a ritual to start the work week
If you miss the beginning,
give the middle a shot.
And if the middle eludes you,
give the end the best you’ve got.
And when the inevitable happens
and the end also passes you by,
don’t let the losses delay you:
give the next beginning a try.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Eleven doves line the streetlight,
awaiting some peace to announce.
A barren tree holds a flock
of roosting vultures, restless
above the hospital before
some feast, as a hawk perches
nearby, its mate swooping
for a closer look.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Still — sole-to-sole,
tip-to-tip to
feel floor below,
wall behind — held.
Still dizzied by
our hurtling,
orbit and spin,
gut-sick, weightless.
Still within heats
and purifies
into essence.
Held, hurled and honed.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Shoulds fizzle under my skull,
someone else’s wretched designs
caught within. What want, I wonder,
do they reveal? What desire
quivers to be noticed?
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
No end in sight, only more
choice, piling up like alarm
blares at sunrise. Yellow leaps
off the horizon, nice things
just out of reach. For worry
keeps us homebound,
protecting some precious
unknown from becoming ours.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Sirens cry in the streets (choose joy)
Bad news breaks in our hands (choose joy)
Bitterness spills from our cups (choose joy)
Smoke rises from the land (choose joy)
Wealth compounds out of reach (choose joy)
Power bends us in half (choose joy)
Hunger tugs at our guts (choose joy)
Fear eats on our laps (choose joy)
… (choose joy) … (choose joy) … (choose joy) … (choose joy) …
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
We see each other peeking
between clenched teeth,
white-knuckled brains straining
to spin and climb, gain
the slightest sliver to light
a path away from our pain.
So why not glow — burn
ochre against slate skies; cry
sappy tears from our tapped
trunks, eyes sunken under
knotted fists; leave our roots
to recharge — and release into
the fall?
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Cosmos bloom fuchsia-pink,
eight-pointed star between
my fingertips. Directionless
as the fog lifts, no way but up
off this island. No hero, here —
he wrote, hopefully or woefully
we may never know — only
waves echoing prayer-like out
into the infinite, uninhibited
beyond.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Nectar opens endlessly, unstable
unable to keep from filling
eager nostrils with its
sweetness, forever wafting, volatile
and vulnerable, taken
and given and giving and
taking, using our self-sustaining
insatiability for its own ends
and endings and beginnings.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
all this static
and mental crossfire
have my brain waves
going hay-wire
fighting battles
with no foes
and trading secrets
with no codes
but I know
closed blinds
don’t let sun shine
into cobwebbed corners
morning finds me
awake and aching
already exhausted
from night-years
of longing of woe
as one below
of one above
we wander
wondering why
we feel so alone
split by our wills
and our wealth
hiding inside
our selves
and our cells
finding mighty cons
to busy our minds
while our newness
keeps its peace
marginalized
but creeping
note by blotted note
into its own
center
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
From choosing stop over snooze to
missing the third hup-two in my
moisturizing regimen (merely
watching the minutes whizz by),
minor slippages erode my
morning routine like this September
rain feeds high mountain streams
after a parched August. Perhaps
they’ll rediscover their beds
farther down hill as they
speed toward patient low lakes.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
