L, abbreviated
Lavender Light Lingering…
Licorice Longing
Liberates Languishing Love’s
Liminal Limerance
Lavender Light Lingering…
Licorice Longing
Liberates Languishing Love’s
Liminal Limerance
Eighty-two thousand
four hundred twelve words
in the fourth revision:
a scorched Midwest landscape
imagined, written, edited, rewritten,
and then, like a barn riddled
with rotten beams, abandoned.
Young Luna left alone
poised at the gate left ajar—
Rising action swirls in my memory
like shingles in a tornado;
falling action settles thick on barren fields
edged with hardscrabble hangers on
honeysuckle, chokecherry,
plastic debris, tiny rodents, ants,
beetles, skinny scavengers
a few lizards eke life
from exhausted soil I once seeded
with hopes, watered with gentle feedback,
plot raked up stone by stone, pulled apart
fortified with better dialogue
and still
lost to drought, after all that.
Even now, I think of Luna, at that gate.
Sometimes as I walk (all these years later)
a hawk circles above, broad-winged cruciform
shadow dogging my path,
like a dark angel
watching for breath in the stillness.
Anne Burrell taught me how to handle a knife.
She never stained my finger red,
cause I made sure it was tucked right.
My family used to point at the TV,
jokingly stating, “You belong on the show.”
I used to serve hockey puck cookies.
The pork chops were cooked twice to death.
The smoke alarm warned me that someone else should do the cooking.
But Anne Burrell taught me how to chop an onion.
Keep the hairy end. Slices. Sticks. Dices.
She frightened everyone on the kitchen floor. The white hair,
her sharp tongue, the look that could instantly boil water.
I would have hated being on her team. I only watched because of Anne Burrell.
Now her red apron is passed on to another,
but they wear it differently. It’s not the same.
My cooking is not the same. Slices. Sticks. Dices.
No one points at the TV anymore, telling me that
I belong on the show.
A skeleton in black armor approaches astride a white horse
holding a black flag emblazoned with the Mystic Rose of life.
The Emperor lies dead underfoot, the crown tumbled to the ground.
To attempt to resist is to be immediately overcome.
The Hierophant stands with hands outstretched in prayer.
To negotiate is futile.
On her knees, the maiden surrenders.
To gracefully accept is to allow change to happen as it should.
The child faces the skeleton, offering a white rose.
To embrace change without fear is to accept the gift in it.
This card does not signify physical death but
transition, change, movement to a new phase.
In the distance the Sun shines
between the towers of imagination.
This is a mystical death.
This is the death of the present self
to reach higher consciousness.
summer evening
on northern Oregon beach
pelicans lineup single file
for
warmth
security
community
like several brown railroad cars one after another after another . . .
bring loads
grace
healing
protection
friendliness
self-forgiveness
pod leaves at sunset
regal
graceful
flight
glide
in unison
on their
way home
I settle into daily life
after sick-on-vacation strife;
relax into comfortable
routines that enable
me to focus on breath
and no longer feel like death
warmed over. A few days
filled with stormy haze.
Time to do post-trip laundry
among the all-and-sundry
things I have on my list
before I pack my bags amidst
preparations for the next trip.
Let ‘er rip!
Tell me the count of twigs and horsehairs
that robin wove to make her three-chick lair,
and the volume of her song at dawn.
When muscle birthed those hatchlings,
she cleaned them of their fecal sacs,
and soothed them in the early dew.
Did dew nourish both body and soul?
What attachment has she?
My daughter’s young child looks up,
a sudden awakening of instinct—
as primal as the one above.
Of our shared offspring, I tally the love.
