Unexpected

I did not know what it was, the broad moving shadow over my shoulder. But the wide arc of wings became clear, then the gray-blue feathers. It was like a mountain landing, a canyon settling, an entire pine forest coming to rest. I had never seen a heron that close, so I looked at him for a while, while Nikki kicked at stones on the bank of the Cuyahoga, and watched me watching him.

What I decided for him, must be true for me too. I do not write language poems; I do link the universal to the personal. I am a simple person writing on a two-lane bridge.

I want to fly. I want to fly in a way that makes people turn their heads and marvel. I want to know which perch to call home for a while. I want to stand there, so at ease, my barrel chest is exposed. I want to be still. I want to be able to tuck all of the largeness in and be small too. I want to know that I can stand on one thin leg, when the other is not available. I want to wear the cloak of soft blue sky. I want to seek running water. I want my eyes to be alert, while the rest of me rests calm.

A blue Heron is within me. I do not know what is within you. A pinking sky in New Mexico. A thick boulder at the bottom of a waterfall. An acorn cap turned to the rain. All I know is that there is heron in me, and it is perfectly fine – I give myself permission—to abandoned my human brain for hollow bones. For sharp beak. For sweeping wings that use the sky to fly.

MInor Key

This is what the table looked like last night, after Christmas in a Minor Key. Each one of those small votive candles represents a person or a situation that causes pain. I know, for a fact that, three of those candles are for young men who took their own lives. One is for a brother who died at 22. Another for a baby, miscarried, deep into a pregnancy. Several are for parents who have died, or whose stories are winding down to an unexpected disoriented ending. One for a man who left his family. Another for a son who is jail.

It was a powerful night last night. To damn God. To see only darkness. Then to talk and sing our way to the light. There was crying in the chapel. I heard it after the very first passage was read. And, at times, there was sobbing and the heavy heaving of of breaths that could barely be breathed. Yet, it was not uncomfortable. It was not hard. It was the softest and most god-filled space I have been in in a long time. There is something about raw truth that orients us back. Not to the nature of life's suffering, but to the fragility of our hearts. And the gentle care we must take of each other.

It is an amazing gift to sit in safety, surrounded by others who are bruised and yet still leaning. Towards God. Towards honoring. Towards being naked, yet swaddled in light.

I'm scared

...by this storm,

by the prospect of driving home, from Cincinnati, through it.

I'm scared of driving alone, everywhere

always, for the rest of my life.

And, if that is true, I will drive less and less,

and everything I will see is Lake Effect snow.

I need to have more confidence, in my courage,

in my car, in my carriage, in my ability to move

from one place to another, as I have been doing

for the last few year. I got myself to whole again,

I got myself to Los Angeles, to Columbus, Indiana,

I got myself to fearless again, to sassy again.

I brought myself back to myself, so surely,

if I just try to gather the truth and not

the unknown non-truth, than I can get myself home.

All by myself. Because that's the kind of person I am,

and the kind of person someone else will

be so glad to know.

Two boulders

I keep asking the same two boulder questions over and over:

who will she be and when will love happen?

The same two questions most people ask, I bet.

I am as common as Ohio flint.

But today I have decided to ask things a new way,

rub raw more memorable stones.

What sound do I miss tasting most?

How many eyes will I need to see?

Why would the tree not bend in the storm?

Is it the clouds moving or the wind?

Is it the falling or the landing of the snow?

When is the skin too waxy to take a bite?

I keep trying to crunch off a morsel

from the same large boulders,

but instead, it would be so easy to put

a small river pebble in my mouth.

No god likes to be nagged into submission.

Instead, let me turn it all inside out.

Ask myself down a new path of thinking.

This year, I decided to have the kids learn about hurricanes.

(I know, that's an unlikely choice in Ohio.)

I wanted to tie what we were doing in my class

to the regular science studies, and since they "shape and reshape

the earth," hurricanes were a viable curriculum link.

You can ask me anything now; I learned along with the kids.

Barometric pressure of a category four typhoon,

the string of named used in 2005, the year of Katrina,

the lay-out of the levees in New Orleans.

How to spell Ponchartrain. I know a lot.

And the thing that surprised me the most was the list

of conditions needed for a hurricane:

moist, hot water rising from the equator, and

light winds aloft, coming from the same direction.

I thought, I'd imagined, that hurricanes start in a furious way.

They don't, they are nudged into existence.

The woman I used to love is single again,

and all it took was one quick sight of her on my computer screen,

to begin the roil. Not something large, or speedy.

She rose up from the equator, the rubbed raw middle of me,

then one distant fact breathed on me from a westerly direction

and there it came: the tropical disturbance, the begin of the spin.

One day, flat clear water -- a clean mantle of happiness --

then, the next, something cyclonic. I wish I could see

the event from an outlying planet, or I wish I could

be a visitor on this planet, an alien star seed viewing

this treacherous twist with amazement and awe.

Look at the image now, the pure white of the clouds,

the distinct eye wall, the tailwinds spinning off the edges.

Something as massive as this is also rare and beautiful.

I know that, even as the surge wave is rolling toward me.

My friend chided another poet today because her poem

did not seem to revolve an idea that was dying to be written.

Something so powerful that it had to be spun onto paper.

And then, as our conversation turned to love, I asked my friend

if her love was one that she would die for, or die from without.

It was not. It is not. She could see herself being single

the rest of her life. Not me. The one love I had, the one

that whirled me 180 while I was in it, and then cast me

out into centripetal orbit when it was over, has shaped

and reshaped me. If I could look inside, at the skin of my heart,

I am sure that I would see the chamber marks a bullet

has when it is shot from the barrel. Though I will not

know what I once knew with the woman who tore me

through it, I would die for love again. I would lay my body

on the shore of the gulf, asking to be swept up and carried

until I am dropped into it, mangled and naked. I would stand

in the face of wide gathering cloud, my arms akimbo, shouting

let love kill me, before not having love leaves me dead.

the thing about Christmas

...the last few years, was the box. That box of decorations that has not been touched since January of 2008. Nearly three years. Before, I could not bear to see the ornaments Carrie had made me, crafted from the sawed-off-trunk of the Frasier Fir. She would use the stump wedge to make an ornament, adding tissue paper or paint, sparkles and extensions. In December, 2008 I could not even look in the attic, where the box was. It would have sent me into a gloomy spiral. I decided against the tree, and, instead, decorated my mantle. Then in 2009, I could not go near the box again. This time, it would have unleashed fury, painting the holiday and my house with a black tar goop. A sticky, sludgy, hard-to-remove wrath. I decorated the mantle.

This year, it seems very possible, even probable that I could open the box, find those stump ornaments and just chuck them into the garbage. Not down into the ravine, or into Lake Erie, or burned in a cauldron for cleansing. I would just find those ornaments, and throw them into my green garbage bin. With the ends of the celery, the egg shells, the catalog from LL Bean, and the cable bill I paid online.

You see, Carrie does not have sway over me anymore most days. She is as immaterial as those living dregs I dispose of every day. I don't want to eat the horsey ends of celery. The egg shells are broken and contain nothing anymore -- the good yoke is gone. The catalog of options from LL Bean are unnecessary. I have a good winter coat, plenty of cotton turtlenecks, and treaded boats to use on slippery days. And the bill? Well, it's taken care of, the services have been rendered. So, too, with this person who promised she would love me until the day I died. There is nothing else good to reap from love or loss. I have ways to keep myself safe and protected, what she gave me is done. The time has passed.

There will be time for a tree. And all the wrangling that comes with it. The tree stand, the twisting of the bolts into the trunk. The wrestling to make sure it is straight. The disagreements whether to string the lights or the garlands first. The placing of the ornaments, some in front where they can be seen often and others relegated to filling up the back, the window side. There will be time for the messiness of love.

For now, it is December, 2010, and I have again decorated my mantle. Not to avoid something, but because this year, it is what makes me happy.

Chambers and valves

I know someone who is having open heart surgery tomorrow.

It's hard to wrap my mind around it. The way someone,

a highly trained someone, will crack Bill's chest,

put his heart on bypass -- his life hooked to a machine,

his heart will be touch, valves will be replaced,

then he will be sealed back together layer by layer,

until stapling one side of his skin to the other.

It's mind boggling. What people and their tools can now do.

But when I think about Bill, and especially his Lorene,

I am reminded that we all go through open heart

surgery all the time. We all have congenital heart failure,

holes and flaps that don't quite work. And now would be

the time in the poem when I could list anorexic daughters,

sons who commit suicide, dogs who run away and never come back.

I could tell you about my mother's face when she died,

or the story I just heard about a mother bleeding out in childbirth.

But that is not what this poem is about. This poem is about

the surgeon in all of us. How we know when to knock

on someone else's ribs, how we gently pry open the latticed cage,

how we say -- with words and actions, with a softness in our eyes --

I will hold your heart. I will put my thumb in the hole.

Here, breathe through my arteries. Sit in my chamber.

Rest, let the thub dubbing stop. I will be your bypass.

Your blood can flow through me for now.

With thanks to Lorene, who has healed my heart so many times.