My heart has a seam-ripper I’m longing to lose.
Whenever I worry what might come next
I take my heart for a walk in these woods
The order here unfolds without conjectured concern or questions of being
Relentless rhythms born only of trust in tomorrow’s transience
There is a voice in my chest that, too, knows such truths
She speaks her spells aloud in song, their melodies washed in the still-water silence of starlight
I can’t say if another sun will rise, or what those hours may hold, but,
With unwavering wonder at what light has already found me this day,
I will do all I can to grow, all according to purpose; not plan.
I’ll meet you in the dark tonight
Patiently pour over the shelves of my sanctuary, all honey-kissed parchment and gathered earth
Which treasure might best guide your way through these saturnine shadows?
With reverence resounding, my fingers will come to cradle what I could not sooner give
I remember you, I’ll say with a smile to its sentient shine
Are you ready to rise?
Auroral and alabaster as an everlasting ember
I’ll let that light loose to your sight
Do you know what I know now?
My neighbor planted flowers by his mailbox until the day his heart stopped. In August, his widow hands my father a pair of shearling snow boots, size 10.
They sit on the back porch, patiently baking in the sun of a couple seasons too soon. My dog wonders who they belong to. I tell her he’s somebody someplace waiting on winter.
Wherever he’s gone, I'd bet my last dollar it smells like daffodils.
Every 7 years they say your cellular composition will be entirely renewed
I have 1356 days left until you've never touched my skin
But this heart?
This heart was never yours.
When the day comes where I find you,
I’ll lead you to the back porch where we can sigh with the stars.
I’ll dip my fingers in their milky haze until the galaxies cling to my fingers with unrelenting attachment - art class glitter and glue.
I’ll unfold our clenched palms like the tattered, dog-eared, so-loved collection of glovebox atlases that they are.
I’ll hold my sparkling skin against yours to repair a rift and light our way -
Until we both know the road home by heart.
Summertime sifts its reedy songs - sure, sweet, and certain - untangling light lost in morning meadows, all viridescence and tang
Blush brushstrokes bloom from skies, soft and sparkling as spun sugar
Citrus staccatos glitter their gold, bright as the moment I first found that the doorway dust moat becomes a miracle in just the right light
I watch the daybreak percolate promise through pleading pine boughs’ sapphire veins
Their rich bark bases are oars, steering strong across the stillness of inky violet velvet seas
See how the surface ripples where, shaking and slippered, fawns first find their feet
Holy is this haven, folded like line-dried linens sewn through with love, as fearless as forever, here in the dark before dawn.
Take me to where warm windows glowing golden on summer-soft nighttime drives
Are a wild and rooted bouquet of humanity's heart in its becoming
Little freckled, exquisitely ordinary, peculiar and petalled vignettes
Orbiting hungrily around some central beating body, or, perhaps stronger still,
That hardwood, foundational, yet inescapably ephemeral belief
In something better, and beautiful, and blindingly bright.
There is a home on a hill
Honey sunlight warms mahogany bones
The floorboards there are moons
Wax and wane with warmth and wind
Windows cast starlight in the daytime
Their panes coupling under weight of years
Open doors by toppled boots
Hold willow golden shadow-shine
Muddied paws and aching feet
Voyage home woodland memories
Come lie with me in empty rooms
We’ll fill them up with baited breath
Go ahead and imply - I’ll confirm, coy and confident
There is no "if” here, love
The only time that I hung that word in my heart for you, I wondered,
What might be lost if we don't leap?
I fell and I found this,
Pretty-pressed in the pages of woodland walks and eyes that swallow me whole
Sun-kissed constellations at the nape of your neck and kisses that constantly curl at the corners
Promises felt like patches till today
We can build our home here - safe and strong and sacred
Tether today to tomorrow with a daisy chain
Hang that wreath on the door so the whole world knows
Whichever way you want to wander,
You can plan on me.
It's late and I love you
So I scribble something sweet on a grocery list between the brie and some thyme
You're waking pieces of me I long thought were dead
I hand them flowers by the fieldful and ask them to dance
I've been wanting to ask if you’re real yet
My poem-patched knees patiently prayed but roots never grew
Now I'm ankle deep in melted metal asking fading fire to give me gold
The bells all broke by sundown, but I hear fiddles strike the silent night
I bought a little blue book in Brooklyn
I'll take you there someday when we're finished with forests
My palms will plant cursive paper prisms in the soil
Their sweet solemn seeds will say an amen again
Hand me that pen, would you?
I love you like a river waiting
Patiently for Springtime to blossom
When the mountains and your sugared snow
Will melt in the rolling golden sunshine
Where mossy and glittering
A babbling brightness will trickle
Down roiling cliff-sides and cascades
To fill my belly with butterflied rapids
Till together we will spill over
Blushing banks and rush on
To be safe in the soft spray of seas
Until finally found and brought home
Suspended and sparkling in light soft as honey
Held slow in silken silence and sky
Do you think that our love is like water, perhaps?
Do you think that when it's over, maybe we could do it all again?
Become the pattern of a poem
Pressing on amongst woodland stars and soil?
I'd like to think so
I would like to take your hand here
Step into something so big and sweet
So strong and unending
As entropic as an eternity
Sailed forward by nothing but a sparkle of light
And the fluttering pulse of a promise.
I wrote the vows you’ll never hear on the nape of your neck
Your eyes always were in the back of your head
- Don't do this to her, too.
Your forest feels familiar, friend
I can’t claim to know the way to walk, but I feel forevers echo in each footfall that follows
I’ve been here before, been yours before
I’ve known these woods, those words, this wonder - all by heart
The sparkling seasons sway and swoon in shades of glittering gold and rusted rouge
Painted bright as the sunlight they spent summer soaking in
Leaves lazily loft from aspen arms like petals fallen from the forsythia blazing behind the barn
Love me now or love me not, darling, it wouldn’t change a thing
I took you to my hiding place to show you what I’d found
The odds and ends of french braid afternoons sat surefire in silence to see me swing
Back and forth to the tune of some lost little lullaby
I think you must have been there even then, but you are so much brighter than I remember, baby
I’ll wear that light in my ribcage until my bones are reborn roots
If I am blessed enough to be born again with branches, I’d like for someone to hang a rope swing from my strongest spot
Somewhere soft where she can sit and swim in someday
Until that day arrives
Until home is your heartbeat beneath my cheek
Until I take you to my hiding place, to show you what I’ve found
Fold me in forevers while the world forgets my face
The soil will steal all but our souls once we’ve learned why we were here
And oh sweet sir,
Someday we’ll say we were -
We were here.
There are answers in your eyes glittering bright as hidden treasure in its trove
Your wicked cheekiness brandishes itself in sideways smiles and stolen kisses
You are polite, and so you ask
My own questions rise rapid in reply, ready and ripe with alleged expectation
They meet yours at the centerline of no man's land where they stubbornly stand and stay
"Nothing" leaves my lips, the very sound of it dripping pearls and rubies and desert rose quartz.
- What?
Go find your favorite little Vermont mountain town. Greet her like the old friend that she is - with coffee sips, love, and laughing eyes. Walk in the woods beneath fire-flooded maples and sparkling birch boughs. Climb a mountain and whisper "amen" at least once per step. Haunt the hallowed halls of a creaky bookshop in search of the stories that need to be heard. Sift through stacks of records on a sunlit flea market corner because putters and crackles should always be part of a song. Drive through the clouds and ask them what it's like to fall with faith. Hold happiness in your heart like a firefly on your upturned hand. Give it thanks for its light, then send it skyward.
My heart is a martyr.
It craves nothing more than to give its entire being over to a love bigger than itself.
I’ve been pouring poetry into the space between my palms
I find prayers most powerful when spoken in flower petals
Wild is how they were born to be.
Will you still love me when I’m gone
When I come home and fold back in
I will love you soft and steady
Rain on a summered tin roof
The lace of the wildflowers beading brightly
While the warm body of water breathes it back to the sky
Will you still love me when I’m tired
When I can hardly raise my shaking heart to meet yours
I will love you courageously
Be a sparkling dawn in your nighttime
The breath of warmth from the fireside
Mirroring the mountainous strength you already hold
Will you still love me when I’m here
When joy pulses through the air like holy hands and praise
I will love you with arms outstretched
Running into you like a high speed collision of stars
The snowy air holding us soft in its galaxies
I’ll be your gravity, your orbit, and the silken sweet years
It takes light to come home.