a ritual to start the work week
Divinity can’t be taken from us, friends —
carved away by practiced hands,
edited out as a typo or forgotten
like ghosts or silent letters. Our
wholeness and our holiness flows
past frustrations, through deletions,
over our errors, smoothing their edges.
Comfort not in our connectivity, but
in our continuity — the flower
and the bed, the ink sown into
the page — and rest, friend. Rest.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
The comfort in circles, in cycles, in growth
still chills in long winter nights.
Still pangs and oozes in the pruning.
Still sizzles and melts in the flames.
To comfort in change
is to ache and to break
and to love
that we won’t be the same.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Dregs of the year’s cheers
dry semi-circles
in bottoms of cups —
incomplete and primed
possibilities.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Cold metal hooked under our knees,
limits on our vision fall with our shirts
over our heads, showing off our soft
bellies to our bullies, busy with touch,
tagging and tackling. The cracked third-eye
that hangs from my neck drops into place,
refracting our broken world whole again,
only when this wood floor crowns me
and my bare feet dangle in the sky.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Care goes as care comes — the energy of
empathy flows while halting repression
stutters unstopped. Care interrupts only
with care — to reverse it or remake it,
we need first to know it needs it. Oh we,
oh why, oh wither, oh fly! Find patience
enough to eye and finger the present
as it’s bestowed. Be it bedazzled or
bedraggled, best to know before it’s stowed,
let alone repacked, rewrapped and resown.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
A house turned upside-down
in the morning makes it
easy to forget the earth
lies still below, the air
soars above, equally
eager to be grown into.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
ghosts in the stairwells;
ghosts in the dance halls;
ghosts in the aisles; repeat
ghosts on the highways;
ghosts on the sidewalks;
ghosts in the trees; repeat, repeat
ghosts in the textbook;
ghosts at the statehouse;
ghosts in the sightglass; repeat
ghosts hear our questions;
ghosts know the answers;
ghosts keep their peace; repeat, repeat
love notes
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
