She is sure of it

inside ICU
mom sees steve young sip champagne
I love her sparkle

Receding

I mourned because
I did not get to say
one last good-bye,
my heart aching and afraid,
my unquiet mind disbelieving
that you loved me unconditionally
that you would return.

The table had been cleared,
all the guests departed,
coats donned
scarves wrapped against the rain-swept night.
Pretending to be fine,
even to be very busy, I bustled
from empty room to empty room,
straightening crumpled linens here,
re-ordering misplaced photos there,
tossing refuse,
hiding my secret longing
for the we-are-one-ness of your eyes
sparkling into mine.

Without their light
I felt myself grow smaller,
my heart flutter in fits and starts
as a choked cough denied how,
what seemed like only moments before,
my rhythmic breath had carried yours.

Later, turning off the lights,
closing sliding windows,
pulling down accordion shades,
I forgot the imprint
of your hand in mine,
the we-are-forever-ness of our jousting play,
felt the familiar wall begin to build,
ancient stone by ancient stone,
forming protective battalions around my tender heart
until I became the one receding,
until I became the one to disappear.

The Angry Ones

They live outside
secretly longing
to be invited in.
Open your door to them,
but do not require that
they enter.
Instead, return to your kitchen.
Set your table
but do not call them in for dinner.
Allow them to pace awhile,
even to run through your roses,
ripping them from their roots
fingertips bleeding as they
tear them apart petal by petal,
shouting No, when they really means Yes.
If you are patient,
they will enter at their own pace,
drawn by the aroma of your freshly-baked bread
the promise of warmth and sustenance.
Though they are children, all of them,
muddy and riled,
wild and unkempt,
do not force them to wash before
sitting down to eat.
Remember, they have been shamed and dishonored,
ridiculed and lied to; rejected, misread, abandoned,
not chosen,
forced to do that which they would not do.
They have forgotten their manners.
They have forgotten where it is they belong.
Do not try to teach them,
do not try to convince them of their worth,
that the meal has been prepared for them.
They may be afraid at first even to sit,
eyeing with uncertainty
the steaming bowls of soup,
the thick bread and rich butter for spreading.
If they do take a chair, they may
place it as far away from you as possible.
Allow them any table edge they choose.
Ignore how their feet jiggle
so fiercely that your floor vibrates.
No one will perish,
do not ask them to stop.
If they slam their spoons
against their plates,
do not scold them.
Otherwise, you will become
the thing they fear the most,
you will become just like them:
tight and distrustful.
Remember,
this time they have hurt no one
they have not hurt you,
they have not hurt each other,
they have not hurt themselves.

Even if the plates are shattered,
unusable,
ruined,
just clear away the shards
sweep them into the trash,
laugh out loud and
bring new plates to be filled,
not when you finally force these
young ones to eat,
but whenever it happens that they are ready,
whenever they choose to settle in,
to reach out and serve themselves.

Love the Undiscovered

Do not let your wild horses keep you
from continuing to do whatever it
is you love.
If you can find nothing you love to do
then love the undiscovered.
If the undiscovered only makes you angry
because you do not know what it is,
love the anger.
If the anger scares you
love your fear.
If fear makes you tremble and prance about
stampedes into your lungs and throat
threatens to crush every bone in your body,
love the trembling and prancing
the stampeding and snorting
the breathless desire to be seen
and discovered, to feel flesh upon flesh
to be reined in with love
to move as one.

Tonight, if I love anything at all

Tonight, if I love anything at all,
it is the pauses,
the quiet gathering between
the words that have been said
and the anguish
of what has been left unsaid.
If I hold anything close,
it is the potential
of those mysterious moments,
the sense that anything is possible,
nothing is forsaken.

Hearts Sing of Mystery

hearts sing of mystery
pulse in and out of the blues
we are beloved

One Drop Shivered In The Breeze

You muddy the water
roil it with your urgency
blister the smooth surface
into opaque shimmers of rage,
all because I will not sit
beneath you,
all because you want to own me
and do not.

I went out that morning with nothing in mind
except to wander aimlessly,
to stop the flickered warbling in my head.
The river drew me down a steep
and winding path, until I stood
beside its noisy turbulence.
At the top of the ravine
the early light hung in dewdrop prisms
from willow branches bent
in what seemed to me
a sort of yearning toward
the rushing water.
One drop shivered in the breeze,
broke loose and tumbled in.
I imagined how it might bob downstream
some times pulled beneath by rapids
but never drowning,
at others buoyed by swirling eddies
and long, leisurely, bends.

How would it be,
I wondered,
to change the lyric patterns
in my head;
transform cacophony to teardrops?
Could I release just one
and let it fall, now so far away from you?
Would it plunge into the rapids
make it’s own small journey
around the rocks and boulders,
the twists and turns
until it reached a vast and endless sea?

What if?

What if you are the prodigal one?
What if you are welcomed, always,
deep within the heart, regardless of your deeds?
What, then, becomes of your certainty
that a rightful place has not been set for you?
Or the belief that someone has the power
to seat you at the far end of the table,
where only remnants are passed
on platters previously brimming
with a succulent roast from the fatted calf?
What if you are the lost one,
invited into generosity,
your dazzling body newly clothed,
once again reclaimed into the fold?
How then could your resentment continue,
your tale of recurrent exclusion narrate your life?
Would you lose your judgment against the one
who fled and squandered all,
who abandoned freely-given riches and slept with swine?

Consider this:
what if an amazing feast, a banquet of forgiveness
is laid down for you
simply because you have been misplaced
and then returned?

Black Cat Purrs

black cat purrs and paws
dreams of a long lost mother
my cheek, her comfort

Delight Sneaks Upon You

Delight sneaks upon you
just when you think your heart is breaking,
that no matter how you try
to understand this un-chosen breaking open
you will simply fail, and fail again.
And then you see how the crab apples blossom
all white and glorious and fresh,
how the roses begin to bud
aphid-less and all spring new,
and the aroma of the lilacs
springs into your very core
as you pass by on your way
to visit her, the one who is leaving,
who may not return.
In that moment you pause from your
rushing-to-claim-just-one-more
(possibly the last)
moment in her presence.
You lean toward the perfumed blossoms,
four-petalled wonders
surrounding that small golden center,
and imagine her breath as fragrant,
her repose as peaceful,
your connection as everlasting
as the sweet-smelling cluster
and its miniature sunrise core.

The Ease of Companionship

The ease of companionship
stretching into each other
without tearing in the process,
how I’ve longed for the beauty of such a love.
How, though, should I ever achieve it,
given what we know about growth,
about the strengthening of muscle,
how tiny ruptures, followed by rest
and return to whatever movement first wounded us
creates a cycle of healing,
restoration of vitality,
offers flexibility and vigor,
increases our access to life force.
How is it that I forget the heart is a muscle,
companionship a byproduct of concerted action?

Death

Death

I shouted your name
from the crest of the hill,
wanting to destroy you
claw your eyes out
disembowel your very essence.
Like a lion attacking a gazelle
I wanted to devour any power you wielded to further destroy.

But my bellow brought
the wind rushing up the hillside
untamed and wild,
shadowing my echo.
At my feet lady slippers dipped their heads
exactly where they had bloomed the year before.
Somewhere in the sea below I knew
an amoeba simply divided into two.

All this transformation
where I had desired only annihilation.

I see now that you are not the ruler,
not the test we always fail.
You provide no “lesson,”
no inner wisdom of your own.
You are in fact the messenger,
perhaps a dove,
the mysterious courier who carries our essence
over the ridge
across the ocean
into the mysterious other world
which we simply cannot yet see.

The Critics

The Critics

The ones within us are the worst:
the chattering voices
examining and re-examining,
rehearsing and rehashing,
running us round and round in circles,
splintering in a thousand directions.
But there are ways to welcome and calm them.
If we focus on our spines
our bellies and our tailbones,
focus on our breath
and our heart,
the oxygen moving through
our blood and lungs,
how it keeps coursing
whether we make the best choice
or not;
when we have to say we can’t
when we thought we could;
whether or not we did
or we didn’t.
When others withdraw
or throw poison daggers
in our direction,
when we believe all of this is about us,
if we quiet the ones inside
those attacking us tenfold
bring them into our awareness
into the chambers of our heart
help them to
follow our blood flow to our spine
notice how it is aligned.
If we help these critics to
calm and to
allow us to be carried forward,
strong, steady, balanced,
they can transform into
deep listeners that
move us on to the next small thing
one small step at a time,
one flexible movement at a time,
moving through the door
into our chosen future.

I Don't Find It Hard To Love The World

I don’t find it hard to love the world
in its big, wide open expanses,
its prairie grasses and battalions of geese
soldiering on in perfect v-formation.
What is difficult is to love the losses,
the million small ways in which it seems
life is reduced, instead of grown.
What is difficult is to lay down in the
brittle brown grass and look up at the sky
to listen to the wild geese honking
disappearing across the horizon,
their cry moving into my heart,
echoing my own buried grief.
The beetle doesn’t bother with such things
I don’t think,
neither the tortoise or the eagle.
Rotting stumps decay and become a home for eggs,
swamps stagnate and transform into breeding grounds,
one tree is chopped down, and another,
differently sized and shaped,
but equal in it’s wide arms for holding,
invites the nest
built twig by twig:
flight in and flight out.
It's true,
I don’t find it hard to love the world
in its fullness and welcome
what is hard is to say goodbye,
over and over again.

You Do Not Have to be Perfect

You do not have to be perfect.
You do not need to be a star-shiner
polishing your imperfect acts in hope of being chosen
to herald the Nativity.
All you need is to love all of who you are, the longings
and the half-misses, the scattered thoughts and the focused passions,
all you need to do is to walk out into the nighttime air
and breathe,
welcome the vast array of shooting stars
cascading in glory with no idea of where they are going.
You who believe in the greatness of others but not your own,
who fear burning out before you have made your mark,
look closely at Orion and the Pleiades,
constellated stars aligned in space
burning with brilliance,
never altering their position, though the spinning world
will make you believe they are drifting away
disappearing from your sight.
You out there who deny your inherent always-was-enough-ness,
go out, again, night after night
cloudy or starlit,
and greet the galaxies.
Without your star-shiner’s cloth,
powerless to dull or brighten that darkened sky,
go out and receive your gifts:
trajectory and surrender.
When you come to the edge of your evening
will you have seen how the darkness holds the light?
Will you have welcomed
your one, small, meteoric life?

Wildflowers Waking

wildflowers waking
shaking off grieving raindrops
choruses of joy

You Have Ceased Your Conversations

You have ceased your conversations
muted your clandestine call
along the sea cliffs
and in the valley floor,
whispered messages of ecstasy,
surrender and enchantment
come no more.

Your empty tomb awaits her,
forbidden wanderers, angels knocking at her door,
night-watch wakefulness, cloistered kisses on the floor.

So You Have Felt It Too

So you have felt it, too
the wildness burning deep inside:
hot and fiery.
passionate,
heaven sent:
the jaguar preparing to pounce.
You have traveled in its belly
demolishing your innocent prey,
your fears and envy, your holder-backers,
destroying them all with one powerful bite.
If you bury this lord of the underworld,
it will simply send you to the bowels of your desire,
if you try to tame and domesticate it,
it only grows larger and more fierce
until overwhelming in its power
it releases itself
charging into the river of life.

I Open to the Sense of You

I open to the sense of you,
float into your forgiveness like a twig dancing downstream.
I yield to your knowing, the truth of your erosion,
how you carry detritus across the ages,
from frozen ice fields all the way down to the open sea.
No longer caught
in the narrow interstice of my mutinous, glacial boulders,
nor trapped in the dams of my own making,
I embrace your whitewater rapids and swirling eddies,
your placid meandering, and your steep descent
over well-worn waterfall cliffs.
In your presence I flow with ease,
drink each unique moment of the ride,
follow the course of your current.

The Fear of Being Left Behind

You know so well
that fear of being left behind,
unseen.
Share your stories of abandonment
and I will tell you mine.
But do you remember the day of the dragonflies?
The thick pack heading south en masse,
electrified orange and red,
moving like helicopters
up down forward back sideways
seemingly all at once
while still making their way down the beach?
Can you still see the way their wings flashed like
beaters, here, and then gone, like
those steel mixer blades
covered thick with chocolate
and our mother’s birthday love,
how, without admonition,
she let us both, together,
run our fingers trustingly
along the could-be-sharp edges,
as she retired to her room?

You call to you the truth that no one survives,
that everyone you love will leave,
you wrap yourself in the surety of your isolation and your need,
but have you forgotten that constant dragonfly stream
how first you feared, then loved their presence?
The outlaw one who landed on your shirt,
stayed for the rest of the walk
wingtips glittering in the sun?

I Need To Go To Bed

I need to go to bed
I’m tired in my head
I cannot stay
There is no way
I’m truly almost dead.

You Dance Without a Partner

You dance without a partner,
and with all partners
caught in your embrace.
No wonder I cannot love just one other,
not just a single pair of eyes gaze deeply into mine.
With you I AM, the alpha and the omega.
In you my senses have their being.
The body’s center is the focal point
from which all movement rises,
in tissue and in sinew,
spirit twirls and is released,
changing partners
in the moment
of the longing of the sigh.
No wonder I am whole only
in the moon-night.
No wonder white bears draw me
toward your darkness
and your light.

After the Funeral

After the Funeral

You have had enough flowers
for one day,
daffodils and roses
wild blue lupine and queen anne’s lace.
You have made enough attempts to imagine open meadows
where you lie undisturbed
breathing aromas foreign and divine.
Their bodies are gone.
The night has come.
The back yard calls you
to its shadows,
moonlight dancing with windblown branches:
a slow waltz, perhaps a fox trot,
and you see them both
(before they ever conceived of you,
before they got lost in the stop-time
of abandonment and pain).
They are moving as one, cheek touching cheek,
stockinged feet sliding slowly across another time,
breathing in
the whole
of each other.
Now you cross their rotting deck,
step down into un-mown grass
and let your bare toes drink in the recent rain.
You pull its sweet essence into your veins
and remember that everything will change.

So what does Jesus do

So what does Jesus do
when disciples turn away?
When fire burns in their bellies
and the hot coals of betrayal
scorch their un-sandaled feet?
No doubt they want
to stay awake and watch,
but they feel his passing
even before the soldiers come,
before the cock crows,
yes, also before the kiss:
those cold lips
so soft and
pliable, barely brushing his cheek.

They know it’s noble
to be loyal,
to match his open and loving ways,
to forgive him the scruples
that are causing their bereavement
and will leave them alone,
the fervor that will steal his guidance,
keep him from taking them and fleeing
into the dark night
like the burning bush of Moses,
all un-consuming flame and heat.

They want to forgive,
but can not let go of the injustice of it all.
What does Jesus do
When they can’t absolve him from
living out the truth of his abandonment?
Does he pray?

One Night

One night
you couldn’t hear
what you were called to do,
as you left your burning house.
Muddled by the smoke
and fear of flames
you forgot, for just a moment,
the angry child still sleeping deep inside.

You scooped up the handicapped one
from the cot beside you,
cuddled her head to your chest
to quiet her whine,
grabbed her leg braces
and rushed for fresh air.

But somehow you failed the one who
most likely dreamed of your demise.
You left her
all blanketed over,
no doubt still tucked into fetal position,
like those “pill bugs” you used to torment,
when you yourself were only a child,
poking them this way
and then that,
until they curled upon themselves in protection

Thirty-fifth Anniversary

You tell this part of you that you’re just too tired,
The one who conjures moonlit walks,
Tender kisses,
A blanket spread across the sand
Sun warmed bodies passionately entwined.

You remind the niggling sense of
Pressure, there in the center of your chest,
Of companionship,
Restful couch time,
Watching romance on the television screen,
The way you hold each others' hands.

Perhaps you try to hearten this fearful one
who tangos in your heart at night:
You say that marriage,
(Contrary to the belief of some)
Is not a Holy Sepulcher.

Thirty-five years is, after all, a long time, you say,
Sparks can’t sustain themselves forever.

But there are the crocuses
Warming each other in purple clusters
At the edge of the little garden by your front gate,
And those two robins, persistently foraging in the tall lawn grass,
Battling each other for the earthworm,
And sometimes...you wonder.

Brown Bird Attacks Self

Brown bird attacks self
Pecking at rear view mirror
Not so unlike me

Seeing Snow Geese

so for this poem I'm offering two versions. If you're so inclined would love to have you "comment" on which you prefer...Many thanks, and many blessings for all of you who continue to "follow" my flow...you can even offer your own third version if you'd like! MBB.

Miminalist version:

Seeing Snow Geese

You have crested these mountains
Entered the verdant valley
One-hundred times or more.
Still, the snow geese startle:
White psalmists in the sky.






More wordy (or more fulfilled?) version:

Seeing Snow Geese


You have crested these mountains
Entered the verdant valley
One Hundred times or more,
Still, the snow gees startle,
Resurrect your black-tipped longing,
Rise with your undulating heartbeat,
Strain to return to the source:
White psalmists in the sky.

Can you imagine your life?

Can you imagine your life like the honeysuckle?
lingering, delicate, filled with sweet nectar,
always leaning toward release
from your trellis –
your essence transported
by curious hummingbirds
that dart from vine to vine.

She picks wild roses

She picks wild roses
Harvests thorns and petals all
Looks to the future

He brings her roses

He brings her roses
Sixty-five: one for each year
Patience, Persistence