APIARY

Just decide one day

to buy some, some

bees, and begin.

Bring them home.

Keep them.

Take them in,

into your heart, your lungs.

Become the buzzing,

let the honey be your blood.

Wake each morning and say:

I am the Beekeeper.

Today I make dreams,

honeycomed and hived.

THE STICK AND THE SNAKESKIN

Don’t keep poking at it.

Leave it be.

                                                              

It’ll turn to dust

in its own time.

The life this shed flesh

once clung to

has moved on,

you should too.

Let die in you

what needs to die.

Leave it like a rind

by the side of the road.

STRANGE PASTURE

     after Robert Rauschenberg

A taxidermist had already done his handiwork

when you came along and rescued me 

from a New York City shop window.

You cleaned me up, tended to my fleece,

married me with a tire,

daubed my snout with acrylics of many colors,

installed me at the center of a canvas on the floor

adorned with the detritus of the everyday: 
a strange pasture.

I became part painting, part sculpture.

A Combine, you called me.

An enigma open to interpretation.

Here I stand, your most famous survivor,
facing modernity like a monogram 
stitched into the tarpaulin of time.

MISALIGNMENT

We are meant to look after
our own damn selves,
to make our way through the world
standing tall, heads held high, 
strutting our perfect postures.
If we do this then
form follows function.
If we don’t and we acquiesce
to the needs and will of others–
if we let them choose our way for us—
we are like atrophied muscles
that enlist less capable neighbors
to do our heavy lifting.
And when we do our bodies
fall quickly out of alignment,
their inherent design
compromised, and balance
is only a muscle memory.

ADVICE

A Blue Jay dead

On the pavement

Broken neck

Belly full of red

Berries turned to wine

A window

Out of nowhere

Impedes further flight

Advice can suffer

This same fate

If traveling on

unwelcomed wings

While drunk on

Its own airs

THE SHAKEDOWN

Burgle your own home.

Ransack it.

Throw open the cabinets,

the cupboard drawers,

empty everything out.

Turn the furniture upside down.

Spill your purse, your wallet, your pockets

onto the kitchen floor.

What you have hidden 

from yourself 

should be in a shambles

at your feet.

Shed all your layers.

Step out of your skivvies.

Stand there shivering naked

in the middle of this self-shakedown,

with a mirror as your only witness.

From this place

begin again.

Learn how to say thank you.

And remember:

Keep nothing, nothing

from yourself 
ever again.

TESSITURA*

On the best of days

I am searching,

Reaching

For that perfect,

Impossible note

That lies outside

My natural range.

On these days

I run the scales

Of everyday living

With the fervor

Of a virtuoso.

Texture is

my teacher.

On the worst of days

I am tone deaf

And suffering from

A bad case of laryngitis.

 *acceptable and comfortable vocal range of a singer

WHO'S THERE?

A soul hangs in the balance

Like a door on hinges.

Someone is knocking.

A beggar, perhaps.

Will you let him in?

Feed him?

You might need him
More than he needs you.

THE ISLAND

On one side

All you can see

Is water

In every direction.

On the other,

Shallow rivulets

Snaking through sand.

Both are the tide’s work.

One side's crossable.

The other's not.

To be marooned

Is a state of mind.

Which side of the island

Are you on?

THE TABLE

My great grandmother,

who spoke to leprechauns

as a girl in County Clare, Ireland,

whose voice was a song,

stood over me as I sat

beneath the dining room table

pushing a red fire truck

round and round

the table’s legs.

We made a game of

looking at each other,

while laughing uncontrollably.

I was four, she was ninety-six.

This memory is all I have of her.

The older I become I realize,

every pursuit, everything

I chase with a passion,

is an attempt

to return to this table.

THE SECRET SHARER*

I am reading a book

you gave me.

I am holding in my hands

the selfsame pages

you once held in yours.

And I pause

in the places

you once paused

with your pen.

The marks you made,

to phrases, passages,

whole paragraphs,

have me feeling

strangely,

that it is your soul

I am seeing:

that a marriage of things

wished for

was never quite consummated

in the ways imagined,

which makes me

your secret sharer.

*Inspired by David Whyte’s, The Three Marriages: 
Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship