Wrestling

 Last night I dreamed

I lost my cellphone and my passport

And then, oh

I found after some

Ultimately futile 

Contemplating

About what to do

That alas,

I’d also lost my driver’s license

And the billfold in which I carried it

And 800 dollars, and 

But, and  

Where, I woke to ask

Was I going?

In my dream, 

After I knew I’d lost my passport

And my cell, 

I was frantic:

Dad! Oh how can I even find you?

So I started

(In my dream) 

To look through the cupboards

In my grandmother’s pantry

And just when I despaired,

I found I’d tucked my 

Carryall,

My pocketbook—

The grey bag with lots of pockets—

Tucked it 

Into the cupboard where

The china was, 

That she wanted me to have

I found it

And so I woke to ask

Who am I? 

Way it Is

Winter

Pondering if it is a truth, that I’m kind of isolated and getting to be an old woman up here, trying to make a difference, juggling integrity, weariness, love and all that bit. I sit looking out of my nighttime windows, and it’s the strangest outside I’ve seen in some time. The north is still snow-covered, though mud is everywhere the rest.

I realize I’m becoming used to green winter, though it does feel random still, and in my recall I think on snow pinwheels in May, early snow before Halloween one year, powdering an icy sprinkle. Seems a little frivolous, a frivolity I may need to think on a bit more. 

It is 1-9-24

I wrote a poem a long time ago about green winter. I’ve been thinking about it for many moons. And ten years ago I sat to look into this kind of winter sky, wrapped as now into what just is, and later, in the shift in my interior wandering, I started to muse on my last quarter, and wrote about that too. 

The arctic, though, in that poem I wrote maybe ten years ago, shivers now, still, and dissipates into another kind of moment, deepening into a whole again. There is breath and life in an arctic, and I breathe anew that breath. Part of me has to wonder if it’s about this last, a past, in the beautiful warp of time. Perhaps we take our leavings on a wild, wondrous cold slide navigating worlds, cosmos, and so forth, and so I ponder.

I didn’t take my hearing aids out tonight. I usually do. Oh wind-whipping beauty, oh the life pattering on my metal roof: rain? Sleet? Hail? Small messages from restive clouds, portending snow? I don’t know, and I could be afraid, and maybe I should. But I’m not, really. As I write, I think hmm. Derecho. 

1-13-24

Muse

Sanctuary 

Salvation 

Approaching sleep I ponder these

Lovely words popping into my head 

Beauty in silence and spaces…

So how old do you have to be

Before you can be 

Just a little crazy

And no one will notice, 

Except he notices

He does, and 

Imagines what he

No longer sees

Except he 

Does

What he thinks he sees,

Himself, is

What I think I see in 

Myself. 

Now here is a deep irony

Of confession: 

A few days ago these words were 

Gifted to me,

“I thought you were beautiful,” and 

In that moment of connection 

We were remembering a rafting trip

We took together on the Cheat

Friends, then

And in the long sighing 

Of decades lost not knowing 

That and 

Turning to the solace of 

I’d rather have what might have been

Than what was, 

I’m not sure what to do

Light Blue

 Some major contentment 

Around me now

Gazing south, 

Near west, 

Up the road and across

The plain fields, 

The Plains 

Going to starch 

Winter wheat sown 

A light here and there

When they’ve gone home,

I fiddle with ours

Our lights of course,

But lights across the dark landscape 

Enough to 

Spark and flicker toward 

The grazing forest, 

Bobby’s farmlands,

Rural landscape nestled into

The curves of our long lakes

Small clusters of stars and diamonds, skies of 

Families, maybe

Gone in the centuries, 

Lifting souls

Mine and theirs 

Up toward the

Hector Backbone, 

Floating on lake dreams or

Settling maybe and 

Breathing here and

Seeking balance, I 

Sigh into 

Sighing into 

Sigh into this night. 

Move away just a bit
Find yourself where your heart
Tells you about where you're
Going.

Tides change,
Skies roil strangely
Looking for future
I'll never see
All that's left
Is
My heart
Looking for the way out

August 2

 There is a lot of light

Leftover in this late night

Horizon and sky clear 

From the westerly of 

My bedroom window. 

This time and these years

Float and flash by

The homeostases return 

Colored always, organic to me

Gold, peach, rust, bronze

Copper of the turquoise 

Matrix 

Stasis and 

Intensity quick tears

As the leaves begin to 

Turn and fall. 

Disquiet Étude

 I lie about my age

Or I avoid disclosing

I don’t know why really

But it serves no purpose, and

Only makes me more disquiet.

This near-twilight I sit looking

Towards the back, and

Towards the pond 

And I see layers of color

Texture

Dishevelement

Density

Persistence

Age

Which is where I seem

To be wanting to go. 

What good does it do

To linger here in this étude

When maybe 

Old, beautiful await? 

I once wrote that 

We were composting here. 

Plenty of sky and room to breathe

My sending lines in gold.