a

      house                              lived in,

                a
family,
                       a community.

                                                                            The  stories
                                              still
                                                                                walk,

            fire,

                                                                                               give
rest,
                                           a
                                                  presence

                           shaping                                                        my

                                                       course.

~ Erasure of p. 60 in The Delicacy & Strength of Lace, Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright, edited by his daughter Anne Wright  

It’s coming through like feedback
from the god-channel —
part poem, part engine-reverie.

The leather buzzes like an oracle,
headlights slicing open the veil.

Orpheus is leaking from the speaker,
moonlight’s caught in your rearview,
and the highway’s humming prophecy in 4/4 time.

You drive like you remember dying
while the music sings, “come back.”

No static. Just signal forward.

But if you’re ready —
yes, let’s turn the dial.

It was a long slow wailing of moon that drove them mad it was a sound that only dogs could hear in their beds at night the sound would draw them out to darkness hearing the moon’s golden horns like a trumpet playing moonlight into sound poets came out of their cocoons to listen to the magic of moon in trees stars in their hair sea in their ears all the dogs in the world could not match the strange perfect harmony of the wind’s madness but they tried every night to bring the sky down with their strange howling circus mesmerized by moonbeams caught in the cacophony of starlight and the dust of a million harvested frogs and the dna of a thousand stranded motorists honking like geese in the asylum.

typing
with my eyes closed
a leap
into the chasm of mind
with no parachute

is an open
window  

where spice-fringed words
flutter white lace curtains  

the sun’s softer self
casts its artistry upon the wall                                                                         

dew-spangled figments                
carouse the giddy lilac  

dreams stretch their opus                   
to sky’s lyrical promise              

and poets rise
singing                                                    

                                                             
                                                              Thanks for all the inspiration this month!     

                                                              Dear Editors:  I am a fan of including Coleman’s “Thingy”                                                                   into the title of this year’s anthology.  

the world can sometimes take my breath away
I’d forgotten this
all these years on   things seems to be balanced on provision and enough
yet today

walking the dog
a rote route  we both memorized long ago
instead of listening with buds popping
I saw

the yellow finches tipping head over heels for a drink
the neighbor around the corner and down a bit
smile and say hello
the passing car not so much get along
as draw near and see

these things take work
years of

this wisdom
surprise

I walk around their house as though traces of memories will creep out & overwhelm me. I walk tenderly. The dry grass from the drought is crushed by each step. A white plastic wastebasket lays on its side near the back door. The walk is covered in grassy weed debris. The hammock is rusted & torn. No one will sit in it mom had said, speaking for her past self, the self that would never truly relax.

What’s the formula

for disposing of the past

when no rituals

It’s what gets left behind that tears a family apart. Yes,  you can’t take it with you is one reason to not cling to material goods. The other is who is going to go through it when you’re gone? Perhaps it’s best if someone else is the filter, sells them at auction or takes them to Goodwill. To unravel the life of parents could take a lifetime, every item touched a memory re-lived, analyzed, deconstructed.

A stray tinfoil

lays crumpled covered with sprouts

from an old rose bush

I hear the roar of wind in the trees. It’s the kind of morning my mom would’ve hung clothes on the line to dry. Furniture is scattered on the front porch, wind chimes collide, books remain on shelves, souvenir bells wait on the mirrored shelf next to their 50th anniversary silver plate. Siblings have been broken apart. Family  photos with smiles from 50 years have been replaced by quibbling &  quarreling & questions of what goes to whom & why.  In the case of money, it’s easy. The  case for mementos, knickknacks & photographs, is more difficult.

the mantra let go

all the more important yet

unattainable.

She asked God for a baby – not a human
child, just some tender new
root of a thing to love. In the garden 

she scooped up the helpless
furred creature found curled
among spring-green shoots, 

never bothered to consider
whether it already had a mother.
What should we make of it now

that the blessing she named
and claimed has died in a box 
under fluorescent lights?

How foolish to believe
simply getting what we want
always means an answered prayer.

The ocean is gentle today.
The sky is a gray mattress.
Humidity hangs in the air
like an old TV show.  

The rest of fam damn
is off playing laser tag.
It’s just you and me, my love,
embraced in our peace.  

Thanks everyone for a wonderful month of poetry