a ritual to start the work week
The bottom layer of gray breaks
briefly enough to reveal brilliance
that dances around us always,
a wide open reflection of our depth
and potential, of our history and
mystery. Returned to our corners,
these glimpses may be all
we get, may be all we need.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Through a low ceiling of creeping
branches on a night when
the moon forgot how to shine,
a single lantern reveals
each step as it comes.
Yet by the time it peeks
its cautious head beyond
the tree line, the path behind
teems with needy seekers
who follow its soft warmth
and the shadow who holds it
high in the dense wooded depths,
the first star, rising anew.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
A leopard-spotted sky slides
toward sunrise, magnetized
by new whys, uncertain what
waits farther west. Birds fly
south or hunker down, dark
crosses crossing the yellow-
splotched blue to escape
the cold or folding
into themselves, nestling where
the prowling orange tabby below
can’t see. Trees shed their dresses,
cast their ballots down just
as they always have, naked
bark calling quietly upward, unsure
if their votes for growth and
for rest, recovery and rebirth
will be counted.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Decades-old cheers tingle, echoing
upper-vertebrae open and
an army of forearm hairs
leap to attention remembering
a fandom becoming a family,
thousands of anonymous bodies
electrified by a perfect string
of shared moments.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Hum and rumble reverberate
between bone and muscle, up
the right leg, bouncing behind
the knee cap. Hubcaps spin faster
as toe presses, knowing a moment
of truth waits just far enough
ahead. As the fork approaches,
an inner map populates, the head
fills with minute details, memories
of traffic patterns and weather
delays, flashes of yellows and reds,
the whether or not this morning
will be different, if some loss
will slow our momentum. As
the leg shifts and toe hits brake,
final arguments close in. In
the right’s defense, it is slightly
more traveled, the gravel just
ever so subtly smoother, its sights
a mite more familiar. And though
unknown potholes may await,
as the foot returns to accelerate,
the left hand takes the lead, taking
us a way that may not lead us
toward righteousness, but could
never really be deemed wrong.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Does the bud know
the bloom it will become?
How its petals will unfurl
just so? Does it know
the sacred architecture
it holds? The radiant
perfection it will unfold
when it wakes, bleary
one morning? Or does
its dance and delicacy,
its curves and fecundity
surprise even itself?
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Leaves lean away from their branches,
tempting air to take them, lower them
slowly home, tokens of love returned
to nurture their earthen partners below,
short scribbled notes and brief kisses
slipping from you to me and back again.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
S L A T E
C R O W N
P A T C H
M A T C H
S T A R E
P I N C H
S P A R K
H E A R T
S L I N G
B L A D E
P L A C E
F L A M E
S H A L T
L I G H T
S P E C K
W O U L D
C H A R M
M A N I C
M A G I C
love notes
a ritual to start the week
We lean on each other in heaps
awaiting some savior to file us away,
turn our turmoil and devastated disarray
into a library of broken spines,
realigned and rebound one page at a time.
Compile us, we plead. Come,
pile us. Rake us up like leaves.
Break us, again, if you must. But
remake us so that we may be remembered
together: a collection; a community
of hurt and exhaustion; a reservoir
of survival; a wildfire flicking
at the gates of Alexandria, hungry
and hunting he who would erase us.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
All the good things hurt —
the pain of growing, loving, living
all mere redundancies,
the same ache by another name.
Such fertile blooms, heavy
with pollen and cloying, claw
at our eyes and inflame our sinuses,
tear at our insides so that we may
expand into the fissures.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
