....From The Tree Of............Sudden Joys
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_______________________________________________________ Heaven To Some Bring your books your scarf, your woolen underwear. Throw the snowshoes in the trunk. Stock up on good, hot soup mix. Don't forget the emergency candles we can handle anything that comes, caught up in pine ful, silent, blue light special Wunder Nacht when all the world except the one we're warm in up and disappears. I'm here already- follow the frosted breath the swoop of smile and two bright lantern eyes :) Post-Christmas Post Christmas, those post redeemer, those post-partum blues, the dragging tinsel, sagging in the saddle you, the tripping on extension cords, and one more lean over, one more straining back to reach the outlet just behind the couch -the grouch of it; the full up to the teeth with wintry weather. Better to be me who just ignored it best I could, who sent out cards and sat and scrambled eggs, watched Home and Garden's Christmas Castles, saw the rich boys do it up and grinned all round my un decked and cozy, no need to 'un-decorate'd house. Cherubim & Serphim It's important to remember we're angels after all -kneeling, awkward in our gowns waiting for our wings, things we never think of, now we're grown but ........believe it- it is true. We're all angels. Undressed Joy curious phrase, 'my heart in my mouth' and yet, that's what it was. I gripped the wheel as though to turn it into butter, trying to soften up the frozen feel of simply everything my own fear most of all, as tires kee-runched kee-runched over icy clods of white stuff waiting to smear me on the road. Pittsburgh Pennsylvania PennDot road crews, having brunch at 6:00 a.m. putting skid marks out of their minds with little soothing pills of Dunkin Donuts and a union contact, queuing up with swervers they could have saved from the science fiction out there on the highways- yes, my heart was in my mouth. I felt that muscle climb right up my chest and through the throat and higher, touching teeth, the beating one more thing to think about in a mind in a morning rush hour panic- flying along, barely touching the ice beneath but there are some whose very nature stagger's reason- there's a season for us all and somewhere there's a man in New York City, singing in his underwear, the snow -it hardly touches this kind of madman, child or 'Crazy'- how I envy him. Nomenclature Won't Change A Thing According to this test I took, my pirate name is Mad Mary Flint. I like it; has a hard-edged razor feel. If only there was a frigate I could board tuck my sword inside the the folds of a long coarse skirt, dirt under nails grin like a wicked female Flynn- I'd win you then, I'll bet; bad ones get the play- but mushroom hearts that accordion soft around a thing and trap the meat inside, the reality of a man- they're tough to take. That isn't me either. I'm a flutterer- borne by wind, too quick to catch and probably due to hatch a passel of polecats in the gut, but o so charmingly you'd beg for one more scratch before I leave for points unknown. Persistence Dark morning in a cold car, windows icy at the edges. See breath in puffs of here I am and I can see my spirit, what is warm in me puff out into the world. My molecules commingling with the bigger breath of life. I turn the ignition key and hear the hesitaton of car just getting started trying to find it's pistons, frozen in the position still of sleep. We both by exhaust and exhalation show we're keeping visible faith with doing it again. That is the secret. One Bouquet Less It's true there's nothing quite as new as a string of words that present themselves as gifts, given to the mind and out of nowhere. Usually I gather them as tigerlilies, orange and suddenly happening, knowing their caprice to wilt away. Last night as I shook off my slippers, bent to put out the lamp, there was a rush of them, orange in 'here I am' happiness that I ignored, punched down the pillow and went to sleep. They're gone now- wherever words go when too tired to moor till morning. The Way It Was Seeing frozen, looking out at friends over scarves wrapped turban-style around our mouths, faces swathed and hidden just like mine. The watering eyes, the snotted lines from everybody's nostrils, trails of winter apple-cheeked and hoping for the snow to reach the windowsills- soft white hills and flying home on bookbags by the seat of the pants sledding into happy. Winter used to ring like this. Singing Like The Top Of The Head Is Off How do you write or why do you write I couldn't say in any way that would make much sense to anyone not badly bitten by it, but I'd say this: see that sky that look of burning? Do you see striations remind you of a murder or Iran before the terror took it, sumptuous and silk? Do you see Easter morning rising on a lily, sun like love paint at the lip of the corona around the risen Christ or orange that follows black full way to the edge of disbelief before a flooding fills the cistern of your soul with whitest white- bigger than you ever knew it was? Fill these hands with mud and I will make of it the turd of God- if there were no more skies, then I would sing of mud. That's how far the language takes me to absurdity and back- I know no other love as open mouthed and gangle-kneed and young, it is the adolescent voice-crack down at dawn when all the best ones come -but are used up, have been forever and if you hear me crying in my sleep, oh do not wake me -ever. I am dreaming words in dialect I'll never hear again and when I wake I will have forgotten them, but not completely. I'm a ragdoll stuck to a bronco's back that's bucking, there's a runaway horse whose saddle stirrup I am hung from, world is upside down- seeing in a way I've never seen: the corn is blue, the sky is green. Jellyfish Sway of hip sway of ship sway of opinion all of life is movement with the wind. In a box tongue of rocks stolid man of hard opinion, everything of death is solid solid, while water takes the shape of things- fog and mist will kiss a corner turn it, stone just sits- waits for foot to find it- bring a man down, so fluid me always. On To Page 3 .............. 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