I think of you

 I finally listened to a song you used to post, to tell me to go away. It's both a rejection and maybe some attempt at a tender send-off, but when I was young, the concept of the rejection alone would just send me into aching tears. I wonder if you knew how deeply you hurt me, if that would have changed your behavior at all. Or if that was the point. 

When I listen to it now, it sounds cowardly, and corny. A shallow song. 

I hear another song - "I think of you, my beloved." Minor key, a plea with weight, a song with self-giving in it, and love's seriousness. 

Cat

 Your descriptions of beauty products reached out to me from the page, like you were a friend from middle school. 

Sweet, honest.

Eventually, I was drawn into the chaos. My story is what it is. 

Sometimes no one wants to hear it.

Still, I am led to the right people. Truth passes from ear to ear. I hope I will share the light, nothing else. Sweet, honest.

Anthem

 Halting, sound of sorrow,

quiet note in pale blue evening,

dusty,

a voice that knows it may not be heroic,

swelling sounds of brass. A cry.

Stranded in a present

and knowing what has come before,

a struggle for existence, to which

a crowd will softly clap.

Unsure of where we are -

singing of some lost tradition - 

a quick child greets you -

you pour out your song. 

Portrait of a Woman

You turn and glance, with veils of turquoise evening,

and rose ribbons, eyes serene like a crescent moon.

Faded mountains in the distance. 

With a fine gown.

With hands created to lift others up. Beauty, smile, night, world.

The green ground is filled with white dandelions, wishes. The trees twist gracefully and still offer white flowers. The once lost people lose themselves in remembrance and a song. There is a joy that moves. 

Come, moon, we will sing the new song again.

Nothing is lost, all is altered.

We will not remember the troubles - you will cast these years off, a relief. Do you hear this melody?

Sonnet

 You look at a painting that seems very different

than how your life turned out, on the surface.

You didn't yet succeed in looking over

pain and investing in a passing world.

Maybe others think you are too particular.

There are things you are afraid to reveal to others

although we should all know that we are fallible and perishable.

Your flaws are a safeguard that you hold to you in the sun.

You do cherish the image of love

although its reality seems increasingly something in the fairy tale or fantasy.

He holds her in the golden light

safe and secure, sleeping in a world of beauty.

You read a poem before a group of children - 'My darling - my darling.'

In the true world, you are held, promised, as the bright sea is whirling. 

Wedding Song

 When someone sings a song from the heart, the atmosphere changes.

I remember a wedding I went to, invited to celebrate, although I didn't know the groom or the bride;

a relative poured his life out in the song, and the leaves swayed, and the sweet Spirit moved through us all.

It was a blessing and a moment to think of God's sweetness.

There will be another wedding song. It will be so beautiful, beyond compare.

I'm looking at yellow flowers, and imagining them in pure light. Bloom, flowers.

Who is like Him?

 I always thought you had a nice voice.

After it all -

I hope one day to hear you sing a new song, in this life, or the next.

I wait for that. 

Grace

Poem, you approach in sorrow,

joining the voices of birds that sing in the leaves after rain,

down yellow streets, where tall trees once rustled in secret.

Poem, be drawn down the roads of your life, 

and meet the loving child who waits for you.

Over, and over. 

Resin

Like many (most?) parents, one of my Mom’s main expressions of love came through food and providing for us.

I remember New Year’s Eve in our hometown, dark cold nights, cold rain in the dark and twisted trees.

We would watch The Princess Diaries and she would make punch by putting orange and lemon sherbert in soda (…sprite…7 up?). 

/

I remember in 2nd grade, she bought me a beautiful amethyst necklace from one of her travels, for work.

I brought it to school, but after the morning it fell on my hard desk, and broke. I couldn’t stop crying.

The shattered jewel touched a deeper sadness; I missed her.

Around that age, I remember watching a movie about baby polar bears and arctic animals, which filled me with a feeling of longing, for some reason. I felt like some lonely arctic creature.

/

I’m in another land, where green trees shine in the light after rain.

/

Today brought a feeling of ‘how far you’ve come’ at a school event I was attending.

Children wearing beautiful clothes from around the world skipped around. Families ran stands to represent their cultures.

At the stand from Oman, they pressed jar after small jar of date honey into my hands, and gave me a white cloth bag of Frankincense. 

Crystal

The art class dissolved into shards of citrine,

symmetry and floral motifs springing bright from my students' hands.

They color seriously,

a vision glimpsed in clouds of dust,

a field, alive and timeless.

Faded, sketched stained glass.

The young girls discuss eternity, and share what they have heard about it.

Others listen, quiet and hopeful.

Deluge

 My bag is heavy; I'm literally carrying around rocks.

Cheap jewelry I bought in the south, painted gold and plastic pearls, with the clasps soldered shut. Still, it's pretty.

I'm carrying memories of streets in the city I love, chandelier stores, every person behind each door holding their own memories of a different world. My sadness did not feel at all out of place there. Dark branches of the trees. 

/

I walk on the side of the mountain at night, watching the sky shine white with lightning. "I will walk, I won't try to get a cab."

Then hailstones start to pelt my head. I run into a fluorescent-lit discount store. "Older sister," a young man yells, "we are closed!" He says this in another language, but it's clear; with his arms, he forms an X. I huddle in the doorway outside for a moment, but it's futile; in a second, I'm soaked with flying slush. I find an open door to the empty hall of an apartment, and try not to trip the automatic light as I stand and watch the electricity and rain. 

It pours on, and a light turns on in one of the rooms. I decide to join the deluge. My shoes fill with cold water; no trying to keep them dry. Brown pools ripple over the sidewalk, rush into the streets. I trail spots of gravel, and leap. 

Inside, I see a print left by rain on my shirt, the shape of a protective hand. 

/

You carry a light that you cannot imagine.

Lanterns

 The story between us - longing, absence - doesn't play in my soft dreams now - gentler visions - shining green in the sun. Maybe it prepared a way for them.

I will write about it. Black words wait on a white word document. Lined up like skyscrapers in our old city.

I found it somehow hard to be in nature with you - our hearts hid in shadows, screens, in artifice, deep within a glass.

In nature - where I usually felt solace - the truth was harder to ignore - your lack of love that I didn't want to look at.

I'm thinking of the girl I was.

Her childhood. The city with glowing parks and streets.

I think that I will write about it - but there has to be a right time.

Words are like lanterns that you send out into the world.

Love is reborn through centuries; art and poems shine on.

So, you're cautious of what you put out there, not knowing where it could someday land.

You want to put out something good.

But, you can trust the words will travel where they need to.

Work provides the ability to give. That's what I want to remember and the place where I'd like to live. That time of just giving everything.

What would I tell her? "Don't look at this world"?

I would give her lots of different directions.

But she lived the life that she did...she was led to where she needed to be.

I don't know why, this month, I'm struggling with some things again. When I feel like this, I don't know if there's something I should do, somewhere I should go.

I think I have to trust that I'll get where I'm meant to, and let go. 

Shine All Around Us

In the summer driving from Clewiston, on a stretch of highway by fields of sugarcane, shining pools, pearlescent, beautiful sky - stalks dancing - 

I saw a white truck with red letters, clement - mercy - 

The road timeless, a blur of raindrops, singing, walk in the light - that year you would be tested - you tried to stay true to the song - beautiful light -

Come, where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright -

All around us, light + beauty, perpetual light, light.

Singing love - nothing else will stay.

Gifts

 I have a new friend, + I'm delicate with it; I won't say everything, lay the whole weight at your feet.

I am good at listening. It's a special thing to be listened to, too.

Closeness is a gift that is given; maybe you can nurture it; but you can never force someone to care. So, a gift. 

I think of S's love, something I could physically feel when I ate a meal you made. Thank you for your love.

The painting of the radiant one reminds me of you - you emerged, glowing with God's love, with a flask of oil - "The Call". It was costly.

I am sorry for every time, in my rashness, I acted out of step with love.

I'm sorry for anytime, in my lack of care toward myself, I hurt anyone.

There is a ship rocking on turquoise waves, sent, bearing a message.

Today, you're given a white dahlia to hold, swaying in your arms on the bus. 

Good Riddance

 I remember hearing it in a dark car, as we drove home over dark winter roads in Michigan. 

You have had a way of making cliche songs meaningful, so that I might fall into tears at any random hit of the 2000s.

I missed you, then.

Promise

 You might meet someone you're meant to as you trace the plot of each day.

You could stand outside a brick elementary school on a sunny day in Riviera Beach;

you don't know why, but the ones who work there smiled into your soul.

You could find yourself on a flying bus in a dusty, mountainous town,

surrounded by people mostly dressed in black, who you feel you understand, somehow.

Wonderful meetings have happened, before. 

Light of the Moon

 The luna moth is quite soundless.

I met it on a quiet journey.

It has a few days of luminous movement.

I stopped at a state park, the shining river that inspired a famous song.

Wherever I go, I am known. 

I don't know what tomorrow will look like.

You moved through many days of quiet beauty.

Searching

 1

Saint Elizabeth sits - in her hand, a needle.

A sparrow swoops through an open blue window.

The woman is wrapped in draping white fabric

and her eyes look down at her work, by the bright window.

To her left is a canvas, frames made of wood.

The bench, the alcove, formed with care in light wood.

2

After years of caring for the poor,

Evangeline found her lost beloved dying in her arms.

They gazed into each other's faces.

When you let go of a dream, you may find things like healing supplies in your arms.

A search can take you far, the whole world over. 

If God is love, a moment of love is never over.

3

The world of nature changes each day - look.

You've been given a chance to reflect beauty.

Take steps in a direction of love.

When old plants fade, they bring forth renewed beauty.

As you work, may your pain fade, or be felt

if it would guide you as it is felt. 

Far, Very Far

 I

I arrived in Marseille with memory and the Mediterranean glistening

I saw a gold castle standing far off on a hill

the hospital where you left this earth lay somewhere in the heap of buildings

II

As a highschooler I planned a film inspired by your work in my head

I don't remember it all, but it would involve a field of wheat

and probably a mother in a black dress

your technicolor dreams and your pale face

III

Bohemia is the agreed-upon place

for imagining a free + wild beauty

At some point I thought, "I don't want anyone to feel the way I do"

and I wonder if that thought is wrong,

if I'm wrong about the way I've started to view this life,

if I should shine with a more grateful soul.

It's not right to be miserable

but the truth is I do feel pain.

IV

Your biographer said something happened when you were 17

and after that you could never accept life as it was again.

At the end of your life, you suffered.

You sang songs to your sister and strummed an instrument.

They were still there, sunrises, 

herbs, gardens, 

the far reach of your radiant life. 

Butterfly Planet

 Here is one

garden, field, life, month, date

What you feel now

You drove to a nursery in the glinting sun

You can drive from the week and all of its weight

Here is one

Soft wings emerge from the gauze chrysalis they've spun

being born and dying at a cycling rate

What you feel now

You go through the garden, meeting a ton

of flying creatures who zig zag beneath a glass gate

Here is one

Of these ones who fly, soon there will be none

Passionflowers, filaments in a plait

What you feel now

Souls come here with a grief that creation can stun

An image of hope spreads its wings with a color so great

Here is one

A Beauty

 Your eyes are like those of a 24 year old girl standing alone on the subway, feeling the rush of wind from an approaching train.

Your smile is like quiet hands trying to check out groceries in a language they don't know.

Your cheeks are like roses whose seeds were brought from another country and sprinkled in the park, laughing freely in the wind while families gather around the tables and sing sad songs.

Your actions are mysterious, like apartments with black criss-crossing grates. 

Remembering

 Today, I realized I don't cry so much like I used to.

Like in my early 20's.

There are normal times of sadness, but not the horrible feeling...
I don't feel unconsoled.

Amazing - that those tears could be finite. 

Things didn't just change; I was helped.

It's a blessing, how your life is woven together.

You see the bright colors' of others' threads,

and a door opens to a bright history.

 

Yes; I was helped. A loving one brought me here.

Migration

 Don't remember the ones who turned from your song.

You're not the one they've scorned, dove.

I create a place that whispers in soft light. 

You will not weep much more, dove.

Trust that I can lead you there, you,

so often lost dove.

I call you to a land you don't know,

a place where free things can grow, dove.

Nor Perfume That Smells Like Cloves

I'm not a cake, but if I was, it would involve condensed milk.

I'm not 1992, but an old song a student mentioned has played in my head all evening.

I'm not a balcony; still, I find something lovely in them, outlined by palm leaves.

Nor oil in water in a parking lot; yet with you, I beam, blue, rose, gold.

Ginger

Scent of a field on the outskirts of a city, enclosed by a revelation of blue mountains. Yellow and indigo wildflowers sway in the light, radiant after rain. Broken stalks snap under your feet. Past languages and untold lives whisper. 

The earth shines, vast, opulent.

As if you were about to cry

 Child, I write you from under the orange blossoms. The scent really is beautiful, like they said.

Children I didn't know skipped over the concrete, and they became the ones I cared for. Cracks in the sidewalk, miniature caterpillars inching somewhere. You all liked to hear me tell stories about snow. Why are there tears on my cheeks? You're laughing, and all around us white butterflies.

You see reality differently than us, and I'll try to capture it in a folk song. The lonely one is well loved, the white roses hold inherent meanings. You don't question every image, but rather, allow each one in. 

And let it become a hymn. You dance in the snow, like falling roses of flying butterflies. You are not enclosed by houses of concrete. 

You flew, you were everywhere.

You rocked babies to sleep who you didn't know.

You wrote so many poems.

/

You're the rain approaching on a cloudy day by a lake - scent of nature around - olive trees, orange blossom, mimosa, all of it. It's just the beginning of April, but you see yellow wildflowers...

Cloudy day on the lake - silver - childhood best friend memories. Quilts. (Covering of prayer.) Prayers act for a long time. "Here is no why".

Light dust of rain. I'll return...

/

The shining waters and grace fall upon all of us.

Darkened human forms shadowed by bright mercy.

You just lean against the beauty. There's no way to describe it.

There's no way to describe it.

The waters move slowly - ten million sparkles -

ecstatically beautiful -

A song - what other way can we respond?

In a trance, resting together.

Chiming music. Softly moving melancholy bridge.

/

At the airport you see loving families and playing children. 

Living with paintings

 In our house growing up, it was Andrew Wyeth’s white dog sleeping on a white bed.

There is something peaceful about watching another being rest.

In some Russian homes, there might be an icon in the corner. Kazimir Malevich referenced this in his Black Square.

I heard an orthodox hymn yesterday morning. A woman was singing alone in an old Greek church.

I write you from a popular Russian tourist destination. At first, the constant motion stressed me out, but when I accepted its rhythm the days were full of beauty.

I am better at calming myself down than I used to be. Every moment used to be so “all or nothing”; I was so impulsive. I feel like I’m finally realizing that I can be understanding of myself and what I’ve been through, feel my emotions, emerge, alive.

I saw a peaceful blonde sleeping dog at the market, and a cat restfully curled up in a pile of clothes in a store. 

At a spa, I think of oils and preparations at the end. 

I don’t know if I will ever really surrender to the promise of this life. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to have been separated from hope in this.

All is mysterious. Anyway - I’m grateful for the free and joyful beauty here. I heard melancholy songs all through the night. A child smiled at me in the morning.

I’m not a guitarist

 When I started, the strings hurt my young hands too much.

Nevertheless, I lose my worries in the waves of sound rising in intricate melodies.

One song says ‘yes - love is what this is.’

One sounds like laughing children on vacation with their families.

One sounds sweet and sad, like a time-worn saying to comfort mothers.

One sounds like a teenager abroad in an unknown city, gentle and brilliant new leaves.

One sounds like a woman patiently tending a beautiful store.

Fill my life with music; while I won’t play, I will sing. 

The world stopped and I became quiet and blue.

After all this time, you fall into the love songs’ ecstasy.

To a younger self

 You will rise in blue mornings, and you will often not know the language, but you will understand others easily. Lilac mornings and connections on trains, numbers, tickets. You will travel through many days, and inner rooms will wait for you, decked in white.

Blue mountains will rise in the distance like a wild song.

You will be strong. You already are.

I think you will like the flowers -

yellow ones woven with others, shining on a mercy-blue postcard.

With love.

Ariette

     Maybe it's no surprise that the shining leaves speak to us. Someday, a child will name them. Adalia: noble, princess. Once, a girl imagined that a tree outside loved her, almost like a mother would.

    The white blossoms give themselves quietly, and I won't say they're unimportant to reality. A sweetness you can only apprehend for an instant as you pass by.

Portrait of A

 Understanding eyes can be holy.

In the glowing park, you spoke of unending love.

Solace bloomed with wild apple blossoms.