Truth Be Told - A Letter to Demeter (my mother)
I feel you
wanting me to return
to you.
Truth be told,
it is always winter
with you,
winter of my soul
cold, stark,
lifeless.
No feelings of my own.
Only your need,
your happiness
to attend to.
Truth be told,
it is empty and cold
in your world.
All that matters
is making life look
perfect
and hiding
your unhappiness
behind an empty smile.
You lie about
letting summer return
when I return.
Truth be told,
it is never summer
with you.
P.S.
Here in Hades
I am the One.
Nothing to do,
nothing to prove.
So simple to say
yes to His fruit.
Red juice drizzles
down my chin
And we laugh.
Poem
I have suspected You
hidden from You
wailed and railed at You
I have turned away from You
ignored You
hated and berated You
And still
You invite me to dance
You ask me to sing
You offer me a ride
in Your
red
Eldorado
convertible...
And I say yes.
at last evening's end
I am lying in the dark
after Red Sox and reading
dream work every waking hour
to keep me safe against rejection
and oh my God
my body starts burning
shame scorches my flesh
and melts me down
almost unto death
the assault is so ferocious
I cannot stand against it
and have to get out of bed
and go downstairs
I make tea and sit with Ash
he watches the end of the game
and I talk a bit about burning
we have twenty years and more
of "not talking" loving
wordless deep unending
this balm spreads over my wound
and I go upstairs to bed
I lie again alone but knowing
now that I can make a distinction
between her lies and my trues
what I need
when I find
my NO
and want
to turn into my yes
patience to feel
the hard pain
to call its name
love to hold me
close before the shame
of being here again
sucks me into the
vortex that spins me
round from girl to hag
dark to Him
soft pain to open
clean the wound
cauterize the lie
to expose my NO
for just a no
not me
not the girl who
loves and lives
to grow up
in Him
***
what do I need
when I find my no
and want to turn
toward my yes?
I need to stop
to want to stop
to breathe and wait
and look and weigh
what is going on?
where am I in me?
who is speaking
thinking moving?
Ash asks me
do you want..?
I first say "No."
every time
then I change my mind
every time
about food or departure times
gifts or parties
these "little" no's
are big indices
markers born
of the habit of fear
fear of being
wrong every time
a fear born of
shame every time
OWWWWWW
and Wow
and Now
and How
I can change
I am in my feeling
I am open to attack
and I am learning
how to fight back
shame scorches me
yesterday again
all my oxygen
is eaten up
I am "life less"
my studio walls look barren
the shell of me
can't find my girl
I am in the burning
I do not remember
"Do my homework"
anytime every time
I am drowning
going under
I reach out
to belonging
I remember
I belong
and call Christa
who calls me back
dark and golden
raw and cloudy morning
retreat becoming
part of me
all ways
I am with Him
every hour
in the back seat
of the car
on His lap
with Him
scared or tired
ebullient or
grief stricken
failing opening
I ask Ashley
every evening to share
with me and I with him
our days we are
I dare my heart
leaves falling
skies heavy
me renewing
in the mystery
of belonging
I am away
not outside
the communion
heart play
theater of the strings
I am home inside of me
with Him all ways
altering me
unexpected and unimaginable
delectable
so much hard work
so much fun
best of times
in the hardest
I am home
rain is falling
sun is shining
I am in His river
swimming for my life
in my life
when I write
in the morning
I am greeting
me
I am swimming
in the seas
of my unknown
fishing
I am diving
into now
with my eyes wide
open
my heart is rushing
to find my feet
on His holy
ground
I am searching
the tribe in me
for this fierce
joy
I am using words
becoming flesh
meeting Him
incarnate
I
am
praying
Him in
me
Ash and I are trammeled now
in bodies giving way to time
both besieged by wear
this new to us me and him
we are children infants
burdened by predicament
his left knee and all my bones
two person surgeries
how to live recover
driving shopping therapies
tending one another
in time of disrepair
this reality new and scaring
'bends the knees of my heart"
to the ground
prostrate in love
before my God in me
"Know me."
when things are rough
I have no words
but this is not NO
not my long old silence
this is not no voice
this is not unheard
this not my childhood
this is me struggling
with the mother of all dark
on the bended knees of my heart
incarnating His voice
in every cell I say "uh huh"
I walk away from her
ten thousand times ten thousand
I "string" my words I cry out
the raging fear and old old pain
when she would slay me
I bathe in His hearing
I smell the furnace of His alchemy
and know I am His gold
He alone will slay me
and burn me out
not overnight but over life
I rise phoenix on His wings
He flies me from the heights
of this battle and from its bowels
to return to the ordinary
to my life in His Love
YES
my skeleton almost dust
my flesh melting away
I become Your good earth
before my very eyes
in Your Very hands
God, help me
I am scared
tears brim my heart
and deep breath
fills my breast
You come to me
in sweetness
and breathe me
into life again
broken open
robins in their first fall
are feasting in the crabapple
over my head as I write
and I am feasting on Him
Sue asks me to choose
some poems for a page
reading them just now I see
Him reworking me
I hear His Steadfast Love
calling me by name
against all odds
I hear my heart reply
"Yes, my Lord, this is me.
I can hear you
in my cares and fears
joys and unknowns."
I can hear Him
in the quiet of first morning
and the noise of my day
is ever punctuated
by my dreams' work
every hour my soul flies
to its Heart wings folding
on His knee
this morning I wake
my cat Ramon along my side
his paw covering the heart
His hand holds fast
my no, my yes
my edge revealed
for me to feel
with His fingers
I surrender to His art
Dream With No End
Red
Night falls hard
Twisted logic of traveling spirit beings
Look. Look here FEEL THAT!
Swirling, swooning, Falling
Down, down, down
Do own
Look here THIS IS YOU!
When you wake I will be gone
The part of you that is still with the Archetypes
When you wake, you will be no more
Feel how you know this loss
The path of your ideology will blind you
Right here in the middle of night the sperm and egg touch
The drop of blue/red growing spinning out the world
Can you feel this…
…the intense erotic feeling forming the world
The light comes up
Go down, go down
God own
See
Me
Touch with feeling touch
In the dark
I come for you
AWAKE
You have died
Yes but Live
In me
So own
Allowing the alchemy
I am I
NOW
Dream with no end
Frederic Gluck
His Poem
I am the One who holds the one
As you become strong in My embrace
All life is revealed in it’s timeless awareness
A constant play as re-creation of giving and receiving
receiving and giving back until only the gift remains
This must become your “Understanding” to share as I have shared with you
Then will you be drawn……. as......Into the whirlpool
****
The first and last line are all that I remember from a poem I found in a book of poetry in a dream, I then filled in the middle section with what came up while pondering these two lines.
Here is the dream:
.................................
There is a silence
which fills everything
so perfectly
Silence begetting wonder
past the raw edge where scrawling
and chattering ceases
How do I know?
I was there
The air is different there
Alive, electric
You can almost taste it
Something mysteriously quickened
connecting one to the other
There! In the room last night
A slip of wire
A hand on your breast
An arc of lightning
All of these
And more
Like some heavenly gate opening
and we witnessed the eighth day of creation
And less
A snowflake falling
A prayer whispered across the ocean
But oh, your eyes
How they said all this
by saying nothing
Glistening in wonder and acceptance
Compassion, pain
All dissolving together into silence
You, meeting You
Salt tears soaking the face of the Divine
Witness and participant both
Blessing me by being so blessed
................................................
.................................................
THE BREACH
(for Marc)
To stand exposed
hobbled in my trousers
my misdeeds thick around my feet
To feel the torrent of shame
pouring thick upon me
tentacles around my heart
my mind cased in iron
angry hammer blows
the unrelenting din
YOU YOU YOU YOU
To want another skin,
another face
some nowhere
where I can be nothing
unseen
unknown
uncounted
unsought
And to see you
standing in the breach
bearing the banner high
fierce against the foe
flush with love
for me
when I no longer know
how to be for me
myself
The ache and intensity
Where the battle rages
Helpless you were
to do more than this
fearful that I should falter
and forget
that I was that child
and am that child
and may yet be that child again
(if mysteries of grace and fate
conspire with will to repeat the miracle yet again)
The child, the child
who suffers a thousand blows
against his tender innocence
.........................................
Curious fire
that may be smothered or fed
now felt belly deep
softly brushing my senses
like fingertips
or midnight voices across a lake
laughter?
crying maybe
or a drunken argument
distilled into strange music
Could be anything
a faint echo of the Big Bang
A sonnet composed by God
I would kneel at this shy flame
kindle it with useless shreds
splinters, yesterday's news
and self-fulfilling prophecies
toss on the old furniture
hell!
why not let it take the whole damn house
.................................................
Light filtering dream from memory; your bed is like a great field petaled white. The trunk and limbs of me, like the cove of an apple tree. I woke early and can smell the coffee you brew downstairs, hear the making of food. I imagine how you will come to me bearing coffee and toast, the way my grandfather brought my grandmother her breakfast in bed. Here, your daughter lies in the shelter of my body, curled in upon herself. Like the calf I found in the meadow those many years ago, quiet and waiting, unsure if I am the enemy or the haven she has sought.
It is dinner time and I am cooking in my kitchen. I am imagining you’ve come up behind me. I think to say the moon is but a sliver and holds the sky like your hand on my hip. Of course you do not hear me, you at your own stove two states away. I think, the sand hill cranes have come back again, four summers now. I think of their wings held to the shape of a crescent. I think, if I were a crane I would leave the burgers to burn. Head east toward your long wooden table my wings like two napkins flapping. The sound they’d make like the smack of lips.
We are here to plant flowers, to bury our lost sorrow with the still faces of these Johnny- jump-ups. Birds cry from new-leafed sumac and in the wet air of the mountain’s shadow I can still hear the twelve gun salute, still feel it in my body. From here we move to the stones that my mother learned to tend from her mother. If you move to my house I will have to teach you my family’s way of tending the dead – nothing to do, you will have to leave your buried in Maine.
I was told once that an owls eyes were so big
that there was not a lot of room left for a brain
I wonder at that today, to see and not think
to know and not understand
it is a relief, the thought of this
and yet there is a terror
What would it be like to see
and not fit what I see into a shape that I am used to
to let the thing that is, just be itself
would it really be okay if it just was itself
there is a vulnerability here that I do not want
a loss of control that I do not like
how does one pretend that all is okay
when one cannot pretend anymore
it is one thing for the mind to say that it wants to see
and yet another to see in a way that allows oneself to be seen
Bill St.Cyr
Here I am holding the door open
for you
Once upon a time it was to the bells call that you came and I held the door open as you entered the sanctuary.
But today, my dear friend, I stand holding the door as you exit.
No more bell, what could be told has been said.
What is silently reverberating inside you needs be your guide now.
Listen with your heart and will as you walk out into the world. I have opened the door
for you.
You pass through and now I am at your back.
I walk with you
Snow buntings lifting from the field, shift,
bits of white-light against sky.
My voice splinters me
like this, into a flickering, dialect of His name.
Sound: tinkling ice- the buntings’ song,
my mouth the chamber echoing.
It’s true I speak of god, the white birds
flying through me, their wings a beating.
At the heart, all trees are dead.
The first tenderness hardens
to become a foundation
from which everything radiates.
Only the layer just under the surface,
the one most vulnerable, alive.
The tree held by all that.
Flight
In the field
each little bird lifts
turns like a spelling.
When I look at you
I too want to lift
move in unison.
O delicate field.
O sweep of flight.
* * *
In my dream my name on your tongue birds lift
like words to sky I am spelled let me trust to the
air let you be the air let us rise in accord let us
be flight.
August, 2007
Necklace
two strands
not one
one in this world
one in his
wrapped around me
soft stone
on flesh
my warm flesh
flesh that i trust
infant flesh
still soft
unworn
my soft animal body
my soft
animal
body
i remember her today
with trembling fingers
i feel her body
my body
with trembling heart
i touch her hand
wondering
is this real
does he really see me
this way
hold my hand
this way
does he love me
this way
the way
i have tried to love
could he feel for me
what i feel for this infant
his hand on me
as mine is on her