The alchemy of gathering transforms 
us from within: little switches flipped and
mutations gained. Skin pressed into muscle
and muscle pressed to bone, palm in palm and
aura to aura, we grow with each squeeze,
compressed into something new. Come change me,
my loves. Embrace me into my next self, 
guide my evolution with your caress, 
my growth with your closeness. I crave the heat
of instability, reacting to
your you-ing with my me-ness, gaining and
losing, trading blocks to build new castles
and empty old moats, yearning to be grown
and held, reshaped by magic all our own.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Frequent flutters and a constant sizzle,
something like fuzzy electricity jumping
across imperfect connections or
the seventeen-year cicadas screaming
into summer’s stink, crowd me out,
do not hold me, do not embody me,
do not necessarily nudge or nuzzle,
yet always push and pull my gut and
gizzard into inhuman acrobatics:
my brain playing chutes and ladders
with newts and adders, doubt-addled
and mistruth-splattered without 
taking root, just blind branches reaching
for ghost-light, any sign of room to grow,
any word of acknowledgement 
or shadow-sliver of home. No, don’t
fill me up, you frothy frustrations
that urge painful gestations through pesky
garbled permutations too eager to check.
You are not me, so not of me, sow not in me,
grow not, own not, knot not around my mind
nor tourniquet my heart, lungs, spleen,
clean thyself of me by sifting and sieving,
crushed and squeezed by holy tendrils,
breathed out like filthy droplets into
utter innocuousness, untethered and free.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

The battery in the old clock next to my desk
is not quite strong enough to push the second hand
all the way through the thirty-fourth second of the 
wrong minute of the wrong hour. And yet it does 
keep tick-tick-ticking all the same, counting nothing. 

The thin black grid of the window screen boxes up 
the greens and browns of two treetops, their uneven 
branches reaching into each other, out and up,
and the wispy white cloud that slowly slides eastward
through soft blue skies, pixelating the gradient.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

If you believe, as I do, that little 
ripples can stretch into waves and oceans,
then you, too, must worry and fret when your 
finger mis-taps or the milk-pour misses 
your glass. 

The mighty ant that lifts giant leaflets
and carries them back to the mound knows that
its impact is only felt in tandem.
To choose to do is huge, nevermind height 
or mass.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

One tick ’til four, she peaks 
just before disaster 
pours itself onto us; 
adds her weight, builds its churn. 
Rough cycles spin and soak, 
hiding her. Catalyst—
fist raised in full salute, 
lit by the fading sun—
surges forward, lifting 
up the tides: a jail break 
bursting, cacophonous. 
Rivers run unbound and 
echo through the valley. 
A wave and then a snap: 
new bridges to raise up. 
Tears wiped clean, sobs slowing 
to gentle groans, once more
she peeks out grinning, sly.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Heavy and huge, some slowly sighing mass,
expansive I sit, grown by my own breath. 

Liquid rather—a lava pool whose thick 
heat releases gently upward, soft harm;

returned to muck, holed up, hidden, cocoon-
ridden, mid-shift and shapeless; I begin

another period to traverse and
stretch to end. Who could help themselves from this?

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

A tangle of wires, 
switches, screws and circuits
connect us, reach through earth
and air to find their way
from me to you and back. 
Some ordered jumble of
lines and dots, ones and ohs,
sent screaming into space 
by hopeful fingertips
and hungry eyes, dashes
to meet you where you are,
to call for your gaze and
urge you closer to me:
a fire burning red,
impatiently smoking
in giant swirling plumes.
How fast that thicket of
electric sticks sparks and
flames. How bright. How quickly
cut short by water, too.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Who controls your time here, dears?
I mean, the way you spend it,
not how much you can gather 
before the last sand grain falls
and final second hand tics. 

Take it as you take my love:
a deep spirit to savor,
warm your heart and ease your mind;
yours to gulp, bubbly and light, 
refreshing, endless and free.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

What’s this? Where is this
strange place I’ve gone?
So much flatness and grey. 

The work is the same, the pen
between my fingers, the keys 
and the screen. The seltzer
bubbles popping on my tongue.

This cushy chair holds me closer
and extends its arms for me. 
But I miss the ease of your reach,
mid-day dishes and candlelight,
the warmth and the wood.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Bullfrog, waiting, weighs his choices:
fat, flapping suckers flit and fly, 
a smorgasbord abuzz-buzzing. 

Child’s wide eyes flit from fish to fish:
the feint and the flipper, swimmers
flopping from shallow warmth to depth.

Little fingers flap, swat and clench:
dratted distractions bedevil
grand plans of searching and snatching.

Eyelids narrow to a tight squint:
surprising speed; a single fist;
a wriggle; squeal; splash!; and a hop.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week

You live on my lips, my love,
parting them when you dance
and tucked in at bedtime,
all pillows and soft cotton.

You live in my belly, my love,
pulling apart the world
so I can use it to grow,
settling and stoking my flame.

You live in my knees, my love,
greasing my way, easing
the blow of each step as it
reaches forward in the dark.

You live in my little toes, my love,
holding me centered and hiding
behind sandal straps, silently
supporting my unfurling spine.

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love notes
a ritual to start the work week