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.

The smoke filled the inner sanctum 
of my stove, the oil splatter set aflame 
with what should have been breakfast and dinner
combined. 

My family slept upstairs like a bunch of late night 
vagabonds strewn on soup kitchen steps. 

If you would have entered my kitchen
at that very moment when I swung 	
the backdoor open to the cold wind, 
you would have taken off your shoes 
to enter such a holy ground.

You would have seen a woman quickly 
swiping the air with dish rags and the chant of
Please, please, please. The smoke alarm ominously 
hanging from the ceiling just waiting to scream. 

Sometimes prayer looks like this. A whirling 
dervish of opening windows and flapping doors, 
smothered grease fires and a mother dancing 
in the cosmos of cold wind and flame. 

 
We hail the beauties of sacred 
snowfalls swirling down to earth, 
we sing of barren branches yielding 
to winter’s quiet whisper. 
We have awaited death to sweep 
the whole world clean in anticipation 
of resurrection, have cleared 
the red and dying leaves 
away to welcome gentle January 
in her unassuming glory. 
Soon, spring will come bounding 
back to tune us to our rhythm 
of toil and verdancy, but for now 
winter is Sabbath falling 
sweetly upon our weary shoulders. 
Burst forth around me, precious 
fragile sunlight, and I will 
extol your brightness as I curl 
into the rocking lullaby 
of snow upon my spirit’s eaves.

Don’t lose yourself 
in the clank of the world. So busy with 
so-called progress 
and profits. 
Walk, instead,  
between snow-covered trees—breathe true air. 
You are something of a telos—not a means to one. 
I know, I know. 
The world is not ready 
for such a vision. 
But that doesn’t mean 
you can’t be. 
So, breathe—breathe true air. 

Ocean tides break against coastal cliffs; 
endless is their rising and falling. Time 
endures as mankind tarries over the earth. 
Is there an end to progress? What of toil? 
Mechanisms of greed are metal wheels 
churning as we sleep. The carcass of a young 
whale decays on the beach. A leisurely walk 
is all it takes to see the sequel of free will 
wash to the surface. The dirt is not our 
dumpster, yet bears the litter of plastic.
The sun shines on heaps of shattered glass 
and still it gleams. Shining over asphalt. 
I’ve misjudged brown shopping bags midair 
for mourning doves. Deprived of beauty—
my eyes play tricks on me. I’ve had my fill 
of seeing roadkill. I can’t recall the last time 
I saw a doe frolic in the woods. Gloomy 
gray engulfs the world. Cold drear refusing 
mercy. I walk among the bones of winter. 
Old graveyards rest haphazardly between 
strip malls. Developers lack all sense! 
Where are the grassy plains! The babbling 
brooks! I long to behold! My weary eyes
deceive. And though my sight is tainted, 
I look for glory in the wasteland. Though 
my vision fades in and out, I look for glory 
along the road as rain cleanses grim. Though 
my wonder lags behind, I look for glory 
at the intersect where heaven collides— 
shining out among the wreckage.  

In Druidry, 
we talk about free form 
                   like leaves falling—
                           words aren’t evenly spaced.

As with a gale they form in a heap.
Leaves, words, and tears 
                  falling in the darkness—
                           I wait for you.

Like the dark, a journey, not moving.
Waiting and looking 
                 for the Awen and Nwyfre
                           c a l l i n g.

I wait, I wait for you 
shapeshifting through time.
                Spring and Summer—
                           no longer in my vision.
                          
The geese are cackling—
hooting and honking they are c a l l i n g.
                The wheel is turning.
                           Mabon and Samhain pass by.

I am waiting till the time 
I hear you call my name—
                calling me from the womb 
                           of winter’s darkest night.

I know it’s hard to remember the last time 
I lit up your world, even as the clouds 
concealed the sun. When you woke 
to a bright white glory 
of all that is soft and impressionable. 

I smoothed over the rough edges of your childhood 
and gave you a safe place to land. 
Your hopes hung like ice crystals— 
the very thing I’m made of. 
You made angels out of me. 

You stretched and pressed your limbs
making wings across the yard
and into the neighbor’s lawn 
until your fingers 
got cold inside your gloves. 

It was here, where I fell, 
that with every little crunch 
new footprints of memory were made—  
where time slowed down, 
the world went quiet, 
and each new day felt like a clean slate. 

I am a leaf—
one leaf on a long branch
of my father’s ten children,
one branch of four bursting from
my grandparents’ scarred trunk.

And I scan the tree
only to see addiction at every intersection—
the kind found in hazy substances and
manipulating drama and all-consuming careers,
the kind that is obsessed with a high or
toxic people or success

and all at the neglect of little buds,
barely open, begging for nourishment,
receiving leftover drops.

And in horror, I recognize addiction in myself
when I please the person to receive their praise or
do the good deed to be applauded or
say yes—obsessively ever yes—to 
win the trophy of God’s favor.

And suddenly, I feel the branch 
begin to vibrate, 
growing steadily fiercer, and 
I cling to this branch— 
the only one I’ve ever known—
with all my might, 
and I realize someone is
hacking away at our branch, 
trying to remove us from this trunk.

And we fall and thud to the ground, 
shaken and silent and lacking understanding

until the Gardener picks us up, preparing 
to graft us into his own family tree.

sometimes i want a physical address
sometimes i want to write my prayers
	
in cursive & slip them in an envelope
addressed to God: all this 
ethereal jargon is unfulfilling 

sometimes i need to lick a postage stamp
sometimes i need stationary & a zip code
	
maybe it’s childish that I care to know 
if our prayers are making the journey