Category Archives: poetry

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Sea of Love

I go in the sea
of dreams
open the chest
the trunk
the saddlebags
Empty the dirty laundry
Of emotion
On the floor
Grief and joy
Fear and hope
Mine
All mine

There is a place
Beyond words
I see you in that place
It is very old
And very young
It is so frightening to go there
Lose words
The first time
It is haunted and hunted
Are you aware
Of that place
Do you go there
Of your own volition?
Or do you struggle
Fight and suffer in the
Choppy boundary between air and water
Fear drowning
Water surrounds you
Above you too
You are in the wordless place
Over your head
Are you too deep?

Open your eyes
In the green water light
A mermaid waits to lead you
To a rope to a raft
And me

But first you must open your eyes

 

I did not take this photo: it was taken at the Weyerhaeuser Pool in Seattle in 2009 at the National Junior Synchronized Swimming Competition. The professional photographer asked our girls to jump in so that he could get some practice shots from the underwater window. No one else was allowed down to that window. My daughter was in her third year of synchro and already so comfortable in the water that she and the others just mugged and played….

First published on everything2.com.

The Honeydrippers: Sea of Love

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at the end of the massage

at the end of the massage
I was dreamy and he put a warm towel over me
and said that I was not to get up until
my body had absorbed all of the heat from the towel
and he left the room

and I thought dreamily that it was so nice
to have my armor removed and muscles unlocked
and to just be assigned to let warmth seep in to me
until I held it all

and I thought dreamily that if all of the archetypes
are in each of us and I am learning to love all of mine
and even and especially the most horrific ones the ones
we all want to reject, not mine, the monsters, oh, poor monsters
that howl in the wilderness that howl in the dark that howl
to be loved

and I thought dreamily that if I love all of the archetypes
inside me then they aren’t a group that is around a table
in my mind, when they are all loved they come together and I
am one and everything is one

and I thought dreamily that how surprising that I felt one
quite suddenly and with no warning and with warming and oh
Beloved all connected

and I thought dreamily that was I really feeling healed as if
all of the splits and breaks and damaged are healed just by
love and I can add to the love in the world loving the inside
terrible parts of myself oh and the monsters long to be loved so
their weeping is terrible

and I thought dreamily blessings monsters blessings Beloved and
love to all and I lay there until I had absorbed all of the warmth
from the towel

and I got up slowly

and returned to the world

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Dream state

I am in the soft dream state
longing for my love and mate
my heart won’t stop or hesitate

I cross the border into dreams
nothing quite is what it seems
I stop and play in bubbling streams

I wander in the tall green grass
years since the mower’s pass
unsullied by the smell of gas

I lean against a tree
I feel quiet happy free
I feel accepted just as me

my childhood was a frightened place
the woods were the safest space
if I spoke my heart would race

my work is with adults in pain
scars deep as canyons bleeding strain
my tears fall as gentle rain

my youngest child has reached eighteen
she’s bright and smart and kind not mean
I wonder what her eyes have seen

my adult work is nearly done
it’s time for me to have some fun
beneath the tree in moon or sun

I wander as a child
heart gentle meek and mild
connected to the world so wild

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Gleaning

This is for Ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge #70, with prompt words crane and gold.

quick look gleaning fields
sandhill cranes glean gold near Sand
Dunes National Park

I lived in Alamosa, Colorado for three years, at 7500 feet in the San Luis Valley, land of cool sunshine. The sandhill cranes would migrate through and glean the potato fields, flocks with thousands. There were more cranes than people at the height of migration. And in the northeastern corner of the Valley, surrounded by the Sangro de Cristo Mountains and the San Juans, is the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, with dunes up to 600 feet high. We were surrounded at 7500 feet by 14,000 foot peaks and passes out the Valley in all four directions. It is an amazing place.

I took the photo in 2007 at the dunes: I chose this one to try to give an idea of the scale…..we had just climbed up to the top of the first dunes….

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Grieve

For Ronovan’s Weekly Haiku Challenge #66, 2 of the 3 numbers of the beast. The words are pine and grief.

pine, supine, repine
grief, thief, disbelief is chief
rewind, rest mind, find

I suppose the image could be a pine. But this is a picture I took from the Synchronized Swimming Nationals in 2012. Water can be tears, right? Sometimes we are immersed before we can be lifted out…..

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Not yet adequately adored

I am wandering in the forests of emotion I am comfortable now mostly I don’t talk about it much though occasionally I am irritable I am thinking about love I have had my children going commando could also be going postmenopausal because there is no longer bleeding or if there is I would have to get checked for uterine cancer but it is hot and why wear underwear of course apparently things can still get wet which is a bit of a surprise since so many women complain of less libido once the hormones drop I as usual do everything ass backwards and want sex more than ever but not when I am working hard and tired and cursing the new server laptop printer program and the keyboard is spaced differently and more sensitive all this fucking equipment when what we really want is to be loved as we are I have only seriously dated two people in the last seven years and one said that what I want is to be adored he said he couldn’t and I thought why not and Rumi says the depth of the longing is our depth of longing for the Beloved and really it’s not a forest for me it’s the ocean it’s the deepest part of the ocean those rifts and I dive all the way and don’t care if I run out of air Beloved I am not yet adequately adored

I will go for coffee instead.

the photo is from 2006, one swimmer carrying the younger swimmer

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Fourthful of hearts

Ronovan’s weekly haiku challenge words five and thrive bring Walt Kelly’s poem to my mind:

Many Harry Returns

Once you were two,
Dear birthday friend,
In spite of purple weather.
But now you are three
And near the end
As we grewsome together.

How fourthful thou,
Forsooth for you,
For soon you will be more!
But – β€˜fore
One can be three be two,
Before be five, be four!

My version is

Fourthful of hearts

thrive has six letters
five has four and six has three
words alive you see

The moths were in my garden one morning. They ignored my cat and me completely. They were busy. It appears that the moth supply will be replenished.

http://pnwmoths.biol.wwu.edu/browse/family-erebidae/subfamily-arctiinae/

Great Tiger Moth