Enchantment

Arms raised in the desert,

Succulent saguaro standing alone,

Purple martin, ground squirrel

And dry scrub, your only companions.

It must be your meaty center

Pulsing with green living juice

That draws me on my hands

And knees, longing for your lusciousness.

Why else would I touch your spines?

Brush my cheek against your trunk,

Red rivulets running down my face

While I plead for you to yield?

Solitary cactus,

Indifferent to my thirst and blood,

Incapable of knowing anything

About this woman and her body.

How you bleed me, 

Your barbs lodged deep inside

-- The spines will not come out

Despite my tender (sometimes frantic) ministrations.

I have barred my door

To keep me from my nocturnal journeys,

But I am tenacious and sickly thrilled

By your ancient silence,

Your flowers that bloom in the night.

You may stand a hundred years,

Or I might come wild eyed with my machete

To finish the story, unleashing my inner Chantico.

Let the sun bleach our bones on the barren terrain.

Love Poem

 

When my hand brushes your nipple,

An electric shock runs between my legs

And surprises me there.

When my hand glides against

The curve of your hip and flows down your thigh,

I must grab you and hold tight –

The light is coming.

When my fingers are deep inside you,

You moan my name and my chest ignites --

radiance and disintegration.

In and out we go in the semi dark

Plush of bed and bone,

Breath and sweat, lips and warm clefts,

Endless stratospheric stars.

When we have touched and touched again

And sighed heavily into the curve of our arms

The delta breeze puffs the curtains and

Sends relief to our incandescent skin.

I float into my dreaming

Knowing you are next to me there,

With dreams of your own.

Refusing Heaven

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was 
old enough to know better. But anything 
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while 
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
come back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but coming to the end of his triumph.

Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven

This Hand

 

figure-drawings.com/Learn-to-Draw-Hands.html

This Hand draws,

    writes, carries, holds,

caresses, cooks,

    brushes, bathes,

Gets dirty in the garden,

    Makes love,

Wears jewels.

My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts

By Adrienne Rich

 

My mouth hovers across your breasts
in the short grey winter afternoon
in this bed we are delicate
and touch so hot with joy we amaze ourselves
tough and delicate we play rings
around each other our daytime candle burns
with its peculiar light and if the snow
begins to fall outside filling the branches
and if the night falls without announcement
there are the pleasures of winter
sudden, wild and delicate your fingers
exact my tongue exact at the same moment
stopping to laugh at a joke
my love hot on your scent on the cusp of winter

 

Haiku

I can hardly wait

To see you and touch my lips

To your warm sweet mouth

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I found this posted by a friend on Facebook today. What a brilliant recitation of this Kipling poem.  The lines, 
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same" 

just blow my mind.

And then, because I was watching this clip, I found this one and oh. my. gosh.

How much light have these artists let into the world? I marvel at the human capacity for creative expression. I note how much joy these two video clips have given me today. WOOT!

Headache Poem

no electrical shock behind my eye
no pounding rhythm through my globe
dare I raise my head above the dark
in hopes the monster is gone, to torment no more?

boiling the egg is a delicate task
that takes much thought and recollection
--putting the corn rye bread in the toaster
gives me pause.

will I be up for eating this feast
once I have labored over its preparation,
or will I need to fall into bed
to rest, recuperate, and dream of another day?

Transformational

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

  ~ Mary Oliver ~     

Wow.

This poem just blows me away.  Blows my mind.  Blows wind up my skirt. What does it do for you?

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk

looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me

what planets are

squaring your moon...

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.

It doesn’t interest me

if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know

if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,

from the book The Invitation

published by HarperONE, San Francisco,

1999 All rights reserved

Waiting in the Emergency Room

there is no praying to a diety,
no hoping for good luck,
it is what it is, and will be what it will be,
and it will be a big surprise
every time.

Being Awake

“Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself... However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural – if the object and yourself are separate – then your poetry is not true poetry but your subjective counterfeit.”

~Basho

This lovely Basho quote comes in the book pay attention: a river of stones edited by Fiona Robyn & Kaspalita.  Their effort began on the internet, on the site a river of stones.

The book is now available in paperback and hard cover, and is a delight to read.  Many people across the globe contributed their 'small stone' writing pieces, yours truly included.  It is a marvel to see how people observe the world when they are paying attention.  It reminds me of the wooden bell at Tassajara Zen Retreat that says, "Wake Up!"  When I first laid eyes upon that sign I thought, "Whoa.  That's a mouthful.  A mindful."  And then, "Are you talkin' to me?" in my most uncanny imitation of Travis Bickle.

Wake up?  Me?

Santa Barbara

Walking down State Street
past Whiskey Richard's
and the All India Cafe.

In two short blocks two craggy silver men
dig for food in green street bins
while mothers push strollers by.

Pulsing erotic music spills from an open bar
while two sweaty, half naked men
wrestle each other on a big screen.

No matter,  I'm making my way to the ocean,
my westward touchstone,
southern mirror of my home.

A day spent gripping the wheel on
a ribbon of road through green neon hills;
wind, rain and wiper blade squeak.

I'm on the road again
and it's not all that bad
if I remember to exhale.

Dinner at Bucatini
licking the risotto slowly off the spoon
and thrilling to the Sauvignon Blanc.

Soft hotel sheets on a king bed.
Hot coffee and bagels at dawn,
Then I'm on the road again.

I pray for sunshine and kind drivers
--and a little Handel
to tickle my ivories.

Antidote

The Ponds
                    by Mary Oliver

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want my in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that is is more than the sum
of each flawed blossoms rising and fading.  And I do.

Sunday in My Backyard

Crystalline October morning:

I chase the sun

Dragging my chair, book,

Inverted wicker basket,

Cup of coffee.

Lilliputian yellow butterflies

Pull my eyes off the page

And I mark the spot

With a finger,
just so.

Yellow jackets buzz

The fallen apples

While the dog chews

a piece of rosemary wrenched

from the dying branches.

The cat circles my feet

In search of her own prize –

A vigorous rub behind the ears,
a firm pat on her haunches,
a nap in the sun.

Here, together, we all seek

Sustenance.

Just Off the Highway

"When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from." John Steinbeck

There is a place

just off the highway

where dragonflies drop their eggs

into the pond, and hummingbirds

swarm the feeders that have, so far,

delivered 66 pounds of sugar to their frenzied tongues.

A family of quail venture out

to a patch of ground forsaken by squirrels,

and a hawk screams overhead.

Blue jays leap from hanging feeders and send them swinging,

while dove feathers, bone and sinew lie in nearby grass.

Shade of pine, cypress and madrone

promise the day will cool when evening comes

and stars light the night.

I will rest my head upon unfamiliar pillows

and dream of who knows what....

Ode To Tomatoes

I'm making tomato soup today, thanks to Paul's garden. BTW, I was going to skip the part about running the blended soup through a sieve. Then I did it. Glad I did - all the flavors became concentrated and the texture was smooth as silk!

Ode To Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

Old Love

Old love...
dried and blown by the wind
come back in a letter
quite by surprise.

I'm a curious woman
and search for clues - the where,
the what and how
two lives are cracked apart.

I could walk past her shop
peek through the plate glass window
watching my reflection
watching her.

I would turn away then
the words dried up and stale,
crumbling out the corners of my mouth
and dropping to the ground.