It’s lonely here tonite
and all alone inside
my skin
while music plays
and pretty soon
the air is filled with
shadow shades
that sing,
lament, remind me of
my failure to be what
you wanted, what
they wanted.
And there…
in yon wood there
sits the bear
in silverlight
there in the rising
dark and that bear
part and parcel
of itself and
of the wood
but me…alone
inside this skin
well, it’s lonely
here tonight
inside this skin
inside this skin
And all this time
I thought I was
building you up
as you grew
and became.
I really never
realized (really)
you were breaking
so unbecoming
and I was failing bad.
It breaks
my heart to
know you were
ripping apart the seams
of our beautiful story.
And now
tatters, shards
shatters, shutters
mutters and
clogged gutters
and it
is too late
at last
I realize
alas.
Touch me
with unconscious hands
Unaware but
not unknowing
Find me
with yearning heart
untroubled in
the mists of time.
For I am here
dying, Love,
dying on
this slum’bring vine
And I know
myself alone
now and in
time to come
“Absence.
Absence, hear thou my protestation against thy strength, distance, and length.
Do what thou canst for alteration… For hearts for truest mettle.
Absence doth still and time doth settle.”
Could I leave the bright waves
and take to the blue skies?
Could I leave my cold skin
and sail into your eyes?
Is the moon high above
just reflecting to me
all the love that you hold
in your heart?
If the leaves on the trees
can turn red, yellow, gold
why can’t I find a heart
that will tenderly hold
my body, my spirit,
my mind and my soul
while the tale of my true
love is told?
Mount up! Mount up!
Take courage on the wind!
Lift the hands of your sails on the waters!
Rise up! Rise up!
Leave the surface behind and let the bow of your ship
carve the clouds on your way!
I will sail all the seas
I will follow the stars
I will listen behind the beauty
beyond what mars
And someday I shall come
to my sea-harbour home
I will finally rest
deep in you.
Yes I will finally rest
deep in you.
I’m pretty lonely, now
that I am not in
the juggling circle
with all your other eggs
tossing around frantic
and always on the edge
of splatting on the stones.
I just got tired of the suspense.
I got bored with the panic
of will she catch, will she miss
and that somehow miraculous
growing of another arm
there just long enough
not to hold but to toss
back up again spinning
in the cool bracing breeze.
And the worst times
when I hadda catch myself
and then pretend that you did
so you wouldn’t drop you
splatting on stones
and seeing that a huge
quantity of love diluted
by a huger number of recipients
is just about like no love at all.
So…I sit now…watch you juggle
and see the eggs move round
and occasionally I snatch one away
so you can twirl just the most important.
I can’t do that thing anymore,
where I am something to be
managed, parcelled, watered?
I wanna be ground to your feet
soil to your roots, sun to your leaves!
I want you to be breeze neath my blades
and rain on my petals and sun synergistically
all around me and warm.
So go ahead and keep in rhythm,
there is nothing over here, don’t reach.
Eggs hatch, and become real,
and you can quit imitating
a windmill and become instead
a waterwheel and wonder turning you always.
you consign me to shadows and silences
when you look away from wonder
when you sit and ignore joy
when you know what you don’t know
you put me behind panes
separate even though somewhat visible
I can see them there in front of me
by the dew of the morning fresh
you will always think you have measured me
but you have never really bothered
you dodge every questing tentative hello
and your twisting just says goodbye
but light is a funny thing, it changes
when you think it’s rays, it is drops
and when you see drops it is beams
light is never shining as it seems
you know i will sit here, still
because I do not go away
but I hunger in shadows and silences
just stuck here by your faint halfway
a hot summer day and a deck
the sun it glints off of my glass
the sweet-tea ginger peach muddle
the mint wafting from sweaty ice cubes
floating, melting, disappearing
my peach is sweet, tart, it’s just right
fuzzy-firm against longing loved lips
I turn perfumed pages so eager
the story unfolds right before me
on a hot summer day and a deck
the book of you writes itself page at a time
it expands in my hands and the cover wanes old/new
it waxes familiar to my touch then *gasp*
“I never knew you”
every turning page snatches my breath
because I’m not quite sure if the next one
will be there, it could be blank or worse
it might write itself while I am reading
words forming from nowhere, just scrawling
in the high summer light on that deck
I can’t put it down for the life of me
I smell you in air as I fan those thin pages,
flip backwards but not ever reading ahead
(there is no ahead to be read in this book)
I miss you this hot summer day…
I’m down and troubled and I need a helping hand
and nothing, whoa, nothing is going right.
I’ve closed my eyes and thought of you,
and yet you’re just not there
to brighten up even this darkest nights.
I’ve just called out your name, but I know wherever you are
you’ll start running to never see me again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, every time I reach out to call,
you are not there, no no no
I need a friend.
Well the sky above me has turned dark and full of clouds
and that old north wind so chilly’s begun to blow,
I try to keep my head together and call your name out loud.
It’s in vain, you will never be knocking on my door.
I just call out your name, but each time, it’s always the same
You go running the other way to never see me again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, every time I reach out and call,
you are not there, no no no
I need a friend.
Hey, it’s so hard to know that I got no friend? People can be so cold.
They’ll hurt you and desert you. Well, they’ll take your soul if you let them,
oh yeah, but even my soul’s not enough for them.
I just call out your name, and I know where ever you are
You go running so you never have to see me again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, or any other time at all…
Lord, there’s just VM yeah yeah yeah
I need a friend. Yeah, I need a friend.
Do not allow your loneliness to lower your standards.
I am not a “sometimes” girl
a sometimes thrill or sometimes time.
I am not occasionally
or when you feel like coming round.
I’m not available just now and then
if that’s what you want, well I just grin
and fake it like it’s all the time
but I am gone around the bend.
I am not a kitchen drawer
full of batteries and more
to be wrenched open in your need
and taken from as seed to feed
an image of a self or time
when fullness is a masquerade
for decorating a fat heart
I’m a whole, not just a part.
I guess that means I run the risk
of standing lonely in the dusk
and looking on from the outside
but that’s okay…I turn and ride
knowing I am me and always
all the time an always girl
i am burning
the insides, today…
for you i am
burning my cleansings
the insides of my veins
the insides of my organs
the hidden, the deepest,
the most secret
places i burn for you,
for your face
you are core inside core
inside me and the day
i chose to be
tattooed inside
by you inside
with you
was the day
my life was ever
set on high
and rendered ever
always
you see
you remember,
rags of past
times torn asunder
from their loom
where they were
so careful woven
to lay precious
ones under
well i have
made a fire of me
my insides (you)
and see the smoke,
how it cleanses
your self-recriminations
from your lungs
and replaces
them with us
my insides
which are you
pulsing thru me
coursing thru me
like wild horses
in spain
(see their flying manes)
under that rainy thunder sky
while torrents plunge
pelt pungent
onto the plains
so dry
and the smell
of hot rock
so dry
of heated flint
so dry
and flying dust
so dry
struck from sky
by fierce waters fallen
from on high
in our house
in us
we are made
clean in our love
forever.
the best decision
i ever made was you
in all your icy-fire ways
fiery-ice inside and me
ever entranced and held
ever committed to hold
both nurtured
i’d do it over again,
all again
longer than karma
(see her?
cruel imitation
with her puny wheel)
i’m befuddled as jokes,
while i sit here and stare,
at the ordered brush strokes
that are hung there, mid-air
translucent and shimm’rey
in a gloaming lost day
i have witnessed the fading
of the old beauty way
while the efforts of many
seek orange everlasting
orange for my heart,
bits of white lay contrasting
and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed
by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange
so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme
before it was orange,
with some white thrown in there
cus nothing rhymes orange
it just hangs in the air.
We were connected and vital, and love flowed
we were enough for our lack and love covered all
we heard our hearts speak louder than hate
and louder than failure and laughed in the night
and tender was our time, we thought would last
forever.
“‘They never built these places with winter in mind’
Out the window down the gray road
You can see old walled monastery
Now become a barracks for the paramilitary police”
Underneath the make-up, powders, paints, colors bright
there beneath the pretty words and funny sayings light
the blood pools red, the bruises throb beneath my cheery grin
and ruin overflows, and spreads its pain and hurt within
Mama heals, but often heals with pain’s sweet overthrow
She will let the woundings come to deepen healing’s glow
Still, it really breaks my heart to walk alone so long
I must dig still deeper, be brave, and just sing my song.
i get lonely sometimes…
sometimes people speak with mouths
while I am listening with heart
and heralds ringing in my ears
and golden trumpet blasts from spheres
and from those mouths comes noises
that I do not understand
as gravity pulls down
distorts the klaxxon sounds
and it is then I realize
I live in a different place
where angels watching over me
and chariots swing low
and I must follow drinking gourds
and look for railroads underground
and throw off shackles every day
while people make their sounds…
my ears hear different frequencies
they swoon with soft harmonics
and songs swift, supersonic
and way beyond the boom.
But not to worry, people
I learned to lip read early
and watch non verbals busy
and nod a lot and smile
Here, at this late and early shore
in clammy mist and silent roar
shriven and stripped, scoured to my core
and needy midst this weather-war.
I wait for you with my torn heart
Clutched in cruel claws and pulled apart
by lonely memories sweet and tart
in loss I’m given this fresh start.
Remembering fire in this rain
Remembering sweet in suffering
Remembering roots thrust deep in pain
and incense smoke removes my stain.
Old wood, dead wood and debris
and underbrush, flammable me
has fed the flames’ raw hungry plea
Consumed, renewed and set me free.
Sky and sea and wind and time
wash me clean of my past’s thought crime
And scrub away my grief and grime
I’m born again in Love sublime
Shuffling back and forth between…
night and day
week and week
(weak and weak,
strain and struggle)
sighs and sorrows
…the pain of this passage
of time and tears
is present always,
palpable still,
pulsing in my yearning heart
gone nova with the memory.
I lay awake midst pain and memory,
I neither sleep nor slumber
but instead ache and remember…
I re-member, piece by peace,
arrivals and departures.
We wear memories and longings
like stained t-shirts and chinos
and shod in our torn sneakers
we shuffle down the path,
so pebble-strewn and painful,
so rough hewn, uneven
and inevitable.
As soon as we arrive,
our hearts know we have to leave.
As soon as we leave we burn,
knowing that we must return!
Each journey punctuated
by our songs sung in the night…
songs of lament and longing
songs of suffering and sorrow
songs of remembrance and redemption
songs of deliverance and the coming day
…alas…memory is a river terrible
that must be crossed.
The crossing…the crossing!
That’s the common factor present,
primary and consistent,
pervasive and persistent
and it moves,
from background
to foreground and
back again
while it waits its turn to step up and partake
of the Communion Feast, its Sacred Supper,
the Holy Sacrament of our Sojourning Hearts.
I’m decided, I am settled.
I’m on the right side of pain!
I’ll not let anyone or anything keep me captive,
stranded on the wrong side of memory
and out of phase with time!
I intend to feel the pain of others,
bind their broken hearts,
be marked by suffering…
…no, wait: be marked
with suffering by my Mama!
In this looming collision between
uncomfortable mystery and unyielding mercy
and that suffering, ahh…
I can neither sleep nor slumber
because She who inhabits Eternity
neither sleeps nor slumbers but Is
Awake with those who suffer
and There with those who faint, who fall
and falter in the crossing…
She is there (I’ll be there too)
in Her house held up by beams
from that battered rough-hewn Cross,
shining fair with great doors open
thrown wide open to receive
all Her suffering children broken
in the crossing…in the crossing
and Her invitation spoken
Come and rest here at Her table,
there’s a place for every person
in the ending of between
and arrival of the Present
Oh, the greatest Gift of all, the Present!
When the crossing’s done …
I neither sleep
nor slumber, waiting…
pregnant in this moment
and present in
the crossing.
Dread.
I feel it still.
Laying
at the base
of my throat
and throbbing dully,
quietly slumbering
with one leering eye
cocked open always
and leaning towards
my heart.
My heart…
chipped and worked,
touched and chilled
by the frozen fingers
of dread and
shards of it lay scattered
at my feet clear,
jagged glimmering
broken.
I step to the rail and look back
peering intently into the fog
thick and lingering, but
2014 is shrouded, hidden
and if I hadn’t lived it
I wouldn’t have believed it
was anything more
than a dream.
It was a year that hollowed out
thinned out, emptied out
but never declared its intention.
I don’t think it ever knew
or if it even could.
It was a year
without windows
but many doors
and ladies
and tigers.
There is more to life than meets the eye,
more than can be measured
by the senses or a census
but this morning there is just
the fog behind and the early dark
ahead awaiting dawn.
and Dread
and my heart shaped
in its cold hands
and God’s Warm Heart.
Across the prow of my ship
the rain slants and glints
in the deck lights (dark lights)
like silvery needles
sent to stitch
the past and future
together in this moment.
I think of Presences.
Emptiness…
Nothing…
Silences…
Absences…
Love…
Memories…
Hope…
Them…
there and here with me
in time and triumph,
tears and tragedy
but only One
does my heart
awaken in this dawn
and set afire tears
upon my face
a God of grace,
a God of love,
a God of…justice?
Justice.
I don’t even know where
to start with that!
I face forward
into dawn’s early light
empty,
confused,
seeking,
the way of grace
not effort!
I am a childe of dark, a childe of light.
I was born beneath the shining moon
but just outside it’s golden touch
there, on dim green meadows blanketing
the warm red earth in comfort midst the singing dark and stars.
I was born upon the stones that radiate residual heat
as they remember blazing suns so brilliant beneath that blue sky
that blankets those same meadows green and glorious in the day
but now those stones lay bare in the cold night, as I am bare as well, uncovered.
I was born in darkness, and outside
looking in upon the singing stars
hung in night sky velvet-soft and sable
surrounded by splendors from some lost fable.
Outside.
I was born outside the secret knowledge that every other person seems to have
of just how goddam dull and ordinary everything around them “really is”. I mean
just look at them, shining so brilliant each day and acting like it’s only night! I see
their flaming hearts a-fire and blazing but they just trudge by feeling bored, uptight.
I watch events unfold and want to sing in joy and caper!
But when I open up my heart and shout and point in wonder…
well, those fish eyes turn and stare and those mouths gape and mock, hung open
and I am named too much, inglorious and out of order…out of order…out of order.
Childe dwelling in the swelling dark of gloomy bored indifference
Childe dwelling midst the dazzle vast and glory of a day
(just One Day that unfolds brand new
over and over and over and over and over
Full, expressed complete miraculous
in every single same lily white
in every single same bird flight
in every single whispering wind
that echoes ever over the same ever different waters bright)
I am a companion with no company to keep because I’m
elated and afraid,
curious and fearful,
confused and wide awake
and seeing all around me
the marvels that they fail to see
(or rather, what they see and call the same?
the same ole same ole same ole same ole same
and let the repetition rob them of the vision
and leave them drunk and sober but
out of proper phase for when intoxication
is called for in this moment and when sobriety is come
to sing us back at last to proper sanity).
And on the cusp of Dark and Light I’m homeless in the day, the night,
homeless and repudiating that blank stupor of disinterest
that surrounds me…tries to drown me, pull me in it’s vicious grip
and trap me in its undertow of
violence unfolding
suffering repeated
oppression and injustice
become mere background noise
to serenade those bored yawns
and sighs of such indifference
that boredom has become
a way of life.
Out of phase (childe of dark)
and out of synch (childe of glad day)
delighting in monotony…
another walk beneath beauty…
another page before I sleep…
do it again! do it again, God!
another minute sharing hearts
because our moment is delight
alas…this childe born but belonging
not to day and not to night.
Unbidden,
moving like mist in mountains
slow and fast and slow and long,
and lingering, white laced in grey,
and crawling, clinging to ramparts
and ridges that stand
strong and stark and still
catch an occasional ray of sun
from outside…but dimming
as the sun retreats before
the darkness of the night
that rushes over everything
with recollections
haunting,
isolating,
obliterating
sight.
Unknown,
vaporous,
real but irresistible and arising from…
*moan*…
and meaning…
*sob*…
climbing,
clinging,
clutching
clouding out,
shutting out
shouting out
solid rock stable and holding hands
reeling, cavorting, swirling
Undoing,
settling down on everything
and growing quiet,
and gaining in gravity
and growing heavy,
and draining memory
of every drop of blood
until everything
is overwhelmed and overtaken
and surrounded in the silver
of the dull fogs of what once was
and alas will never ever be again.
Alone,
in fields, waiting,
staring at the skies
so clear and so occluded,
every loss hung there bright brilliant
on deep black skies never ending,
every sorrow there is twinkling,
every hurt is glowing blinking there
so merry, so unyielding,
I gaze upon my starry constellations
of great loss and ruination
marking time and pointing steady
so unchanging in this night…
Cold,
missing home,
missing that place (and time)
where all things hushed and gathered
noisy in a deafening din,
all collected, full, o’erflowing
from my tender heart within
the very center of the moment
in the Advent Season Present
bathed in wonderful quick joy.
Real,
that place then but lost now in my mind
(like ridges and ramparts now submerged).
The sheep rustle restless
and underneath their bleating
I hear the sound of bleeding
in the heart of living memory
of hearth and home now pierced
and rent and disappearing…
and I wait here,
lonely in this mist and overcome,
hunkered down but kissed and left so numb
as I recall the bliss of Christmas past
and have no hope of Merry Christmases
to dawn and to me come.
Winds,
well they exist,
and they do blow!
Cleansing from the North
and from the south they flow
in warmth and restoration,
dispelling every fog of gloom
and routing every hurtful memory
that ever happened.
I fix my gaze on that One Star,
that portent bright, surpassing
all the mocking, twinkling titters
of the past its reminders constant.
Here,
in the season of loneliness
my lonely Advent heart
echoes that loneliness that lingers
there inside the heart of God
and so we yearn, together, aching
in the lonely moments waiting
perfect timing of those winds
to blow away the mists
and let that mountain shine again
in solid clarity and splendour promises
that someday the Divine Loneliness
and human grieving longing
will be overcome by
Faith and Hope and Love.
Grace,
and peace,
in the season of loneliness,
Love, Charissa
the dreamer longing,
the lonely unrequited.
the dreamy girl alone
and aching on the staircase,
betwixt two places, seated
within the place of passage
but still while all around me
others arrive to home…
or yearning doggie loving,
transparent in the moment
unnoticed in the wistful hurt
and past trauma returning
just hungry for a gentle pat,
or give a doggie comfort
and drink in human pain.
Yes…I could be either one.
this is me, inside my heart, my soul cupped in my hands
and lifted high in graceful beauty unto heavenly lands,
this is my spirit, beautiful and yielded in my place
on sacred prayer mat made of love and tears and joy and grace.
but this is that me, seen, encountered, clumsy in this world,
the way i am perceived and felt, the heated judgments hurled,
hard and horned, coarse and dull, imprisoned in my place,
of silence, sorrow, empty house, tears always on my face.
it’s been 25 years, every one a chapter in a book
filled with pages written in words
of surprise and heavenly gifts everyday.
i remember the first, that morning walk,
clammy fog swirling round my face
while inner fogs cleared.
breezes of heaven blew bright and fresh
teaching me to unwrap carefully, faithfully
everyday and hearing that free giggle/laugh.
and then i unveiled me (alas), to us all (me included)
and discovered that i had unwrapped that gift and was done…finished
and revealing my own irrelevance, current, future.
another chapter ended yesterday, another one begun,
passing and being born without a word from me (1st time ever),
at least, not one outloud, lest the universe take offense in silence.
but i remembered, all day long. i always do, you know.
and i sang, i cried, my tears washed my love
so my love could clean hold you secret and unseen.
i am sorry, love…i am. i know i was ruination,
a blight on years meant to resonate and not
rot in futile failed half-built huts.
but i will never sorrow o’er that day, that moment
when Heaven spoke and told me of Their gift,
and my heart was blessed forever after.
i remembered, all day long…and sang.
If i ever forget, may my hand forget to live,
and may i forget to breathe again.
it’s ironic,
what the clock says
shouting and inexorable
without words.
the dazed and hazed
love that time…4:20.
i don’t know why,
the stuff they love
is just substance of illusions
in smoky vaporous air.
I’ve been up since 2:40,
and all I can think of is
how shuffling numbers
is so easy, and
everyone calls it different…
but that seltzer?
the one on the table,
left from last nite’s
waiting out the number changes
until it was time
to lay in bed awhile and
exercise my blinking muscles?
well, it’s still there,
and flat.
in the back hall i discovered
that my bike’s rear tire
was flat too,
so i repaired it,
examining inner tube,
looking for holes and patching
in that rough and sticky moment
of sandpaper and glue.
i think about you.
and i think about
the patches on my soul,
it’s unwieldy surface
littered with those bumps
and orange edges and
scratched surfaces from
the methods needed to
make the fix stick…
and it’s still serviceable,
i guess, but i will need
a new one soon.
easy enough, just
buy one with money…
right?
this one is still inflatable,
still pushes out tread
and fills sidewalls and
rolls on the road miles and miles
over rocks and nails
and miles…
but rides,
exhilarating or sweaty
eventually end up
in the back hall,
in the moment called 4:20
(or 2:40, or anything, pick a number
it’ll flip over and come up illusion)
and like that seltzer half finished,
set aside because
(it couldn’t touch that thirst)
it’s flat.
i edited my blog some,
worked on some drafts of
poems that were bumpy and rough,
and found their song in the midst
and that made me cry,
seeing them unknot and unknit
and breathe again, no holes
save that one which they sing out of.
god, what if
life was a great
wordpress
platform,
what if we
could open up
our editor and go back,
rewrite those
lines that went awry
unknot those
songs that choked,
patch those
rash tires flat,
share those
seltzers half drunk,
toasting ennui til every
drop was drained
and finished.
what if we could.
did i forget to mention
how i ran my fingers
round the inside of that tire
worn and used to be sure
what pierced it
was gone or removed?
(if you don’t do this you will just die on the same nail over and over)
anyway, i snagged them
bloody on glass
and screaming silent at 4:20.
but I got the culprit,
at least that one will
do none harm ever again,
that one will not
trouble the rough and bumpy
old patched tube.
so i got that going for me.
i hear those numbers
changing in the deafness
set upon us by the great sunder.
i think about my fingers
torn inside the tire
by the glass
and I think about my life,
a tire pierced and worn
over and again by glass,
by wire, by nail
and branch and bramble
and haunted by this
old and rough bumpy
tube patched and patched
and patched and…
yeah.
i got blood on my keyboard
from that glass that
cut me.
i think it got onto this poem, too.
i think it stains, it colors
all things, i think
i view the world thru blood-stained glasses.
and then i think about
you again
and I blink my
eyes wet again
and i wait for
another day,
another ride,
another changing of the
numbers that all might as well be
4:20
Dear Constance…I saw this image, and it totally summed up my experience at this age…
Me: seeing a potential friend, and who/what I should have been…
Her: seeing a little boy that represented a crush, and really nothing else.
Loneliness reigned.
I woke today,
again,
and sad.
Fingers clenched,
toes curled, and
palms scarred
by my fingernails’
cruciform
crescent tattoos.
Another day of longing…
wash, rinse, repeat.
I had hoped
that someone
would notice my pain,
feel my heartache,
care for my sorrow.
But no one did,
lost in their own
worlds of hurt.
I was glad and sad
when I declared in faith
and many liked that.
To encourage others is good.
But when I was open,
transparent,
silence held court and
there was nothing…
no words,
mute embarrassment at
my open vulnerable mewlings?
Distaste for naked cries?
No hand to take,
no smile to receive…
My Daddy told me,
when I was little,
and mourning
“Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep, and you weep alone.”
I always hoped
he was mistaken,
but I think
he must have
been right.
I’m gonna press on,
give my smiles,
my words,
my hands,
such as they are…
I’m stubborn that way,
I guess.
(this was written in 1979…and I just found it, and I was struck that it might well have been written to myself, hidden and lonely and imprisoned in all the things that I was bound by…shame, loneliness, distrust, abandonment, alienation…and all that in the midst of a life that appeared to be vital and outgoing and faithful and fruitful!
remember Constance…be kind to every single person you meet! You never know what burdens they carry, and what the pebble of one word might do, with eternal effect.)
Song of You
I see you
not with my eyes
but with my heart
a face no darkness can consume,
no light can outshine,
with me always through-out time.
I hear you
not with my ears
but with my eyes.
I hear what lies behind the syllables
I see them, feel them deep inside
words you could never speak or hide.
I am touched
not by your hands
but by your thoughts,
feelings caution can’t erase
nor careless caprice…
you give me peace.
Today dawned golden, blue.
Birds sang up the sun and
grass gracefully beckoned time
to snuggle in
for the day.
But inside me
Dawn hid
her apple cheeks
and a wind
howled thru the hollows
of my sad soul and my
heart ached like hungry teeth
gnawing on glass,
and rock
and foil.
And time?
Stomped in,
laid down
and settled over me,
raptor
piercing air
in screaming dive
to lay claim
on me
its prey.
I am aching and
stuck among these ruins,
and yet
I must press on.
What would I do?
Why, I would have a best friend and go bike riding with her all day
and end up at the creek behind the Gibson House
Buried deep in the pear orchard
where the water doggies dance and skitter across the surface
and my dog, chest deep and soggy-doggy dank,
(Mighty Huntress!)
would chomp and snap them up, protecting us from
those threatening piranhas and keeping safe our
Treasured Trinkets
We would shinny out of our clothes like
young garter snakes shedding our skins and
cannonade off the bank into the cold and merry flow.
Smelling of sun and creek and joy we would swim and
shrilly shriek (quietly, lest we be discovered).
And then we would lay in the weedy straw (waiting cutting,)
and dry off with closed eyes and open hearts
holding hands and content.
Later, after we rode through the orchard (on our way to Paris)
we would end up late at night watching
Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie
eating popcorn by the handful and ice cream by the
painful spiky skull full til we at last had
outlasted my parents and been ordered to bed.
And when I woke in the night, fearful and stiff and petrified,
she would be there
my friend, and breathe on my cheek and
tell me that Jesus loves me.
If I could go back, I would ask only and ever always for that…
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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