Thursday, February 21, 2013

February 21, Every Year




February 21, Every Year


Today you emerged
from hibernation
and tapped my shoulder.

Look, you said,
I am
swept under the heartbeat
of your memory, sleeping;
covered by hours,
then by days,
finally by years,
until my laughter
fades from memory
and the sound of my voice
is lost.

I am only noticed
when February cuts into
your heart
or in my picture
one-sided and posed.

You look for me
across the mountain's top
as if my ashes are what
seed the ground.
I can feel
the pilgrimage
of your feet
upon my soul.

You know by now
that your heart beat
is me
and the ache
in womb,
the full blue-veined
breast of remembering
is where you can find me.

I will always be there,
trust your tears.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Dear Love


        


Dear love, 

Where you nested 
my heart grows lithe, 
as with my own whim 
I've flown away from solitude 
and found breach of delight within. 

I can't love you into stillness, 
like rain you come refreshed 
as I weep for what was ravaged 
I keep the harvest's goal, 
Oh, significant wonder, 
girl's gone beautiful soul. 

I can gently part the curtain now 
on what I thought that I should dread, 
and find in truth a grace amazed 
by my own light, wavy threads. 

I have no doubt my sigh and cry 
weighed heavy on your placement 
with time's perfect patience, 
so I threw them in the brier 
I thought I held for you 
to soften a girl's bad dream come true. 

To question is my degree, 
so I ask miraculously 
significant wonder touching grace, 
and though flesh is an unworthy tool, 
I see you smiling in my face. 

I see the pages turn, 
hear the sound of paper, 
know the end has such integrity 
that I want to skip a page or two 
to see what happens later. 

Keep well, this home of heart 
has been growing from the start 
from a chain anchoring one into the other, 
where there is no end to the devotion 
from you, my daughter 
forever in the lasting of me, your mother. 

Could I but see the distance 
plague the stone so I could fly, 
curiosity would lick the slurry 
until the sap in me was dry. 

So, my love I have a feeling 
on the page that says, the end, 
when I've eaten apples to the core 
there will be a light in me, not dim,
that still will want for more. 

------