if you knew how i watched you while you slept
and how much pressure i felt
pushing against the insides
of my metaphorical heart
then maybe you'd understand

how the same heart
feels
when i crumble on the
kitchen floor
every time you leave me...

even when you are present.

sometimes i dream
that i walk down the gravel lane,
past the moss covered granite...
the angel presiding over the tiny plot
of the little child
for whom i created a life in my childhood imaginings.
the one i talked to
and wove flowers for,
along the ground where she rested.
a reminder that the soil of my youth
had been tended by the toil and tears
of lives without longevity.
the dichotomy of my childhood bliss
forming a contrite heart.

i wake to a vapor of
unsettled nostalgia,
a distant sort of longing that rises and dissipates
almost as tangibly
as the groggy remains of sleep.

sometimes i dream
that every acre of land now has a house.
the farm that raised me no longer the sentinel
of the bottomland
and the field of daffodils
that a kindred of miss rumphius sowed,
maybe imagining pig-tailed girls carrying
bouquets so big,
their hands aching on the walk back
to scatter their harvest in jars and cups
along windowsills and farm tables.

i wake
and the panic flees with the weighty sleep.
the knowing
allows peace
to continue watering the kentucky soil
planted in the fields of my heart.

November's Story....

(in other words....traveling with my band, family time, harvesting, music, and enjoying nature's fall show...)

i wrote a prayer for you on shale.
i wrote it carefully.
then turned it over
and covered it with leaves,
so that the rain
wouldn't wash the message away.
i left it along the trail.

it may still be there.

the tears may wash the prayer
out of my heart.
or they might harden
and solidify
and make a barrier.
and i will forget
that i longed so much
for you to know the things i wrote.

but the earth knows..

and Love knows.

and my hope is that
maybe....
someday...
they will conspire together
to manifest earthen prayers,
buried under leaves.
even if the elements
conspire otherwise....

i have snuffed out this candle,
again and again,
determined to live
without the light it casts.
i don't see the shadows
when it's dark.

eventually
enough stumbling,
groping,
hoping,
reignites it,
long enough
to gather
bearings.
then the leaning over,
exhaling,
exterminating.

brief solace.
i will let you light it now.
when you are ready
for the shadows.

Summer's Bounty...
(or a photo tribute to learning to garden as a townie, in smaller spaces. all the bounty and flowers are from my yard, except the berries, which were found along a nearby trail)

"Nature is, above all, profligate.

Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is,
whose leaves return to the soil.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place?
This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme,
the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital.
Extravagance!
Nature will try anything once."

-annie dillard

(photo: rose of sharon blossoms drifting in a pond)

love note

surrounded by strangers
not acclimated to this air
i am right here
you're over there

ask to borrow my days
they are already lent
i've been on a spree
everything is spent

there is no change
nothing to give back
i poured it all out
from the longing....
and the lack

of air that is familiar.

transient thoughts...

i was feeling heavy on the inside as i walked carefully on the old bricks, dodging the tree roots where they bulged up out of the ground and broke apart the path.
a slight drizzle began, and i slowed down and turned my focus upward for a moment, trying to read the sky.
but then the drizzle turned into a downpour, and i stepped underneath the shelter of a giant, aged oak tree.... a little reprieve.... a deep breath.
as i inhaled, a drop of saltwater began to trickle down my cheek, as if to show unity with the decision of the skies that day.
the funny thing was, that, in perfect synchronization, one huge raindrop made it through the leafy canopy and fell onto me.
i wondered, as it slid onto my forehead, if it picked up the scent of my hair on the way.
it continued to heed the law of gravity, and slowly trickled down my face and mingled with the drop of saltwater that had escaped the confines of that still broken place.
i felt its path as it slid onto my shoulder and then watched it get washed into the cracks of the sidewalk.... my tear, my scent, my skin mixed in with it.
i thought about where it had been in all its journeys... millions of years making its way through the earth and into rivers and air and clouds.
who else had once been in that raindrop?
whose scent and skin cells and tears and dust had it held, only to purify itself across stones? make it all void and start all over again.

then i exhaled and stepped out from under the tree.
i took my shoes off and let my feet sink down into the wet earth and grass.
i stood there and let my skin absorb every drop it could. life was in those drops of rain.
and i loved it all during that ephemeral moment.
i loved the wet dirt, the slimy bricks, the feel of my soaked dress clinging to my skin.
i looked over and saw a little old lady watching me from her porch swing......
and i think i loved her most of all.

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

she has always been one that feels the magic...
sometimes it stays just long enough to jot it down,
or chord it out, or capture it on film...
like how the light plays on a particular scene,
at just the right angle.
but she mostly has to be content
with savoring the brief glimpses,
without any documentation...
absorbing it fully at that very moment...
and walking away with stars in her head,
and a twinkle in her eye....

"When you have a child, you have to put things aside, though. You have to live for them, if not for yourself. I was aware of this. I knowed that I could not let myself die inside, so I struggled through and made a way for myself. Most important, I tried to find a way to get joy into my life. I had to have it there for Birdie's sake. She would have knowed if I was miserable, even if I smiled until my jaws ached. I couldn't just fake being all right; I really had to be.

So the rest of that year, I made a way for the possibility of joy. I looked for it anywhere I could find it. I got up early and left Birdie in the bed while I stepped out onto the porch to see the day come in.

Daylight is the time God moves about the best. I've heard people say that they liked to watch the world come awake. But the world is always awake; sunlight just makes it seeable. In that moment when light hit the mountain, when the sun cracked through the sky big enough to make a noise if our ears could hear it, I would be aware again of all the things that had been going on throughout the night. Morning just made it easier to hear. Light takes away the muteness.

I would stand there, frozen to death, but the cold made me see that I was alive, that I could feel everything I was meant to. You have to seek out the promise of joy, no matter what your circumstances..."

-Silas House
'A Parchment of Leaves'

These boys performing in my town.....





Combined with the third blizzard of the season blowing through....





Equals having four awesome people snowed into my house and being serenaded at whim...




What a lucky gal I am!

a new years eve... in retrospect.

i sprinkled on faerie dust.... on my face, and neck, and chest. i wanted to sparkle.
i braided my hair, and wore blue for you, to match my eyes, as you would say.
it had snowed, and the sky was brilliantly clear.
we put on our boots at midnight and hiked through the field... to the creek.
you put your arms around me and we looked up into the firmament, at the millions of sparkling lights, strung out before us..... the whole world was on fire at that very moment.
in the absolute quiet, on the blanketed ground, you whispered in my ear about the time you were sitting on a rock, overlooking the pacific ocean.... and a huge, brilliant, colorful light exploded in the distance. it woke you out of your reverie. it was your ebenezer. that there was so much more out there, things so much bigger than ourselves that we may never understand..... that we just get brief glimpses of.

you wanted to share that with me.
so in the hushed valley, on that cold, snow blanketed night, we spread out our love, like a feast. the heavens came down and joined in. and i was brought out of my deadness.... i was woken out of my reverie.