I was born in the year of the snake
My ornery gestation an insistence
My determined rib-cracking kick
a portent of fierce resolve

Deep within
I carried you
cushioning your sleep
A tiny reptile captive
in a fragile shell

Had I chosen another way
we would sit together and speak
of your birth
Your lunge into the world
Your tender anthem of tears
as you burst into light

But I had no faith
and a predilection for rage

I was terrified
hood puffed in warning
left eye gazing at the future
Skin like boondoggle
Fangs bared for battle

Today the sun soothes me
in my middle time
Not a woman who will bemoan
the final loss of breeding

But I rue never naming you
Never hearing your cry
or the brittle laugh of your rattle

I am surrounded by coal tar,
fear trapping hearts like flies.
In spite of a sunrise every day since
the darkness inside looms thick.
In spite of candles lighting porches and parks
and the flap of flags innumerous and low
against this morning’s blazing near-autumn sky.

I didn’t ask permission.
In fact, I was jolted back to joy.
A momentary reminder of the balm of laughter,
a blessing of innocence resparked in me
from the embers of grief.
And for all of yesterday, I chose celebration
of souls and spirit rather than tears.
Music filled the air like an August breeze.

Instead of merely opening the lids of the window
blinds, I drew them fully open.
I flung open the doors to let music spin
into the yard and drift like milkweed seeds
when the pod is too weak to resist their need for freedom.

My own song mixed with the birds and breeze.
I renewed my strength, baptized again with hope.
I pledge to be a beacon, a small star to honor
all who once sang the sacred song of breath.

A mother with no heart
A child unable to suck
whose thumb serves no comfort

A blind woman at her door
gnarled hands plum purple
gripping canes and face lifted

to the bite of December
She cannot see her breath
Ice splinters the dark

Smelling the certainty of Orion
she asks Are there stars tonight?
They must be glorious.

In shifty moments, summer nap’s drawn curtain,
green reflects the infinite potential of light
Church bells and sparrow song decorate the grape arbor. 
Dogs telegraph their presence like roosters 

whose voices did not stop with fall of day. 
The ceiling fan churns the air to nibble on bare
shoulder and hip like misguided moths, drunk on linden,
negotiating the accidental corners of midnight

searching the room in the feeble lure of illumination. 
No aria, no thick language pillow to rest a weary head upon,
nothing replaces the odd counterpoint of cuckoo.
Not even the faint red kiss of Mars, a stealthy rascal,

his nightly surrender to the brilliant demands
of Venus at dawn; her beauty drives him
swiftly behind the west hills of Dievole.
Here he just fades with morning.

On Route 80 
as I barrel
into the Oranges
I'm stuck tailing
a scary black Lincoln
doing 65 in the third lane

The middle lane finally
breaks open to let me
slip to the right

The windows are tinted
and the driver is a geek boy
trying to look dangerous
wearing his car
like some North Jersey
survival tool

It's all in the costume

Sometimes
when I need
to feel power
I wear my two-toned boots
Long toe and heel
doe brown leather
and the rest slate blue suede
My jeans break perfectly
at the base of the tongue

All I see in my stride
is that Texan toe
pointing the way

I imagine Lyle Lovett
walking from the wings
to center stage
to sing about the Lone Star State

       5/25/99
       (Revised 6/7/99)

What permits me my submission
to your magnet     your words

how I elect to interpret the Beloved
as my personal passion

Were it not so obvious
I would wander close behind

gathering your poems
like dogwood blossoms in May

Would my tears ever fail to yield
salt in the trail of love

This question lay fallow
there is no way to reap it

in spite of the bitter light
of the harvest moon

I mistake you for the Presence
Leave me to my foolishness

for this moment
it is all I know of love
 

      9/26/99
      (Revised 9/27/99)

You give me
such wide
strong wings
to fly

I change
your wax
to sinew...
 

         8/11/99
         [Mason Hill Art Project]

First
speak to me of poetry
the way words tattoo ears
skin
           a blue love
           in summer swelter

                   Leaves
                   bathing eyes green

                   Lavish roses
                   the bold spike
                   of gladiola

Before there is
intimacy
           imbedded
           in your metaphor

before you
write me
blue

Your ink
pressed 
           from blueberries
           big
           as
           bellybuttons

Leave a haiku
in such small
space
           as navel

Spread
sonnets
          on each thigh
                      like jam

before your lips
are typewriter keys
kissing poems
          onto me
                      onion skin soft

or your fingers
search the Braille
of my toes

Dance along
the nubby
surfaces
           of nipple
                      and knee
searching blindly
           for poems

Milk words
from the breast
of your dearest muse
          and then

Bathe me
in
their
power

          until my lips turn blue
                      from wanting
 

      7/19/99
      (Revised 7/20/99)

I dream of Florence:
hot Sunday morning full of an alien language,
thick as apricot jam.

The air, laden with church bells and passion,
would slip over pima cotton sheets, hand-sewn
eyelet gracing their hems, a delicate sun
(gold as a wedding ring)
squeezing through the shutter slats
making my skin, the whole room, art.

I conjure garlic and dense coffee
wafting in from a neighbor's kitchen.
There would be window boxes
brilliant with geraniums,
and angels everywhere.

Angels in the architecture,
fluttering along red tile rooftops,
angel wings kissing in the corners of frescoes.
In Florence, everyone must acclimate
to living with angels.

Some dreams I've yet to sleep
my way into: an intimation of husband,
the secrets the hairs on our thighs
would whisper to each other 
beneath the cool breath of sheets as we
drift into our singular syllables of starlight

and basil from the garden
riding a wisp of moon glazed with the glow
of Firenze.
 

      6/28/98
      (Revised 7/6/98)

a garden has been laid out like a map
for my pleasure
           states of bee balm      lavender
           columbine and violets
raise their topographies to me

But I wander
into the higher mountains
           of tree
my wings tissue thin      stained glass
           sun yellow panes
joined by black night lead

I have seen sister snake
in her silent flight
          through weed and thicket
She raises an eye         a tongue
to the chenille of sumac
          overhead
bare branches tipped with
the dried blood
of last year's fruit

Later in the season
she will shed her skin
and it will dry as thin
          and vulnerable
as my wings

This morning was my awakening

A kiss of sun dried me
          to take to air
a tiny kite in boundless flight
My only tether
          this short life

A bird cries in the distance
more like a kitten
          hungry for mother's milk
Reminding me that I have no voice

One would think me indifferent
as I shift along leaf edges
but it is really
that I have little power
          over wind
 

      [May 1999]

Tonight it would be perfect to discuss sky things
The moon forcing its heavens to be
the inverse of your eyes
Brilliant white center in eternal blue

Tonight would be the time to speak of bat ways
The star appearing suddenly to thrust its light
upon us or that instant it was simply dark
enough to be pierced one ancient pinpoint at a time

And shouldn't this night be the one
in which we talk of loving ways
the sky fulfills the body with its foolish notions
of distance and proximity

Planets and suns dance so far from each other
they can barely speak
Yet they share the same passion
near a brazen moon

Passing too close to her burning
Pressing beyond the danger of darkness
Taking the risk of being flooded
by moonlight and rendered lunatic

       [6/26/99]