, and wait, 

It feels decision but therein, 

Some needed, wanted  

Worlds exist in perfect tension. 

Anyway

In the night black house

The dog snores

Into the next, and beside me 

He too snores, sleeping deeply now 

Perhaps even healing into 

This. 

And this. 

I close my eyes, 

The colors of

My sleep arrive, scented

And wafting

Across the Pyrenees, winds swaddling

Memories, the young girl on her bicycle, 

In Isere

Not knowing then how 

She’d be pedaling now 

Across the fields of France. 

December 15 

Homesick in So Many Ways

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WyHlchGBD2E

In a New December

In deepest trust

Therein the tacit blooms, we 

Make our deals,

We do what we want, need to do,

The coming quarter seems, so far,

To be all right, and we 

Find, we are finding that 

Path that looks like love. 

Breathing Room

A gift like no other

Another kind of making space 

For clarity,

Like light, it seeks 

All of its rays, answering 

Such questions as

Why not?

The fields along I-90

Upstate glowed gold,

A pale ethereal, 

Vast in formative, familiar vista, 

But underground sublime

In geologies of ice and lakes

And another time along the 

Lake, cast up from eastern

Morning storm, a grey pearl 

Pink thrown to the sky from water. 

What I needed, what was 

Answered, a way to keep

On moving,

Whole. 

Return

Outside in the still-gold-green

Winter, the snow is here, was 

Coming on; I couldn’t get used

To my portals not seeming quite

Right. Again I 

Began to feel alone tu me manques

I know what it’s like to

Keep moving, letting, learning 

Finding 

In the silvering circle

There are sunflowers, silhouettes 

Of mountain, plains dusted by the 

Sky. Hydrangeas climbing on the 

Pergola, clover and magpies in the arroyo

You understand all that

Last night I dreamed I was standing

On some steep rocks, slick with the

Fog, water-blasted wind from the

Approaching storm, 

And there was flailing and

The seas were rolling roiling grey so

Beautiful.

You stood there beside me, your

Arms around my shoulders,

Pulling my head to your chest

And I wrapped my arms around

Your body, 

We were wearing white cotton

And I held on 

For dear life.

Homesteading into Light

At some point the pioneers,

Seekers, intensely themselves

Said, Lordy, c’aint go no further. 

Wheels got caught in the mud

And ruts of old mud, 

And then it settled,

All possible, all there,

Bloom and grow, 

Depending 

On state of being in these last.

Time moves, inexorably, leaving room

For sweetness, and for promises.