AFTER THE RAINS

The saturated grain 

of the porous wood.

The worn and torn tissue

blushing and red.

The tear-like droplets

randomly arrayed. 

The heart-shaped arrow

pointing backwards.

The finely branching veins

open like a palm. 

The complexity and fragility 

of life magnified.

The bright 

against the dark.

The intersecting lines: the vertical 

beneath the horizontal. 

The beauty 

in the ravaged.

A bleeding leaf floating 

above a dark current.

I see all this.

Because I feel all this.

Because my heart 

and the grain of my being

have weathered their own

recent storm.

WEDDING DAY

 (for my mother on her 90th birthday)

Without the mirror inside

a camera isn’t a camera.

This photograph is like a camera

memorializing this special moment.

The mirror makes it so.

This is my mother

on her wedding day,

January 31, 1954.

I am eight years

from being conceived,

not even an inkling

in her mind’s eye,

and yet I feel 

in this moment 

as I look upon this image

that I am being made. 

That I am seen. 

That I am becoming real.

My mother’s refracted look, 

one of beauty, grace and possibility,

meets me so completely

I feel like a different kind 

of marriage is taking place 

between seer and seen.

As long as this photograph 

is in the world

and there is

someone to see it

there will always  be

a wedding underway

between my mother 

and whoever her beholder is,

between beauty, grace and possibility

and the intersection 

of the past and the present 

in the present.

PREDICTING THE PREMONITION

Why leave it to chance?

The crystal ball of my brain 

—my mind—will see 

what it wants to

ahead of time

 if I don’t intervene 

with a positive prediction. 

I must anticipate the good,

imagine it, visualize it,

so I don’t see 

what my cranial orb 

wants to show me: 

flying monkeys 

and Wicked Witches.

Give me the Emerald City 

any day. Kansas 

and its twisters

are too easy to come by.

I’m making up 

my own premonitions

from now on, building them

one yellow brick 

at a time, until I’ve made 

my own road out of

Munchkinland and through 

the poisonous poppy fields. 

LULLABY 

Shhh!

Something is trying 

to hum us

but it can’t

We’re making 

too much noise

We sing our little ones

to sleep

with a song

with a lullaby

We do this for them

We must do this

for ourselves

to get quiet

so the hum 

can hum us

into who 

we really are

KITE WITHOUT STRING

I took a journey the other night 

and found myself 

flying miles above a terrain 

I recognized as my life.

I saw the longing, 

the grief, 

the anger, 

and the pain

so clearly.

They looked like chips 

in a motherboard

from that distance.

I thought to myself, yes, 

that’s what humans do.

That’s what I do. We feel.

I accepted this. I allowed it.

And then, without dawdling

or delay, I flew right on by.

I could do this because

I was higher than a kite

without its string.