Everyone else easily slid into their kayaks
except me. Being too short to hop up from
chest high water, the guide instructed me,
“It won’t be pretty but just jump up and
belly flop across the kayak.” Looking
at Jim all secure in our kayak, I obeyed
listening to laughter pealing from
the others. Embarrassed, I righted myself
noticing Jim treading water at the stern.

He was the butt of the joke!

Flipping backwards
from the force of my belly flop.
One guy hollered, “Damn, I put my camera away
this would have won America’s Funniest Video.”

We put our name upon the deed
and claim we own the land,
but its been here for many years
and cared for with special hands.

Stately trees rooted in the earth
many before we came,
should we declare their ownership
and show we’ve staked our claim.

The sun and water bring them life
and through time they’ve survived,
this work of Mother Nature
right before our earthly eyes.

We’re simply humble caretakers
of this ground we call our own,
to cultivate and work the land
and ensure that things are grown.

As stewards of this precious land
to improve while we are here,
to leave the land in better shape
for those who’ll come in later years.

I consume it

Its nectar rolls down my elbow

I bury my face in it

Breath in its musk

Like a fresh breeze on a lake

It revives me

I take another hit

Thinking of another reason to indulge in the addiction

It keeps me alive

Guzzling it down

Water on a summer day

Basking in its warmth

A lizard on a rock

Soaking up its shade

Mushrooms under a tree

Inhaling it

A newly surfaced swimmer

I need it

Just like

I need you

Yes, there is trash at the Gate to Heaven.
After all, we are each carrying
a lot of garbage with us as we arrive.

    Someone has got to keep The Place clean!

But it’s not those who collected the trash
Earth-side.

They are saints.

They were good friends and family–
unofficial therapists,
lovers and partners,
pastors and priests,
strangers who gifted
kindness and respect–
relieving us of our burdens–
but, most of all,
the actual “garbage men”,
who were anything but–

year after year, they 
carried away our refuse,
without complaint or
thanks

purifying our lives–
saints all

discovered…
bones
in Norway 

a woman and
her dog nestled together in
a boat 2,000 years …

…

sun shimmers on a muddy 
lake in Iowa oven hot
I jump in … my black lab

splashes over me as if
to rescue 
I emerge under her belly 

between her strong legs
we mingle cold and
laughing over and over

the skinny man 
watches 
alone unbonded

The signal’s weak out here—just one bar flickers
like a porch bulb gnawed by moths. We pixelate,
our bodies glitching through the net’s strict parameters:
Care. No care. Care with a side of ache.

The foothills don’t care what we name ourselves. The creek
will braid its name through us, will sing off-key
of farm trucks drowned in its brackish teeth.
We kneel anyway, scrub our jeans with wild leek,

press send like a hymn. Our voices crack
as static—Slewfoot, the old ones would’ve hissed,
seeing us twined in greenbrier through the gap
where the fence gave way. But the land won’t miss

our absence–router’s small red eye blinks back,
proof we were here. Proof we were more than light.

that
                                  soothes
                                           by unspooling words: I
         mouth an                                                     incantation

                                                   to
                           dissolve on my tongue,
        breathy
                                             meaning
                                          that

             spills

                   over you.

                            I hoard
                                                                                     names
and language,                                        an allegiance
extended                                                        to

      stories                                              I
                                                                  construct

                                                                                         with
what I knew of  
           
  an
arbor,
lying in bed at night,
gauging the                                                     hollow

        of        time                          by the
hum

in the room.     

~  An erasure of pages 10-11 of Lia Purpura’s book of essays, Rough Likeness 

Cancer is a cardinal sign
heralding the arrival of a new season
But unlike the forceful direction of its counterparts Libra, Capricorn, Aries
the watery nature
              of summer
       slips through my fingers
and Cancer’s emo-moody mooniness
is like sliding into the depths
of the unknown.

Summer is both alluring and foreboding in its unboundedness
This summer
the siren song is amplified
as we un-couple
I vacillate between
cutting a course through the waves to a glittering port of call
and losing my self
           in the tides.
A New Moon says, “Begin again.”
only she knows
what that means. 

Forgive me, Father,
for I’ve moved in.

By day, I wear trainers and a canvas tote,
admire the fresco fragments.
But when the bells go still
and the guard bolts the north door,
I slide behind the unicorn tapestries
and sigh
like a secret.

I live here now.
You may have heard me
treading the Fuentidueña apse,
sweeping the limestone with my hem,
drawing water from the courtyard fountain
in a chipped twelfth-century bowl.
The sound of quill on vellum?
Also me.

I levitate by St. Margaret
during evening meditations,
catnap in the millefleurs,
nibble on stale wafers and docent’s alms.
Sometimes I steep mugwort in holy water.
I dream better that way.

Each night I visit one of you —
last night, the Bishop
with the falcon stare and missing hand —
tonight, the Father of the Broken Nose.
You seem understanding.

I tell you this because
the stones here listen better
than the living ever did,
because you don’t interrupt,
because you’ve seen centuries of women
wishing for peace
and settling for quiet corners.

Mind if I stay?