I try to craft a poem,
to construct a sturdy 
prayer box, but the words 
collapse, scatter,
alphabet detritus 
littered across the page.

With a new day’s optimism,
I trade hammer for spoon,
yet stirring the words yields
a feeble stew, bland and
watery in the pot.

What if the poet’s gift
has flown to richer hosts?

I panic at such a thought,
then remember what to do.
I reach for the rich words of others,
feed on Anne Sexton’s “mother-broth,”
seed my ground with borrowed bounty.
I await the promise of plenty.

Home is more than just a noun,
though the Oxford dictionary may try to tell you differently.
But home can be an adverb when he holds you to his chest.
Or that feeling of returning, 
to where you were always meant to be.
If you believe in that sort of thing.
There’s a reason young people go away for a time, 
before they realize the very thing they seek— 
is right where they left it, 
when they thought it needed to be found. 
Home is more than wooden frames and painted doors,
tiled bathrooms and outdated cupboards.
Home is more than a concrete box, 
cold and indifferent to the occupants it contains.
Home is more than just a noun, 
even when the mind has lost its way.
Even when the beating heart,
forgets.

Dressed in her wedding gown,
wearing a veil of mist, blossoms of virginal colors, 
interwoven, braided into heavenly locks, 
so lovingly brushed. 

For several weeks in her pristine glory, easterly 
winds make no suggestion of dislodging even a wisp,
she is blissful without a care in the world.  

Then before Beltane fires have been smothered—the land 
is demolished—spat on by man's inhumanity raining drones 
and bullets like hailstorms ridding evidence of existence. 

The bride’s dress torn apart, leaving her naked, left to mourn 
for what could have been . . . each innocent life lost, their names 
etched in salty tears, each plant and species washed away.

Litha then comes to celebrate, for what? A broken heart? 
Scorched earth? This widowed bride is losing faith, yet gradually
throughout the darkness, in soldier's footprints, there 
begins proof of resurgence. 

White campions find cracks in the concrete cities, bright buds, 
dandelions, and sunflowers bring renewal to toxic areas. 

Then, as new life finds sustenance in nature's hidden lakes—
Brigid’s satin flowers begin redressing the bride. 

She is bruised but still alive, still breathing, scarred 
but no longer naked, life returning, blooming 
in wild defiance.   

there’s no such thing as scarcity. This world 
of ours is a dense jungle, and life in colorful

array unfurls amid the trees, beyond what 
anyone can see. Sparkling waterfalls plunge

into swimming lagoons. Waters replenish
and flow with no destination. Palm leaves 

fan midday, green as emerald. Eucalyptus 
brims the air. I walk slow and barefoot along 

fern trails. The bee never stings. The fruit 
is good to eat. I take a bite. Time dissolves. 

Three minutes old when we first met.
She carried you over, placing you on my chest.

You lifted your head, dark eyes searching
as I stared in wonder at how one so new could carry such strength.

And I think of a seed that is planted in the earth—
how from nurture and nature it grows to what life intends.

Sometimes.

Because nature is not always kind,
and sometimes nurture is not enough.

But when things go right—
when the green bud breaks through the warmed soil, 
life, oh life!

The tender seedling striving for the sun.
The warmth of her body against my own.

To hold a life. To hold this life.

To hold a life that has only just begun.

Jacarandas burst
in hues of purple and blues—
they giggle with such glad faces.

I wish I took more pictures
in Lusaka when they bloomed.

They remind me of you.
For months, you’ve searched
beneath the ground, soaking up rich waters 
and waited to debut
buds and now flowers.

You could spend your time
wishing blooms appeared 
sooner—but why? 
Instead, let’s take pictures.

Let’s place flowers on the altar
and press them between
pages of sacred text
to be remembered in colder times.

And rest in this 
daring but sure truth—
you will bloom once again.

Above all, love no one.
You mustn’t know of the rose 
in the valley. Never hear
wine-deepened songs
or see sun through trees 
like fine white shards. 
When you come to a day
of warm swollen weather,
or stumble upon an ordered thing
in a wild place, ivy over walls 
or furrows with primal seeds, 
flee the way you came.

Put it all behind you:
old folks still drawing from wells
every dawn, Alpine smells
(God, how clear the air), 
birds, all kinds, crackling 
in the rust-brown leaves.
Or else it will face you
like a warrior with sword and shield—
a true anguished wonder to shred 
your leather-clad skin
and meet you beard-to-beard.

If you must do something,
work hard without rest or end
until you’re always numb 
with a nothing sort of buzz.
Let seasons pass without melodious order.
Let Earth spin without mythic making.
Memory mustn’t sprinkle its meaning.
There’s no light in the moon.
The pond is not dead calm.
The story is not a dream
remembered at noon.
The boy does not laugh
how your brother used to.

You must never, not once, suffer
the fatigue of your existence 
and question if there’s more, more—
throw aside all rhymes that sound
like news from another world.
Just sit there and wither 
into a modern kind of man,
rich and grand, and leave
the gods for another time.

in the quiet
find your peace—
a place to be
when nothing else
makes sense

rest your head
in the unknowing,
the unfamiliar,
the obscure—
for here, you are

nothing will
make sense
yet

in this crucible,
change is already here

what you once knew
is no longer true,
and all of life
groans with anticipation,
aching to glimpse

your transformation—
as you become
wholly undone,
held in your chrysalis,
until you burst
into new life

Sunlight streams through the windows
Fingers of light touching every surface of our home
For just a second this hand of light 
Reaches out and catches your hair 

Your brown hair glows amber blonde
Light strokes your hair
With all the care and caress of a mother
And warmth of a friend

It brightens up the room
The same way you do every time your little chest laughs
It scatters across the floor
Like the pitter patter of your little feet

There is a halo illuminating your holy little body
Backlit behind your perfect little head
I snap a picture
A brief snapshot of how I always see you 

The picture captures 
A kaleidoscope of colors
All I see is how much I love you
The sun is not big enough to contain my love 

How much light you have brought to my life
Spectral sunshine
Holy Light
Brightness of Love
Hallowed Blaze

Mary mistook you for a gardener
where she wept among tender blooms
and bumblebees, yellow bodies
hard at work, collecting sweetness
while she grieved.

Did you wake from death 
and smell the flowers, fragrant
in the newness of morning?

Did you wander past the stone
and drink deeply of the garden air?
Did you kneel down in the dirt?
Did you find weeds and spare them?

Did your hand brush the soft petals 
of delicate flowers as you prayed 
for the first time since your death? 

Mary’s sobs outside the tomb 
must have broken the quiet stillness 
of Easter morning—rising up over 
the chatter of birds. 

How much I am like her, Lord,
to weep, and not recognize you
through the tears welling in my eyes.

Grief is like the martyred soul 
Which buries its own body whole. 
Digs with spade and shovel, through dust and dirt, 
Until the corpse is covered by the earth. 
Little by little, inch by inch, 
A blanket over this small ditch. 
No procession planned or found, 
For this one lonely burial mound. 
Only man stands over his own self,
With tears of remembrance like snowmelt—
That water flowers to spring and grow, 
From the death of dreams from long ago.

Sunset blazes in a walled garden,
clouds leafed like wedding cake. 
Orange warmth stripes stones
over the entrance, into the grass.
The smell of honeysuckle, 
made vivid by rain, 
will follow me beyond 
the shores of a moment.

And somewhere,
the sounds of late tide
between the spacious 
hours of night’s silence.
If I could reach out,
timid quiet would 
shy away, for what 
we cannot hold 
is what we should 
love the most—
moonlight, laughter’s
warmth, golden oil,
a hunger for story,
the flower already gone
between the iron gates
of the garden. 

I run to the edge of my gravel driveway 
and bask in the red light of the entire sky 
glowing like a succulent blood orange cut open. 

I remember how much dread with which 
I used to greet each day and how 
the day would nod her glum head back 
at me agreeing, Oh yes, life is bad. 
 
And how this very morning—cold, sockless 
at the holy edge of asphalt and grass
I allow myself to receive 
ultraviolet.  

Did you know that the sun does not even 
set or rise? That we are spinning 
even today, when everything 
seems so still. 
  
I walk into the center of the empty road
and stand there among the song 
of the red-breasted robins and cardinals cheering 

me on—a silly mother basking in a moment 
of rapture before the children 
of the world awake. Like a woman 

who remembers touching the glow 
of her grandmother’s red ruby rings
and hearing her say, One day, this will be 
all yours.

To make my mother’s apple crisp,
begin by planting trees like my father did:
a hundred and twenty saplings,
just whisps of branches
with bundles of roots.
Give each child a shovel
and show them how deep to dig.
Plant over thirty varieties to grant
the longest picking season possible
and cross pollination
for healthy trees and fruit.
Sweet Sixteen
Haralson
Courtland
Fireside
Winesap
Each name is a song
the earth sang to me in childhood
full of lake breezes wafting the scent of clover
and alfalfa from fields encircling our home.
Those trees’ lives were in our hands:
we mowed between the rows, 
bought bees for pollination,
wrapped trunks in covers every winter
to keep rabbits from nibbling tender bark,
and watered for months until roots were deep enough
to siphon water from the ground.
Don’t forget the dark and fertile soil,
enriched by melting glaciers 
to make our apples
taste better than anywhere on earth.

Don’t count out these leaf-lorn trees
That hold their tongues. Or rivers
Chained with ice in silent song.
Or frost-faded grass, the listless page
Of winter’s tiring tale. All green 
Is gone, like memories of May, but gold 
Still sparks within the dying days.

So hold a deeper knowing. Dirt and dark 
Are always good for growing. 
What wonder! Earth has all the seeds 
She needs, promises unfold, a hundredfold
Like faith beneath the ground. 
True for now, the soil still must sleep, 
Truer still, we shall behold the green. 

Just outside our everyday reality a light 
flickers between the trees of the forest. 
Glinting, as we journey through the black 
heat of summer that thickens around 
the neck late August. Or as winter drags 
on and we sink in our sick beds, waiting, 
struggling to get well. Somehow a light 
animates our dreams, blooming bright 
as lanterns before dawn comes into view. 
You see, this world of ours is not as it 
wants to be, we’re half alive, still we sleep. 
Things we cannot name or know move 
in the shadows, while light shoos away 
the darkness. Amid a deepening fog
the earth sleeps—and like a drawn out
fairy tale only time separates us 
from an everlasting cure.  

There would be too many amens to hold daily 
if I dared to utter them. The gasp of the crimson sky
above the scrape of my green garbage can, 

the way the tall brown grass has become heavy 
with ice and bends its head to the earth saying 
its own winter prayer, the slight open mouths 
of my sleeping children sighing with dreams 
of one day, of now.

There would be too many amens to hold
in my small hands if I let them all in, the wonder
I felt when I would wander as a young girl
to find something alive in the city—

the churchyard with the worn tombstones 
and washed-out names, that fig tree buried 
in the front yard of a South Bronx home, 

the cold smash of waves across the street
from the housing projects saying, 
We are at the edge of the world,

the coo of chickens in the back yard
of the mosque so far from any train stop 
it was no longer part of anywhere but itself.

Aren’t we all islands who touch each other
deep beneath the waves? Aren’t we all trying 
to find a way to pray with each other into 

cell phones or cigarettes, over water coolers, 
or with our hands clasped tightly 
around holy books as we grapple with stories 

of prophets who also fell to sand and said, 
Wonder, wonder, can I hold it all?

If we all have to fall 
(and I suppose we do) 
I'd like to fall like a 
big leaf maple leaf. 
Falling somewhere between 
a flutter and a tumble.

And once I've landed there 
with supreme care—on this 
my second home—I'd hope 
to be on my back so I can 
watch all the others join me.

As I am buried underneath 
this layered-leaf mystery
I'd like to have a question
as I watch the branches bare.
Is this the end or beginning?

It’s so quiet sitting outside on a winter night. 
Maybe a dog barks every ten minutes. Or cars whoosh 
past with the cantering of powerful horses. Someone 
inside on the phone, mumbling beyond walls, voices 
like archivists chatting in a forgotten library. Though, 
for the most part, you hold silence in your hands,
as fragile and cold as globed glass. You imagine 
you're embracing a lost world, where everyone 
knows to stop and stare at starlight on such a night
because they’re locals, but they’ve found a way,
always, to see something new with each look.
A flock of small startled birds. Beads of rain, 
perhaps while strolling the beach. White shores 
where seashells turn over in the waves. Stone 
graves in a snow-caked cemetery. Maybe, even 
if unfiltered glow pricks the sky just so, a goddess 
in an embroidered gown, like marble come to life, 
her hands always extended. 

I used to think that to find you,
I must climb to a high place,
as high as an eagle's aerie.

For it is there, and only there,
I thought, that you must be, and 
to meet you there, 
I must of my own fruition climb.

And so, my fingers grasped for roots
to hold yet only met with shifting sand,
the rocks slipping as I hung, 
suspended I knew not how
at the place I could not pass. 

Until I felt the hand with stronger grasp
than mine—staying my fall—
carrying me forth
further up and further along 
that narrow way, that way
that he and only he knows how to ascend.

For verily, he has already ascended
this pass, impassable as it seemed to me.
Not once, not twice, but thrice.

The first as one wholly changed
as we one day, like him, shall be.
The second as one marred 
beyond recognition
to bring us safely there—and free 
from harm—along its rocky way.
The third to rise victorious
determining for all eternity—

that this is not a place to which one 
walks, stumbles, or climbs 
by one’s own fleeing strength
during one’s waning days upon this earth
but a place to which one is carried on eagle's wings.