not a pretty picture. not a good. not a bad. picture. but an argument.

Friday, August 28, 2015

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Friday, August 21, 2015

summer closes for a moment like a lotus 'round my heart


 before the end of summer (august 20, 2015)

what an extravagance 
to be left alone in the boat of my skin
after making love,
my husband returned to work at his desk,
his fingers loose over his lips, his wedding band,
and me holding myself in our bed
dreaming of a bike ride to the countryside,
imagining, when i get back,
the bowl of fresh green peas i will eat. 

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

book of butterfly, seeing the unseeable



 To Know the Invisible by Jack Gilbert

The Americans tried and tried to see
the invisible Indians in the deeper jungle
of Brazil. Finally they put things in the clearing
and waited. They waited for months,
maybe for years. Until a knife and a pot
disappeared. They put out other things
and some of those vanished. Then one morning
there was a jungle offering sitting on the ground.
Gradually they began to know the invisible
by the jungle’s choices. Even when nothing
replaced the gifts, it was a kind of seeing.
Like the woman you camp outside of, at the five portals.
Attending the conduits that tunnel from the apparatus
down to the capital of her. Through the body
and its weather, to the mind and heart, to the spirit
beyond. To the mystery. And gradually to the ghosts
coming and leaving. To the difference between
the nightingale and the Japanese nightingale
which is not a nightingale. Getting lost in the treachery
of language, waylaid by the rain dancing its pavanne
in the bruised light of winter afternoons.
By the flesh, luminous and transparent in the silent
clearing of her. Love as two spirits flickering
at the edge of meeting. An apartment on the third
floor without an elevator, white walls and almost
no furniture. Water seen through pine trees.
Love like the smell of basil. Richness beyond
anyone’s ability to cope with. The way love is after fifty.



Sunday, August 9, 2015

Saturday, August 1, 2015