you’re running away to join the circus
you’re running so hard toward your dreams
you’re flying
and i’m crouched here in the garden,
both hands in the soil,
growing roots i can only hope
you’ll someday return to.
i plant my heart
in this warm and increasingly fertile earth
while your heart grows wings
to launch it from the branches
that have come before.
the heart is a muscle,
as strong as the body, as flexible.
you arc, solid, powerful, graceful
a spinning curve from the trapeze bar,
taut, beautiful, capable.
i bend and bend again,
plant row after row of tomatoes,
corn, beans. You coil and turn,
toes pointed, eyes open
to an inner distance.
the aerial dance flies you,
pulls your body, speaks through you.
my corn comes up, in the long
summer sun, rises tall enough
to shade the tomatoes.
our hearts are muscles
as strong as our bodies, as flexible.
we dance this distance,
grow with the change.
you like to see a little dishabille in me
and i can give you this —
i know how it’s done.
i like a little dishabille in the garden, myself.
sunflowers blooming in twenty directions, giant
stalks tipped sprawling and prickly across the path.
tomatoes vining up all over,
whether we planted them there or not.
corn standing tall and rustling in its rows,
each stalk’s bent leaves interfering with the next.
bean vines simply everywhere.
you can’t move a stem out of the way,
for they’re all held askew by beans.
between and among it all, the volunteer lettuce,
lambsquarter, sunberries, ground cherries,
and here, a surprise onion.
beside, a mess of chard, itself
in its second year, vining
and tossing seed stems about.
no wonder, then, for seed pods in my
straggling hair, itself snarled and tangled,
with bean vines and the occasional sunflower petal,
or dirt beading the sweat that beads my back,
scratched and often a little sore
from the bent work of taking care.
if i’m a little excessive, a little messy,
even vining in my habits, it’s only this:
each long summer spent
as much as i can
making life, and tending it.
and mirroring, as best i can,
its sprawling enthusiasm.
i believe in compassion whose wisdom rises like
the swell of the ocean,
cresting and filling all that it touches,
till a body aches with salty fulfillment
i believe that love and compassion
are wise, and we need them every day.
i believe that the more i move from compassion, from love,
the closer i am to god
i belive sex is a key to personal divinity
i believe that letting go is the only way to hold on,
but this seldom prevents me
from clutching too tight
i believe that “fake it till you make it” is a good path to self-change
i believe that people will live up to high expectations,
if you communicate them,
and lock the car doors anyway
i believe that unspoken expectations
are a set-up for resentment and disappointment.
i belive there is not enough time in this life
to waste it in being unhappy
I believe that love is not enough.
what is enough, is complex, individual,
and changes all the time
i believe most hard work is worth doing, and doing well
i believe in the power of art to transform, to heal,
and to make every day that much better
i believe music, art and ritual are alike in this
i believe that when things flow with ease and grace,
they are absolutely right,
but when things are hard,
that does not mean that they are not also right
i believe in loving what you do
i believe that life is a river and
there’s never any “one right” anything
i believe in getting it all out,
but not necessarily putting it up for processing
i believe in being as fair as you can,
and letting fate decide the rest
i believe in taking the time to watch the sunset, and the stars
i believe i will never be wholly fulfilled
by any relationship
i believe in balance, deep breaths, and metaphor
i believe in good boundaries,
and saying yes
only when you really mean it
i believe the book is always better than the movie
i believe in woodstoves, solar power, and organic gardening
i believe in the power of positive thinking,
right up to the point it hits
scientific fact
i believe firmly in a both/and universe,
in having it all, and saying yes
to everything that feels good and right and necessary
i believe nothing in life is sweeter
than falling in love
and so i do this often
i believe in lime popsicles on hot summer days,
when sweat runs down the back of your neck
i belive in your teeth at the back of my neck
i believe in letting your eyes
adapt to the dark, instead
of turning on a light
i believe we all arrive at our own truths,
and they are different and real
and sometimes they change
i believe that roots are as important as wings,
and that we need both
to not drown.
i wanted to follow you up,
not just for the sake of the silks,
but for you —
the powerful grace of your perfect body
climbing the sapphire silks to the sky.
i wanted to follow you up,
climb out of the dirty
necessities of my daily grind,
haul myself, through strength
and grace alone, to another world.
if only strength and grace were
all i needed in this world.
you reach the ceiling and spin,
one arm extended, not quite flying,
and spiralling, drop,
and the world is right here with us,
is only what we make of it,
and when your feet touch the ground,
you’re right behind me,
lifting me up.
in the dark, the irrigated field is a bottomless well.
as if the land drops away beside the road,
first, mud lined with weedy elms,
then darkness, a void, a waiting.
small crackling sounds inform the night,
the dry earth drinking, cracking open
last fall’s wizened crow’s feet, to pull the water in.
satiation is water standing in the field, silent.
beneath the mud, seeds turn.
all you can see are stars.
every time i fall
a small glass heart,
the oakland hills,
a candle burning in bright day.
music i can lean on.
women’s voices, arms that catch me
every time i fall.
i am falling the way sunlight
enters a room through a warm closed window
and unfurls along the floor.
i fall and surface and fall again
like a leaf in a whirlpool.
i fall and fall.
your voice on the altar,
one white lily among the gold.
i fall until i am standing,
and it no longer hurts.
from An Edge Made for Embracing
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