Poetry

Buried in the sand like so many fountain wishes, a wealth of coins increases, each its own nation and mineral currency. What you cast upon many waters seven, eight times, returns now to you, double your nothing. I announce its coming in advance...

Cross the river raging, I hurl a heart of anger at you— take this, Lord!—which is the force of my disagreement with your will. Catch it in a way that hurts your hand like my body hurts all over, catch me if you’re man...

You came to this mountain bearing gifts, thinking a prophet lived on the summit, thinking he would see eternity in your eyes and invite you to his retinue. Cupbearer, harp player, royal food taster—anything to escape the lower life you were living, which is the burden of serving self...

This is how you do it: First, get yourself still, very still, quiet as a cat with its eyes and as open. Find a body of water, facilitate the return to animal. (See, it’s the human in the way— be wordless and let heart speak, let heart listen.) Chatter until the froth runs clear then let silence have a turn...

Someone beckons in the quiet blue, a corridor no one walks. I go through lattice and melt (my lamp, my heart, my hand on the lock). Like watercolour, like rain, you stain my cloak and skin (are tattoo)...

Nothing you do not see, nowhere you do not go. See who rides through highest heaven! Through veil and curtain...

Cracked before the rain and then you… Come. What you can’t see, see...

I am the other side of the door you knock at, heart pounding like a fist through the blood. Go in! What you thought was locked...

My hands, my petals, my face to the sun! In the safe place, I dance before the one with the gentle eyes. Years it has taken, an entire adulthood, to get back here. This one, he looks down and smiles. No memory in childhood not now dappled with sun. Together we invent worlds on the patchwork carpet under the sundeck...

Out of this depth, I rise, kicking to the light. Heaviness, you will not hold me underwater again. Wise to the pull, I know that struggle can also be fight, can trim the excess in me and turn my sinews to men. I have since devised a method when you descend: Stand up on the inside, don’t wait...

Quietude, hidden heart like a flower like a mouth. He is gentle lion, fragrant dark. Sit, quiet one, listen to leaf and windflute; I Am, calling from afar. Magnolia in my hands, you are more precious than perfume and render costly the jar. Be very still: I will breathe in you, lung to blood to heart...

Nomads all, bearing caravans of children along the way, we have walked through four decades of goat-skin tents into a rising dawn, this spirit song humming at our heels. Didn’t know what signing up for this pilgrim life really meant, but the seeker within cries, Journey or arrival, it will be worth it!...