Poetry

A garden, a garden is my mother's body
of English rose, wisteria, and grape
twisting the trellis. Not quite of this rugged
tidal pool island, no longer of her own...

Look, I am bursting with it: seed-knowledge and something to say! Before I was, I resided in the winter crust, here where sugar crystallizes in the green apple; yes, I was the prescience of myself before ever being it...

My mother is a garden, is a universe unto herself in the eternal backyard of Baker Street. In polka-dot halter and flannel shorts, she bends down to tend the runner beans, she bends down to tend to me. A silhouette as large as any sun, and I, small and green as a caterpillar among the rows of strawberries...

Let the waters fill you to overflowing, living springs that surprise you every time with joy and a deep compassion toward yourself. Let this peace rest on your head like a patriarch’s hand in blessing as I anoint you daughter, I anoint you son. Let these springs welling up to eternal fill every dryness in your person...

I am with you, pilgrim, through farthest reaches of your broken mind, the desert-bone beaches of solitude you traverse like a champion would, crying blood, better than a man ever could. No one catches you like I can, myself charging on winged fire to keep up...

Hide me now, cover me with linen as your garment, which is love. All gold are your feathers and silver with dew, as I hide under the wings of the dove and listen to your heart steady, beating. I will never leave your side, made woman as I am of your rib. Hide me now, cover me with love as your garment, which is over me...

Just this morning your shoulder blades sprouted wings, equal parts muscle and feather, angel and dove. White with the peace at the centre of every battle waging for your call, my love, the word I spoke in childhood. Return to your pure soul, who you are in quietude. Sense now the plumed flight quivering at your back...

You've searched long enough—it’s time to come home. Enter now the prepared city; pass through the gates that open now in this moment of reading. A window in heaven! A ladder to me! Now is the time to pass through this world’s veil to celestial shores, the way you’ve known it should be. I walk with you there...

Behold, your soon breakthrough! The Spirit is a bird rising, swift healing on the wing.

Flutter of a small heartwing, threaded like a hummingbird. Do alight on me, Spirit, a motion so minute as to appear still in its beating. I want to settle this striving once and for all, wearied am I from the constant battering against the bars. This is the lesson: a smoothing happens in accepting captivity...

At the opening—silence for half a time. Not even the angels, seven, with their trumpets, seven. What does it conceal, the seventh seal? Come! Open! Beckon us all! Declare eternities eventual. We shall become incense smoke rising, as the prayers of the saints, golden...

Search for it as hidden; dig for it as buried. Treasure unimaginable, I speak of! Peel back the veil of mortal stain we call logic and find the real wisdom (He has a name). This king returns your meagre offering: gold of Ophir, aromatic gum, balm of myrrh. One hundred talents and all the gems she brought with her...