previously published poems

The Blue Flame (published in Skyline)


When I step there
you and I are swept
into the past
and the future
all at once.

When the joy-light
leaps from your heart
through your eyes,
it bathes me--
washes away
my well-tended walls
that you asked for.

I can't help myself.
I've always known you...
we've ruled together
in some ancient culture...
fought for the frontier
in a newer culture.

How long can you
hold off
the brilliance
of this blue flame?

I'm beginning
to fall into it
and all I want
from you is
the pleasure
of standing near.












Insufficient Funds (Hudson View)


People can die of
a broken heart
you know.

I can't afford
that look on your face.

There isn't enough
in my piggy-bank
saved up for you.

Don't hold me
that close,
I forgot where I hid
the cash under the mattress.

Don't say things like that:
a foolish girl
closed the books
on this one
a long time ago.

She got
carried away,
and spent
oh so much
all in one
investment.















In memory of Bessie, Kathleen, Addie, and Cora

Farmwoman’s Initiation (after the style of Sappho)
(Between, Journal of Pacifica Grad. Inst.)

When you were young, Bessie,
with golden hair tumbling to your knees
you caught rain in a magic bowl
and washed your hair there.
The goddess knew what you were about.
Then rain and mystery you gave my mother,
she, the sweet one, of silvery laughter’s darling,
and then to me, the uninitiated.

I was brought to rain’s softness
and you called me to be brave
go out and walk barefoot in the dew
with nothing on but my nightgown
made of pale moonlight
now diaphanous in the morning sun.

Is there no relief or understanding
of the pain in my womb, mothers?
These nymphs have dug up
the sacred sassafras root
boiled it and blessed it
given it to me to drink.
A potion from mothers to daughters
from that sacred thicket
and all is well—only good has come of these things
since Aphrodite blew her kisses.
















Bears (Alchemy on Sunday--PGI)

This one I’ve never heard
but I remember the old mountain story
about the woman who is tricked
and hands her baby over the fence
to a bear who she thinks is her husband…
and I have dreams about bears
they change into people and change back
I change into a bear and change back
I sit in a tree and sing to one
until fierceness turns docile
like a puppy.
I dream of looking out a high window
below is snow
a black bear is rolling
I see the moonlight reflected
on his belly.
god, I miss those blue mountains
it’s a pain in my throat and the only place
that causes me to cry when I see it and when I don’t.

So we’re all kin and we’ve all married
our kin and we continue to find them
we continue to look for their twinkling eyes
in the hills of every place.
One may come lumbering out of a cave
give itself shape apart from the trees
look like me and feel like me.

Why do I miss it? The thing I’ve never had?
it was a distant backdrop to my childhood dramas
but a visit is a visitation
the place where mist is at dawn
where I fished on the Shenandoah
where morning glories dot even the sun.
Stories of bears reside in my flesh
what is commonplace there
becomes extraordinary elsewhere.

Aunt Han Ran may have used a broom
to chase that bear off her back porch
I’ll invite him in to sit by the fire
dust the snow from his fur
and ask for all the things he knows.
I’ll bid him stay till spring
he may tell me where the treasure is hid
or what enchantment he is in.

I am close in nature and nature
is close inside me. Woods and Mountains
become my house and call me.
if I don’t have you covering me
I dream of bears and an ancient wooden door
and my daddy calls and tells me mountain lore.











Mother Moon (Sojourn UT@Dallas & UU church cville onlin)


Shall I take up this conversation again?
A question from me
that rises to mother moon.
Yet if I cannot believe her
who can I believe?
She speaks of hope
of beauty
of change
in nightly perspective.

“Remember, I reflect,”
she says…
the conversation
doesn’t stop here
it continues
in whoever gazes
who chooses to see
to hope, to reflect…







Baptized in the James River, Richmond, Virginia 1978
(Alchemy on Sunday PGI)

The brown James
old with blood
caught my body
once
when I was old
with youth
standing in the current
I died to the old
rising up
I was born to the new.
Arms brought me up
too weak for such
symbols of power
we danced on the water
danced on the shore
too young
for such an old
tired brown river.

In memory
I can’t believe myself
but in the mind’s eye
I see a familiar:
the muddy James
an old waterloo-
sad city
an old tired religion
letting go
into the river it sinks.
There is comfort in murk.
Who can tell the difference
between death and re-birth
when being lost
is the song
of the river?
When having lost

murmurs from the shadows
under the tree branches?
All is symbol

for such a river.










The Missed River (Between PGI)

In the dream
the river wide
flowing quickly past
Great Aunt Grace, my father, and I
without words
watch the river flowing.

The Shenandoah
muddy river skimmed
with dancing dragonflies
surrounded by mountains
our blue and purple ridges.

The river full of memory
of generations of us.
The river flows past
with the story of time
once upon it we boated
fished for catfish
what a lot of trouble they be.

In the dream
we watched the river flow freely.
I turned to great-aunt grace
one hundred years old
puzzled as to why
she had come back from death
to be here watching with me.

She answered,
“I missed this river so much.”
My daddy behind her smiled
they had both crossed that river
but came back to join me
in the watching of the missed river.








In my end is my beginning…

T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets”


This robe of snow and winter stars,
The devil take it, wear it too.
It might become his hole of blue.


Wallace Stevens, “Snow and Stars”
in Ideas of Order


Wilderness (Between)


Leave your name behind
enter here to seek
that which you wish
find that which
you are not looking for
do not think of intentions
or of boundaries
this is not a place
where in the dark
you can find your way
by touch
this is not familiar.

Yet in this forest
it is quiet
the silence in-between things
my breath forms a cloud
the night sky is loud
with stars and trees
stand tall speaking
with only posture
the sky now shiny black
has begun to drop feathers.
I forgot how snow
makes no sound.

Memories float through my
waiting mind:
(what is it I’ve come here for?
but to allow the cold air
to come in a snowflake pattern
through my mind
heavy with fixity)
in the garage
my brothers and I
will wax the toboggan the sleds, the skates
find the hockey sticks
tomorrow is full of plans
of nothing, but snow.
Indoors is enemy territory
land of temporary Mom
refuge for numb fingers,
then urgently must
get back outside.

Once my brothers built igloos
from the world of nothing
came a white entrance
into nothing-ness
where only children could go
so many crammed in there
that it became—something
and lost its play.

Now I feel compelled
to build my fire
dry wood is in my pack
I want to see what will happen
when I mix fire and ice.

Though I’ve built fires before
and watched them until
a chemical change
came about in my brain
and time and safety
made a home in me.

Now I want to see
how fire alters this beauty
a landscape outside me.

It is this deep painful desire
for beauty that drives me.

When the flakes hit the fire
they say “ssssss…”
I watch and the night dances
snow, trees, air, stars, fire
they watch my sudden fluidity.

I laugh as I consider
in snow-less Dallas
how stars and snow
also dance here together:

unintentional pearls.

Deep in the forest
is an enchanted princess
each night she sits
by a water-well
she takes off her mask
of ugliness and her beauty
shines forth like the day.
She weeps tears of pearl
and so unintentionally,
by happenstance,
leaves a trail
for her past
and her future
to find her.















“He stood among a crowd at Dromaair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care…” W.B. Yeats


Rainy Night (Sojourn UT@Dallas)

Sparkles in the night

dark early falls

sinking deep

to feel in this mood

something primeval

the beautiful old void

delicious grey

tinkling drops

where fairies live

though this wet is

wild and gloomy

it’s an intravenous drip

to the desiccate imagination

now that my feet are warm and dry

and my heart

is all wrung out

and set before the fire

like a silken dress.






Spring for Edwin (Parabola & Skyline)


I went out to meet
the wind half-way;
something new is always
turning up,
though the crows complain.

When Mom died
Daddy went to the ocean
to meet the tossing--
the change halfway.

It should be winter
longer than this.
For a very long time
I should be buried
in snow.

It seems wrong
that the very day
you were buried
change should ripple
out in such a way--

Everything blooms in shock.

The spring equinox has come
and someone else will
be the teller of the seasons
since you are strangely silent.

Yet the master of language
you are, now speaks
in perfect metaphor—wind,
the red-bud tree, the deer
in the back yard...

You continue,
evenso,
my heart is in some
snowy place.

selections from "Dreams and Visions" chapter of chapbook

To Travel Well


The importance of traveling
is to make nooks
of time with presence
compare and contrast
experience as time
folded into space
to put one’s stamp
upon a corner of strangeness
to greet the universe
to move with expansion
open a pocket of sensation
to then fall into a well
of sleep with the effort
of the spirit’s imperialism.




The Listening Time


Late in the night

is the listening time

the opening to possibility

deliberate nothing

dreams may come

rain may thunder

pound the roof

while in the un-do-

journeys in that other place

angels tend toward me

even in the waiting gap

just out of ear-shot

they dance throwing

bits of glimmer

thoughts of wholeness

through time’s tiny rip here

while I listen

in the noise

of simply living.





Oh Christmas Tree

1.

Another time comes
dawning over mind
seeping from this weary soul
a Christmas yet to be
a magic to be sung
when just like this one
a Christmas tree will glimmer.

2.

Dreaming this child and song
her lyrics are Shakespearean
the music is a salve
healing my wounded heart
and as the little child sang
the healing song I gathered
and in the distance
was the man
I once lived for
he watched me being healed
from the far horizon
the song transported me
so that I floated to the ground
as in a faint, as if slain
by some holiest of spirits.

3.

When I pressed this pear
into my mouth and drank
I saw the Valley of Euphrates
murmuring as I reveled in it
“the Valley of Euphrates”
I didn’t know the garden of Eden
till now. I didn’t know fruit.
I didn’t know why Eve
could not resist till now
and why she was the stronger
to have given in the sooner
to taste is to know
the smell of God
to know love, to be human
and why on the first day of Christmas
the partridge sits there.




The Gift of the Hermit

I understand the hermit
the music of silence
heals the aching heart
to truly listen
is never to be lonely
but always to be lonesome.

Some senses become keen
hearing and sight
smell and knowing
touch fades from fuchsia
to midnight blue of night
passion shifts
until one feels inside
the smallest rustle
in the underbrush of Ethiopia
and the stillness of here.

But the hermit
does not ask fo pity
she knows this partial life
its grief has made her wise
take your portion
eat and drink it
for its own riches
nothing more
but especially nothing less
love grows bigger
every day
until you think
surely by now
you will burst
but there’s no limit to this growing
only your feet
feel lighter
half of you is here
and half is in heaven
where every day
they drink champagne
and eat chocolate
and never grow tired of it
it’s the inside that’s changed now.

In the end
if the gift is evolved
in silence and secret
in the perfection
of what is made
you must give it all away
but to the living and free
in exchange of flesh and spirit
move this big light out
and have show and tell
taking the dear dead with you
otherwise the gift will burn down
this hermitage
and all the music with it.



Pleurisy

Jesus is pruning the trees
see how the branches shake
with every snip a tear
rolls down my face
time for a cleaning out
make way for the new
this passage is made painful
with every breath
inner time envisions
a galaxy of marbles
but blind to what this need is
until the monsters are slain
and the war is over
I exact this information
to love with patience the locked doors
secrets the heart keeps from itself.

Now the work is done

I have a freshly sweated face.




I Must Sing


Why do I live?

Because of the rings around Saturn.
Because the Welsh must sing.
Because of Fragonard and
the lady perpetually on a swing.
Because Mozart existed I exist;
he is the color of violets in the spring.
Live because of the eternal
nature of the sweet ring
of familiarity. I know you darling
angel light unashamed—bring
your joy to crack and melt
the dusty veil I held thin
around my soul. Mozart changed
the world and now I must sing.
How can I do otherwise honestly?
Through trials, journeys, despair, war
little birds and Mozart still sing
and I hear them better than before.




Bridges


I’ve seen so many bridges
dreamed of ancient gatekeepers
a fluffy white dress
and dogs that fly me
through the gates to the big house

I’ve come from a far off land
an alien amongst you
somehow I’ve won your love

my wandering isn’t over though
and soon another bridge
will magically appear
when the river is too wide
to ford safely
first the bridge appears
then the river
and it’s time to cross
with my children and animals

a trumpet will sound ahead
the elephants will parade first
to announce our strangeness

and like a dream I had once
I will see more names
written on the wings of an angel

I will never forget you

but for now let’s toast
to the mystical tension

between order and freedom.



The Future

I want to give a pure call
deep and untainted

my life is veiled
its meaning shielded

I exist with history
personal and public
forever watching
in some ways I cannot
enter the ordinary
and the ticket-holder
may pass by me
at any time

there is no script

but suddenly an opening
I must go and see
have my bags packed

the roll of oceans
take me—and also
keep me back

and I don’t know
from what.

Spring for Edwin

I went out to meet
the wind half-way;
something new is always
turning up,
though the crows complain.

When Mom died
Daddy went to the ocean
to meet the tossing--
the change halfway.

It should be winter
longer than this.
For a very long time
I should be buried
in snow.

It seems wrong
that the very day
you were buried
change should ripple
out in such a way--

Everything blooms in shock.

The spring equinox has come
and someone else will
be the teller of the seasons
since you are strangely silent.

Yet the master of language
you are, now speaks
in perfect metaphor—wind,
the red-bud tree, the deer
in the back yard...

You continue,
evenso,
my heart is in some
snowy place.

Favorites of Nature Poems from the Dissertation

Bears


This one I’ve never heard
but I remember the old mountain story
about the woman who is tricked
and hands her baby over the fence
to a bear, who she thinks is her husband…
and I have dreams about bears
they change into people and change back
I change into a bear and change back
I sit in a tree and sing to one
until fierceness turns docile
like a puppy
and, god, I miss those mountains
It’s a pain in my throat and the only place
that causes me to cry when I see it and when I don’t.

So we’re all kin and we’ve all married
our kin and we continue to find them,
we continue to look for their twinkling eyes
in the hills of every place.
One may come lumbering out of a cave
give itself shape apart from the trees
and look like me and feel like me
and like the polar bear be the loneliest
--that’s because he hasn’t got any mountains.

Why do I miss it? The thing I’ve never had?
It was a distant backdrop to my childhood dramas
but a visit is a visitation
the place where mist is at dawn
where I fished on the Shenandoah
where morning glories dot even the sun.
Stories of bears reside in my flesh
what is commonplace there
becomes extraordinary elsewhere.

Aunt Hanran may have used a broom
to chase that bear off her back porch,
I’ll invite him in to sit by the fire
dust the snow from his fur
and ask for all the things he knows.
I’ll bid him stay till spring
he may tell me where the treasure is hid
or what enchantment he is in.

I am close in nature and nature
is close inside me. Woods and Mountains
become my house and call me.
If I don’t have you covering me
I dream of bears and an ancient wooden door
and my Daddy calls to tell me mountain lore.



Nature's Dream of Otherworld

for Edwin


Wrap yourself in a blanket
go out on the porch,
to the rocking chair.
The wind has turned cold
gusting through bare woods
tossing purple clouds
into the darkening night.

Rock away,
the yellow cat
peers into your face,
wondering, just wondering
“Is that really you?” he asks.

I know nothing,
I came out here
to let the wind blow through my soul,
to get a taste of purple clouds,
to swing my heart
on the crescent moon,
to glimpse nature's
wintry fresh
dream of Otherworld.


Squeaky Wheels Passing Overhead

Fifty squeaky wheels
roll over my sky-head
sudden dawn at pre-dawn
high above me flying wheels
squeaky-talking-chatter
in pre-wake sleepy
think—Canadian geese!

Why am I awake this moment?
just at this turning over?
in time to be observer?
beholder of the passage?
Holder of sacred portals
their journey and my listening.

I drift again and dream
the geese stop to visit
and stand at the top of stairs
I look up at them
My father, gone five years now,
stands beside me delighting also
--we gaze upward
at our magnificent visitors.

I wake again and see images
of snowy Canada
and the warm coast of Mexico.



Bird in a Tree


A bird singing in a tree
brought to mind
something I’d read
a study on reciprocity,
how bird-song calls
the plants and trees to bloom
and how plants and trees call
the birds to sing their growing song.

The clouds too soak up moisture
from the earth in order to be—
floating around the world
dropping rain at the earth’s request.

So too the sun must need the moon
(because in the night I need to remember)
the moon would be a floating rock
if it weren’t reflecting sun.

I saw a black creek yesterday
reflecting a cloud full of pink light
I needed to see that
for my growing up
It needs me to see it too—
for there is light known
and metaphor is born
when I see the sky
reflected in the earth’s eyes.



Born to the Earth: Newgrange, Ireland and Charlottesville, Virginia


They move all around
glimpsed by feeling
in the greenness of moss
in the otherworld wind
that blows a deep silence
atop an ancient hill.
In the passage to the
womb of the earth
I am being born
this time, as I go in,
not as I come out.
Born to the earth
rather than the air.
This zipping into other
time and space
is easy, yet
I am stunned—
something has just
happened to me.
will I ever fully
grasp what?
The ground sways
back and forth.
it’s not the ground
of the new world.
I will take this
hand-branch of the tree
and what it knows
it will pass onto me—
as the Otherworld wind
blows, the dusk settles
and a farmer and dog
gather in the lambs.
They have been
scattered on the hill of Tara
where ancient kings married
the goddess—the earth—all one.

Writing this in the hills
of Virginia, I look up
and see four little deer
run through the winter woods.

At once, I am here in magic,
and I am there in magic,
as thresholds to
Other worlds
make their appearance
in every place.
Even one tree alongside
a superhighway
can beckon to me,
perhaps this is what
it means to be
born to the earth.



The Eagle and the Snake


Stepping through a thicket
to get a glimpse of the creek
a vision opened
as if it were in
my psyche:

an eagle flies up
to the top of a tall tree
carrying a long snake
in its mouth.

I come to this place
with injury
I leave
knowing all is well
all is available
magic is mine.



Black Angus Memory


Black Angus cattle
stand like gods
amidst the trees
and startle a little person
in their stare
their stance
their breadth.

I’m relieved to be
standing on the back
of this 1939 pick-up truck
with all my brothers.
Holding tight to the cab
we ride over bumpy
unmarked pasture
and there they are.
I tighten my grip.
Nothing could move them.
We’ve come to count you,
but who is counting whom?

My grandfather leans out
the cab window and utters
an uncharacteristic sound
low in the throat:
“N-e-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!”
and I see them coming over the hill
a body of great dark beings.
Not daring to get out of the truck

we start to count them

without knowing why.




In my end is my beginning…

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets


This robe of snow and winter stars,
The devil take it, wear it, too.
It might become his hole of blue.

Wallace Stevens, “Snow and Stars”
in Ideas of Order


Wilderness


Leave your name behind
enter here to seek
that which you wish
find that which
you are not looking for
do not think of intentions
or of boundaries
this is not a place
where in the dark
you can find your way
by touch
this is not familiar.

Yet in this forest
it is quiet
the silence in-between things
my breath forms a cloud
the night sky is loud
with stars and trees
stand tall speaking
with only posture
the sky now shiny black
has begun to drop feathers.
I forgot how snow
makes no sound.

Memories float through my
waiting mind:
(what is it I’ve come here for?
but to allow the cold air
to come in a snowflake pattern
through my mind
heavy with fixity)
in the garage
my brothers and I
will wax the toboggan
the sleds, the skates
find the hockey sticks
tomorrow is full of plans
of nothing, but snow.

Indoors is enemy territory
forced to come into
land of temporary Mom
refuge for numb fingers,
then urgently we must
get back outside.

Once my brothers built igloos
from the world of nothing
came a white entrance
into nothing-ness
where only children could go
so many crammed in there
that it became—something
and lost its play.

Now I feel compelled
to build my fire
dry wood is in my pack
I want to see what will happen
when I mix fire and ice.

Though I’ve built fires before
and watched them until
a chemical change
came about in my brain
and time and safety
made a home in me.

Now I want to see
how fire alters this beauty
a landscape outside me.

It is this deep painful desire
for beauty that drives me.

When the flakes hit the fire
they say “ssssss…”
I watch and the night dances
snow, trees, air, stars, fire
they watch my sudden fluidity.

I laugh as I consider
in snow-less Dallas
how stars and snow
also dance here together:

unintentional pearls.

Deep in the forest
is an enchanted princess
each night she sits
by a water-well
she takes off her mask
of ugliness and her beauty
shines forth like the day.
She weeps tears of pearl
and so unintentionally,
by happenstance,
leaves a trail
for her past
and her future
to find her.




This Grove of Trees


There is a wide circle
I am surrounded by it
it is filled with silence.
Each day is a documentary,
I consider what is growing,
how to make my life sweet,
the slant of morning light,
the complaint of crows.

I will slowly turn moments
turning towards a breeze
suddenly
nothing has changed
but it will.
Love and honor this
for I was born to love
even to disregard blue light
as great engines
slowly, suddenly, pass by
this grove of trees,
shaking the ground,
while I stand still,
knowing, this grove of trees

that I am here knowing
this grove of trees
was once not forgotten.



Mother Moon

Shall I take up this conversation again?
A question from me
that rises to mother moon.
Yet if I cannot believe her
who can I believe?
She speaks of hope
of beauty
of change
in nightly perspective.

“Remember, I reflect,”
she says…
the conversation
doesn’t stop here
it continues
in whoever gazes
who chooses to see
to hope, to reflect…




Snow



Snow again

everything must freeze

be white

have dreams

be night

dazzle the world

with crunch

dance in the kitchen

expect nothing

and everything again

float down feathery

and catch on the grass.





“A Local Habitation and a Name”


To sit in the moonlight
wrapped in a blanket
rocking back and forth.

As the dark grows
I hear many walking
in the woods
I see only shadows
in the pale light
as they walk or
scramble through the
fallen leaves
to be close around.

I hear breathing,
some walk slowly
stopping to consider,
others follow each other
in a mad dash,
all the while
the owl hoots
high up in his overview.

Nocturnal comings
and goings,
dreams while awake,
bathing in cold moonlight
all heals an un-named pain.

Beauty, movement, animal
beings, dream sequences,
happen outside me now.

The dark formless
inner stirrings
take shape
and are given
“a local habitation
and a name.”*




* from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream