I am Home

I Am Home

It's the warm floors on the coldest nights 

Furnace thrums

No cold air seeping through the corners

 I sleep with the windows open

so I can hear the sound of the stars

rain falling

snow shooshing

wind cracking vulnerable branches

the moon humming

and cars passing through town

kicking up gravel

At the end of the day, I come in through the mudroom and

 bright red back door with a glossy finish

to a kitchen with the smell of coffee and herbs, sometimes bacon

when Tim treats himself to a diner breakfast

This place with overstuffed bookcases

Pictures and trinkets 

Mismatched chairs with pillows at the kitchen table

A table salvaged from a burn pile behind the Boys' home

Eight feet long with half burned candles in the middle

and unfinished business on one end;

Taxes or building plans, mail, newspapers folded over

to remind us to read something that struck the other

A jar with fermenting cabbage and a bottle of tahini or some sauce or seasoning

Spills for sure

I roll out pie crust on the other end or plan dinner

No curtains on the windows

but green glass bottles and pottery shapes that love the fickle light of this valley

A sofa big enough for a bunch of people

with cushions that sink and don't mind spills

There have been spills

And the big old jade plants that have grown one from the other

refuse to die from neglect or shadows or front porch spiders when they are moved

in warmer weather

The painted, plastered, and wall papered walls 

seem pleased to host the hodgepodge of paintings and drawings and photographs

 collected on whims, though sometimes there were voices with stories half told

or rumored. I always remember where they came from.

We are collectors of tokens offered as we move through this life

and we stack and store them 

They remind us that we have moved through places and times

that have made us rich with memories

and lives well lived

 The empty spaces are waiting 

for what comes next

In Vain

I keep thinking about painting portraits of what's real about

This changing face

Shifting flesh

Lines that form with each smile and worry and disapproval

around my eyes and mouth

The grey hairs that no longer sneak in but announce

the passage of time

I have never known what to do with my hair

and I won't pretend now

even years after my mother is gone

and no longer threatening to make appointments with women

with pastel hair piled high

who snip! snip! while they chit chat

many more inches that fall in delicate silent wisps

to the floor and my back

while I sit in a swivel chair facing a mirror

that tells me my shoulders have rounded

my neck is fleshy

and that cow lick will always make my hair part so that it looks 

like my forehead is getting bigger on one side more than the other

and what used to be called freckles, now age spots,

have taken over 

Each laugh and sorrow has settled into my skin

and I can feel them when I run my fingers across my face

pull and stretch the flesh

remember the stories it tells.

A Lament on This Day

I am clear that what each moment holds is special,

singular, owing to nothing but the breath that surrounds it

Air that is light and changed with each season

 The sky holds the stars

without effort

and the moon rises and winks from its inky place

certain that it belongs

on each horizon.

a letter to Haddie

Dear Haddie Pearl

There are no words for how it feels to be a part of this next extraordinary 

place in life

with a generation that follows

Big eyes full of wonder

A heart pounding

And moments from every single day

that fill your senses

Greetings and wiggling fingers

Voices filled with questions

Can you hear me? Do you recognize this voice that called to you

in your mother's belly 

That beautiful underwater place?

We are all here to catch you

receive you

Hold you close

and love you

like no other love

we have known.

this time

There is always light

hovering on the edge of clouds

waiting for an opportunity

to shine

We can accept the warm

that it offers

or shiver

in its shadow.

One Step After the Next

I step into the water, careful not to slide on moss covered rocks

Round and awkward 

Those sticking out understand my cautious feet

Slow moving, I break the still surface of the lake, causing ripples 
as I move away from the communal edge with

Picnic tables filled with wobbly legged bicyclists, click clacking in their special shoes

On tour, having their rosemary focaccia and free range something...

local ginger ale

The sky that meets the water with dragon flies that hover and hum

on this picture perfect day

I prepare, like always, to swim out to the middle 
But it's been three nights of cold
I  breathe with each stroke through the chill that rises to my chin
as I get farther from shore

My heart 

shouts louder every time I drop below the surface

I cannot breathe evenly
and I realize that my right leg no longer works

and there is no one

swimming or paddling to call out to
I move onto to my back 

and I wonder about my mother's ashes floating freely.

And I know for sure

that I will find my way home,

first on the water

and next on the dusty road.

Unfinished Days

In These Unfinished Days

I often come home weary after a

twenty five minute drive with no sound

Or too much if I crank the radio and scream with the words that crackle and cry from the dashboard,

and my cheap speakers that

throb and shudder when I press the button to raise the window in my old and tired Volvo 240

No words left after a day of endless chatter

with few solutions to problems that mount and level

spill over into my sleep and dreams where I square off 

with demons and angels, reminding me of

conversations with my mother that I never finished,
even though I can't remember what they were about
 I can always feel the texture of her skin, taut and smooth,

and the fabrics that covered her in her final days

That ridiculous giraffe patterned fleece, the only thing we could find that would wrap around her

Blue knit cap made by the Ladies of Mercy

between gossip and gum cracking 

Emergency room visits that lent urgency

to every single day

God help us

there is still so much to do

That has little to do with 

suffering and righteous

just keeping an eye on a horizon that keeps changing

and light

Gorgeous light

That shows us how many shades of green there are.