‘I though the sun rose in my face
when she looked at me.’
the ridgelines in the map of her Texas (once African) skin
likes the mountains of home remembered
to the parchment landscape of her flesh
(now marigold).
her breast still swollen with pollen promising
of petals
still budding in the eight efflorescences of her ripened youth
witnessing the outpouring of her own fecundity
in the sun stricken face of this, her son.

if you had known him then, you’d know
he was to be dancer. the flowers, singing soundless
of rosey extravagance, orchaic delicacy, dais’d innocence,
and jasmine’s night blooming dreams, called him then
as they do now,
to cascades of deliquescent beauty.
his countenance now ripening, weathered
by days of sun echoing in her eyes
across time,
still raining upon his marigold flesh.

this was what she gave him:
blossoms,
soil,
rivers,
dreams,
and at last the knowing that it was him,
her sun, who brought the light to her eyes,
now glossing his face
and making flourish the flowers that blossom,
still,
in his hand.

last night
he told me, ‘she loved all her children that way’,
the moonlight (now silver) across the landscape of his skin.

thinking you know

is what makes you human

Stones – Lynx

Beneath stones, beneath feet walking, beneath buildings, beneath cities, is dust. Fragments of stone. Sand that cannot be diminished of polluted by the lies of this world. Stones which know only the truth of time’s erosion and the re birthing of soil into leafy form.

the space between, where humanity sleeps awaiting our embarking into dreamtime to be seen. a place of remembrance – of redress – of reconciliation (we hope) – of reconsideration. a place (without space) to remake our world.

i crossed the threshold uncountable times. many thresholds. each a point of impossible return. always alone – if not in the moment of crossing, then in the vast liminal time between then and return. (return to place is not the same as return. return is impossible, yet always occurring – in the way i spiral passes over the ring beneath it but never truly touches the same exact spot).

and i wonder, what would it be like to be in that space with others, in that body, stripped and bear. in that uncertainty. what would it be to share that place of learning. there is so much about humans to discover is solitude, and so much to be discovered in company. how would that be? shared liminality (to whatever extent experience is sharable remains unknowable). but to be in it together.

i feel, and strongly, that we, our species, is in that space now. society and it’s structures are turning on their heads (occupy), the economy is in such a grave state that it’s resurrection in familiar form is unlikely (and unwanted). we are birthing something new in ourselves. and like all births, our lives of our birthing bodies are at stake. this is not for play. this is real. and not (we hope) about empowering the structures which are already in place. not reaffirming a sick society. we, as a people, are in the dark night of our collective soul. we are betwixt and between, with little more than dreams as to what the other side might hold.

but in this we are together. this is the key point. and in that togetherness we are home. and the uncertainty is bearable (almost, maybe, at least). and the ritual will end with our ancestors (human and non-human) and our Mother the Earth decides we have unmasked and learned enough about ourselves to continue on. to rebuild. to raise the child, her grandchild, we are bearing.

a child in my story always wants to know what makes home. surely one of those existential questions to which there is no answer. but for the sake of of her comfort seeking mind i want to find something to say.

home isn’t a place. ask anyone on this planet who has ever felt they didn’t belong. surely a house is not always a home. and home isn’t always  a house. or a hut. or a living human structure. to say that people, or community, are home falls short of the mark. hopefully we are at home in ourselves, but solitude, and comfort with self in solitude cannot be home either. like all of these – house, place, people, self – they are surely home to some. but i am asking about a deeper home than that. the place the meets our the existential imperative to belong with a warm smile. the place that brings us comfort.

perhaps, and i think this to be the most solid answer i can give to this child’s question, perhaps home is in relationships. a complex web of relationships, including relation to self, others, place, space, time, ecosystem, world, spirit…

we can only honestly situation ourselves i relation to some other. when we say we belong to something, our language at once forces us to claim that thing to which we belong (even if it is ourselves) as other than, and simultaneously negates that – for the relationship itself is binding and creates a bridge whereby the two separate beings are now intimately conjoined.

to get a wee bit more practical, i think we do belong to one another. i think community can be home. absolutely. anything be home if we name it that. and for the child who asks, in the context in which she asks, i have to say that we are already home because we, our community, are together, sharing space and stories, interested in including one another so that our longing to belong is a need fulfilled.

in praise of the child who simply and courageously asks the question, i’ll dare to say that perhaps what matters is that we ask the question if for no other reason than to make sure we feel we belong to something, to anything. and if we don’t, may we have her courage to seek it out anew.

in the end, i can’t answer her question: i can only speak for myself.

begin in the middle. which is where the beginning always lives. or at least, in that neighborhood. the ending of the beginning. the beginning of the end. yes, the middle.

we begin in the middle, the rhythms of the sea cascading along the side of our sturdy, weather worn vessel. from the middle we have access to the beginning, which is the place to which we will always seek return. eternal return. the mythic endeavor of human kind: to find the place where we began, that we might come to know ourselves more wholly. anthropology, biology, religion, myth, each bow before the symbol of the beginning and engage in a centuries-long quest to name it, to give it language, to return.

this story beginning in the middle, telling stories within the story to remind those aboard the vessel of the beginning from which we set out. the shores from whence we departed, the villages of our ancestors, the seed beings that arose from the waves to initiate our evolution into what is how called human. the dreaming of god, given form, journeying to live in the middle whilst never forgetting the blessed beginning.

we begin. we begin to tell the story with no end in sight. our story. still living. bringing our memories, if not our timeless bodies, into the story of the beginning. even from the middle, all this is now and all that lies ahead is new. we tell the story to write the story, writing the story to know ourselves in its telling. and we begin, at last, to remember home.

i want your arms around me like a want a sweater on a cool autumn day. a sweater to soak in the last sunlight of indian summer to keep my cozy through the breezy night.

i thought to myself

it’s a strange thing

to have given ones life over

and to find

life

given right back.

Meditating lately on the Weaver, the Shaper, the Dreamer and the Dancer. Looking back on old words still fresh and tender, still children (not unlike the listener attached to the writer attached to the hand attached to that which speaks poems). Still a child, always a child.

Remembering the veil, the tapestry, the skin: i Remembered this:

Needles in fabric
puncture the veil between familiar    and unfamiliar skies.
Holes carved by silver
stars in the night where,
beyond the silk, lie mysteries of another night.

Through the mirror,
beyond the mask,
he works,
in calm.
Making tapestries of fabric,
sewing words into clothe,
tattooing skin.