a ritual to start the work week
smoking wicks and steamy mirrors
show little more than remnants
blurry outlines of what
we thought we knew
overcast’s edge creeps closer
revealing moment by moment
millimeters and miles of sky
that far away seas turn blue
foggy memories jockey
for focus tumbling over
each other to fill the distance
between me and you
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
like far flung tumbleweed,
uprooted, hunched and haunted
from wandering, from peering
through its tangled limbs at
a world that won’t stop spinning,
unable to see the splendor,
so caught up in the framing
of its own broken branches
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Head east toward sunrise,
toward rootedness, toward home.
Turn left onto your own path
away from the throngs.
Follow signs of your joy
and in deference to your feet
arrive and arrive —
achieve, reach and be.
love notes
a ritual to start the work week
Love does, doesn’t it?
Writes the song and plays it
Sows the field and reaps it
Builds the nest and empties it
Raises the gun as well as the white flag
Takes as well as it gives
Hides as well as it shines
— better, in fact —
Nuzzles deep into the marrow
To be copied and indelible
Ever asking the question
And waiting
As long as it must
For an answer
love notes
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
