Month: March 2013

This is so good;

sensual joy

from nerve ends conspiring

to sing their rhythms

in vital comfort

— not blanket or escape,

deep quiver of raw freshness.

All is well,

even here on the charred planet,

soft couch, memory of torment

in the eye of a storm

still raging.

This grin is not wild crazy,

it spills from softness

as if the earth

needed my feet

through which to grow smiles upwards.

Of course we belong,

we be-longing and belonging,

there is no other universe

we dropped from;

this is home,

our cells are bound here.

Carbon and oxygen entwined

in the deep pleasure of this skin

and all that roils beneath it,

and then molecular unbinding

as they dance in new pairings

and I cease.

And maybe you don’t see why

I hang the rearview mirror at this odd angle,

sideways glimpse of happy

living in tragic,

but every now and then

I also get to see the bright flash

of my own delight

as it moves through this aging body,

young and sexy,

aching and replenished,

morose and exultant.

And in that bright shining

the trees and my neighbours

sing their starlight

even as many are sleeping,

and oh! this is so good.

Travel or don’t,

listen or speak,

learn or teach,

journey out or in,

no problem

 

just taste the wind

to discover whether you

are finding or seeking

 

the seeking can raise your head

so that you stumble

 

and uncovering

is everywhere.

Actually I am a poet

right now

in this scratching of pen,

a quiet house

warming itself against outside cold.

 

I thought I needed more,

some eyes to read these words

or ears to hear them

or plotting how to share.

 

But the mime

who performs in her home

instead of on the street

is still a mime,

 

the painter who murals

private walls,

 

the potter who mixes personal mud

for her own stoked kiln,

 

this intimate kundalini.

 

I was seventeen

and fearful in my body,

awkward and stiff

in that latina dance class,

pale fish out of water.

 

And she looked like a gargoyle

come to life,

a fat wild girl

with a lazy eye,

a nightmare gypsy

who also did not fit

the tidy room.

 

But when she danced

time shifted,

her weight ballooning

into grace,

her passion streaming

to make ugly

something coveted,

a freedom cavorting,

daring us to drop

into truth,

to whirl in something larger.