poetry

sidebells wintergreen canticle

This responds to a prompt from the Emergence Magazine Nature Writing class, where we wrote a couple rough drafts then merged the parts we liked of each. This combines elements of mouthing the forest and sidebells wintergreen facts.

sidebells wintergreen canticle

if I press a leaf to my tongue
like a communion wafer
will it bring the Maine woods
right back into my body?
an act of transubstantiation
wintergreen not just standing in for but being
birch, granite, lupine
long-fingered bays
ice crystals suspended in air
all infusing my flesh
like blue juniper berries
pressed close under the skin
of a lean chicken breast
?

I crush a leaf and smell nothing
no, this Colorado wintergreen’s
just not the same
I give the one-sided bells a shake
and there’s only the silence of missing magic
but it’s time to stop looking elsewhere for awe
to grow content with what’s inside
the smallest circle of here

at hand, spruce sap bubbled on the bark
makes 4 small crystal balls
reflecting my place in the world back at me
at a time when divination’s a godsend
I press one gently, then bring finger to tongue
and savor the jolt of spruce essence
clearing my sinuses
fulfilling and fueling a new desire
for something missing from my day-to-day
like when a kiss divulged the plush inside of my lower lip
or when my left foot first stood firm
or my freed collarbones went warm for a week

I never quite stood the same
my ribs expanded
by how sharp life can be

poetry

forbidden embrace

forbidden embrace

each time we approach
the time when approaching
in the flesh is allowed
the goalposts move
and I feel your utterly human
animal selves moving further from me

if this ever ends
we will be hungry for skin on skin
like newborn babies
rooting around to feel the ridges
in the palm of the person in the next pew
slapping the back of the annoying
salesman at the door
combing the postal clerk’s bangs with our fingers
while purchasing stamps
sitting close enough on the bleachers
to feel the stranger-neighbor’s quad clench
before he leaps to his feet to cheer the play

but mostly I will hold onto
my mother, mother-in-law, father-in-law
with careful desperate bear hugs
swaying with them like a child
needing to be soothed
(I am)
so relieved I can clutch them to me
at least once more before letting go

poetry

manners

manners

in Puerto Varas
nonstop dogs and parakeets
all day/night long
until the moment I close my eyes
then mercifully
they all go quiet simultaneously
and I hear nothing more –
one more miracle
of a brain that knows
when I’ve had enough,
lies to my body to just bring rest –
until the instant my lids open to sun
when the whole rough chorus
sings the day awake

poetry

missing out

missing out

he tells me to embrace
the joy of missing out
and I can’t even say
why those words
bring such a wave of pain

sometimes the body knows
what the mind censors

poetry

shaking hands

shaking hands

saying hello
is not the same
as placing your palm
in another’s grasp
feeling their corporeality
in the flesh
letting the electricity
that is your pulse
connect with their spark
putting yourself
in their hands
for even an instant

poetry

Palu Museum megaliths

Palu Museum megaliths

the thousand-year-old figures
show the body plain
and filled with power
fierce naked stone spirits
all eyes ears nose genitalia
perceiving generating nourishing life

Alex told me about the cadaver
what they do to help the students
view it as form not being:
cover the face (obviously)
but also the hands

the hands disturb them
when they wield the knife
too personal and desperate
too likely to move

every day everywhere
we learn what makes us human
all us apes gathered in a clearing
thinking about the ones before us
who chipped stone with stone
to leave for us these silent symbols
saying who we were

poetry

blood

blood

our bodies are strung
with garnets and rubies
glowing coals
hidden by
pallid flesh