Category Archives: Poetry

the salt and the spear

i-
The salt and the spear
begin
    to wonder
    to woo to

walk – unshaken the spilt
part
    wonders too
    who to

call wind as the spear
knits
    wonder, knits
    wood into

salt

—

ii-
Large is the willow’s red – it is sound it is near – how near? as
your reach is bound to wrist to hip, that near – small is the
swollen sea – how small? as your paw is yearn is seen, that small –

ii asks

As I sleep away my mourning, grass walks, asks, “what
is it that the children of rain remember most?” The story
answers, waters the plaint – As I seep away my morning,
grass is worm is root as this poem is awake with heal-

“How does the strange earth bear fruit, does it know
which road shall converge into dark & which one shall
be the rabbit?” I stand as it all begins to flower & then
smoke – the fruit bearing earth now rustles its feathers-

Open water

do we in our moving
move toward life or death

do we in turn sell, burn & prosper   do we raze our haven   as death?

Stroke by stroke drawing us
Out there?   Father of rhythms,
deep wave, mother,
There is no out there.
All is open.
Open Water.   Open I.

Open hearth   Open stone       crucible of love     crux of I

Women, ships, lost voices.
Whatever has dissolved into our waves.
I a lost voice
moving, calling you
on the edge of the moment that is now the center.
From the open sea.

Whatever has dissolved in our bones
as rust
recalls –
we recall the tender
the edges recall, the stone, the work of the sea as the breaking out of open water.

—
Lines in bold are from Muriel Rukeyser’s “The Outer Banks”

Poet as difference

Poet as difference
the smellsweet
    wrungtooth, it keeps us in guess
    in

deference to differ
the snuckroot
    earthsweat, as blade wishes blood
    in

rain – the differed
the nailred
    skyrust, as air as parch as wet as pain

—

that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference—to kill it or ignore it

Audre Lorde

restoring death to its abode

the throes of pale descend;
    a bone is wrought   this the wire where blood is vine   as fern-door tips
    open, the solitary dove coos   whose wish remains,

which house of worm witholds?
    as the cove of ground breaks open love buds   whose wish remains, which
    whorl of tincture roams? restoring death to its

abode   i as the stubbornness of
manhell climb out of nothing into
nothing   serpent! sway us
into call, strum the wet wood into
storm   smoke   mother!