i will not die an unlived life

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

- Dawna Markova

to breathe my deep

I am thinking of how,
when Jane was sick -
for a long time, I would kiss her and taste
the subtle shift and changes in her body chemistry.

For months, I begged her to go to the doctor.
She had no symptoms of her cancer, but
I could smell it
on her breath.

It was metallic.
Cold.
Like the thing growing death
inside of her.

I knew.

"Perhaps your fillings are leaching
into your bloodstream?" I said.
For months, I begged her to find out
if something was wrong.

When she finally presented with pain,
it was nearly 6 months later.

The doctor didn't think it was anything...
...but did the requisite bloodwork and culture
all the same.

They caught it,
on the outer edge of phase 1. And.
She's alive to this day.

---------------

I wish.

Someone was there
to hold me in the dark.
Like I held her
then.

To hold me so close, she
inhales my breathing as I sleep.
And whispers a silent prayer,
that I may be healed.


- jen busch

{i think i am waking up now}

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

- Rumi

through it all...

...I am learning, the infinite, transformative wisdom of simply becoming
Yes.

i. can.

Variation On A Theme By Rilke

(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)


A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.


- Denise Levertov

when we do.

Singing Image of Fire

A hand moves, and the fire's whirling takes different shapes:
All things change when we do.
The first word, "Ah," blossoms into all others.
Each of them is true.

- Kūkai [774-835]
translation by Jane Hirshfield

post. apocalypse.

i have read...
and immediately responded
to your letter.
call.
and.
response.
...and eeked out with passion
...in furtive splotches of clumsy ink.
black.
the thought carried
for so long, my heart
craters a constant
hole.
it aches.
it haunts.
a footfall,
remarkably like yours.

and after tears and tears and years and tears.
[i've cried so long, even tragedies seem quaint]
i fumbled the word out
on the page.
the word.
made flesh.
the flesh.
made alive between us.
[and neither
of us,
were ever the same.]

so. after
crying. and sitting
in silence.
like a catatonic wretch.
i let the words come.
come.
flood forth,
and they came.

and finally after days of carrying the tiny missile.
i rent asunder the lines
that connect
the far-flung
ties
that still bind.
even now.

and stitched together.
like suturing
a binding, piercing
my heart.
my hands.
my all.
for you.

check the box.
the mailman cometh.