Riptide

you were drowning
and reached out to me
but I could feel you pulling me under

and then I started sinking
and reached flailing to you
but you couldn't hold me

and I realize
that in patience is surrender
a morsel for us both

we cannot always swim
against the current
or we will tire

we must wait out the riptide
and swim parallel to the shore
before swimming back in

so I am learning
to wait
to let this current carry me

for a little while
until

perfect is dead

I never expected you to be perfect
or me either
because perfect is dead
so we must aspire asymptotically for perfect
approaching but never reaching;
the journey of our lives

I want to sit in those hard conversations
wading through the muck
trying to find the courage to stand and speak
without the crutch of my journal
with its scribbled notes.

I want to reach deep into my gut
and touch my heart, still beating as you hold it in your hand
dismembered yet still warm
what can we learn from reading the entrails?
What does my own gut, swirling mass of of primordial ooze,
that part of me that is a whole ecology of microbial not-me,
tell me that the revered mind cannot?

Last vestiges of summer

I finish my run
through the marsh and into the valley
where I am dizzied by the sudden flash of green.
here, along the creek bed, I find
the last vestiges of summer
Where the sheltered understory of maples
are still fourth-of-july green

I imagine seeing it from above
and mentally trace up the fingers of the tributaries
where the last green drops of summer's juice still linger

I slow to walk up the hill, reluctant to leave
and come into the cemetery
where it is already autumn
the last of the leaves are bravely holding onto the lone ash.

caught in the balance

I am caught
by the options

paused
at the fork in the road

one leads back to where I began; flat and wide
the other climbs steeply
with the promise of a view

what lies beyond that mountaintop?

a promised land?
or will I climb arduously
only to look back and realize
the beauty of where I was?

I close my eyes
and take that leap
for the first step is the hardest.

I got the text that she passed away 

on halloween

my cell phone came to life

as I came down off the mountain

I snapped the phone shut and

my headlights caught her

a white birch,

her bare pale skin striking against the dark

of the fields beyond

with branches upstretched

a dancer, with a leg extended behind her

arms reaching for grace

every day I see her

touch this memory of a woman I've never met

until today

she is shrouded by the green growth at her tips

and though I see her when I drive by

she stands out less in the long summer days 

her green leaves blending with the the fields beyond

her graceful dancer's body hidden

but I know, next fall,

when Halloween comes and the distance between worlds

is closest,

she will have shed her leaves and come alive again

Marathon Monday

after the news of marathon monday

tears sting the corners of my eyes

thoughts of the euphoria at my finish line

the joy of seeing friends and family alongside strangers

all cheering me on 

we all help each other believe

I walk by the co-op in the shock

of the early spring sunlight

to see my teardrops gathered

in a piles of broken glass

glinting brown and green

in its sharp beauty

i dance
through the maelstrom
i sit
in the whirlwind
for at the eye of the storm
there is stillness
calm and quiet

and when the storm passes
i am still
here















and today i am still hungry :)

My brother took this photo of me and my friend Anna collecting eggs at the farm this winter.