Just After Twilight

There is no end to the blame
Or the depths of pain.

We all bear not only our own history
But our ancestry.

There’s no way to even the score.

We must, like children, cry,

Olly olly all come free!

Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in children's games such as hide and seek, capture the flag, and kick the can, to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that position of the sides has changed, or, alternatively, that the game is entirely over.
Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in children’s games such as hide and seek, capture the flag, and kick the can, to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that position of the sides has changed, or, alternatively, that the game is entirely over.

Back to the Garden

Not one more word.
I will go back to gardening,
Which is really all I ever do anyway.

I don’t know why these moods come upon me–
Why I cannot stay.

I know. I do know.
Seasons change.
I am an annual blown by the wind
Visiting established gardens.

They don’t know who I am
And I am gone again.


“Not to love is a failure of the imagination.”
I know someone said this to me once or I read it but I can’t remember who or where.
It came into my head this morning,
Watching rainbow prisms upon the wall.

I will care for my garden.


(Where my garden meets your garden is also my garden.)

Blessed Are the Trodden

Blessed are the trodden, with their faces in the dirt,
Who process what the rest refuse to see.

The thing most do not know
Is that without exception each must deal with their own shit–
Ain’t no way another can take your load.

Neither cash nor coercion can contract that labor out.

Scapegoat, or the Blue Bottle Fly

Freedom to be a fuck up.
Freedom to dive into the muck,
Smeared with shit.

But you know there’s a reason we’re doing this.
Compelled to do this.
Natural urge.

Are we worms, breaking down the garbage–
                Last year’s leaves,
                Last night’s cold silence?

Breaking it down,
Raking the ashes
Where the phoenix will rise?

Dispatch from the Frozen Tundra

Last night was crazy—the wind blowing from the west and into my apartment, every crack a gale. I went out with Lucy when I got home (around 4:45, so we can walk before the coyotes come out). But the wind…we had gone only a little way before I realized we couldn’t even take a short walk safely. So we turned around and I started to shout at the wind—joyfully, playfully. I said, You go girl!! And the wind increased! It blew harder and I was a puny human and shouted all the more, laughing. This was coming around the house to my door, and I was confident, so close to home. Then I tried to take my snowshoes off, and my fingers started freezing immediately. I couldn’t get them off and I couldn’t feel my fingers. Shouting to Lucy now, to come on, we’ve got to get inside snowshoes and all, but she walks away from me, scared of my shouting and snowshoe banging, so I shout harder, telling her we’ve got to get in! She comes, and we get in, and I realize how stupid I am, saying You go girl to Nature. Mother Nature.

The wind blew from the west all evening and well into the night. I fell asleep—after plugging the cracks in my doors and windows with every spare towel, sock, scarf—with my hat on, blankets pulled up over my face. It felt like a bad wind. An attack. A reminder of my precariousness.

After the Storm

After the Storm

I saw a coyote

We were walking up the dirt road that cuts midpoint in the short loop around the farm, and I had just reminded myself of what I wanted to remember from earlier in our walk:

Why would you ever want to be any place but here and now?
Where you have a choice.

…Just coming up the hill toward our turn for home. Lucy is interested in something ahead, away from where we are going. Not tugging-me interested like it is a deer, but definitely interested. I’m noticing but not thinking much of it when I glance up and see, about 50 feet away in the misty light, a male wolf. It nods once and brings its head up looking to its left. A mild shock runs through me and I whistle–three short and one long that curves upward–then turn right for home.

Of course it couldn’t be a wolf. Must be one of those coyotes that have been howling in the distance come near. It would be easy to succumb to fear, but aside from the prompts of my programmed experience I am not afraid. I feel a masculine presence and see that nod.

I sent my thanks and the blessings I had then to give, and came home and wrote this.

This world, every day, all around, is for us to witness and love.

Ugly Duckling

Now I float upon the cool water,
My webbed feet gently keeping me true
As I breathe and come to.

Here I am upon the calm water~
The ungraceful dance,
Frantic footwork to be what I am not,
Is over.

In the distance swans take flight~
Recognition leaps in my heart
And my wings give a sympathetic shake.

Now, here, I am what I am.
My webbed feet paddle the cool water,
Moving me forward, swift and sure

Until yearning meets with knowing,
And I unfold large, beautiful wings
That carry the drumming of my heart
Across the years and vast deserts I have traveled.

In a moment,
Through a flurry of sun-kissed water,
I am airborne,
Flying to meet my mates.

Sherman

Sherman Treebeard

8.21.02

I Stop

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.
~Walt Whitman

[Context: I had run away from home (for a week. yes I did set a time limit. mother of two after all–maybe not the best, but the only one.) because pretty much everything I had built my world on–my belief in what was the right way, who were the right people…the right according to everything I’d been fed and swallowed (or rebelled against and paid for dearly)–had fallen in rubble to the ground. Bad scene but also a chance to pick and choose what you’ll build with this time. If you can survive. (Which you can.)]

 

∞ ∞ ∞

Brand-new, clean notebook. All possibilities exist here. I love paper, and it hardly costs a thing. This 70-page, spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook cost 25¢ at Wal-Mart. It is one of the best-kept secrets of our time.

My feet are speckled with gray, the rim around my toenails black. I have a black smudge on my calf, just below a freckle, which is itself below the scar that is a reminder to me of Albert…nope–can’t remember his last name. Italian. Started with a C. These marks on my calf form a constellation–an anchor, perhaps. Here I sit, on my eldest son’s camp chair, up in the North Country. Sharp Bridge Campground, 40 sites and the cleanest bathroom I’ve ever had the pleasure of using while camping.

I wanted to write a little before doing the dishes, even though it will get dark soon. So much of my life is spent going, doing, or planning on going and doing that I almost never get the chance to just sit and daydream, or notice the activities of the little ones–worms, ants. A giant bug flew into my campsite this afternoon–I heard it rather than saw it at first–a dark humming, more bass than bee, and when I caught the movement that went with the sound I was prepared to get nervous if this creature did not go soon. But then it stopped moving and hovered in the air for a moment; it looked at me and I smiled and said, “Ahh! a hummingbird. Thank you.”

Sharp Bridge Campsite, August 2002

It dawns on me that I have a tendency to expect too much from people. More specifically, I expect them to be “better” than I am–more enlightened, more understanding, more generous. I don’t expect this from everybody, but I do tend to expect this from those I admire, and often from those whom I love.

Sharp Bridge Campground

Sharp Bridge Campground in North Hudson, NY. Photo by Michael Lechasseur.

It is the morning after an afternoon and evening of rain. Every patch of sky I see supplies a crisp blue outline for the pine needles way up there. Long streams of sunlight lay upon the ground, flowing and shimmering when a breeze moves the trees. The white pines grow cathedrallike here–columns shooting straight up to the fronds at top. Steam rises from the ground and the trunks. We are all glad for the rain. We all need it deep down and often. And it does make the sunshine so sweet.