i.

transition to fall is subtle here
colors don't happen on the outside of 

old cedars and ancient oaks
but nature's way is a kind of wild humor
everything is felt, not seen 

the shimmered heat of brown and yellow
and today a raucous wind is as welcome as water
after eighty-nine hundred-degree days
an unrelenting friendly state, texas

where hell never freezes 
and heaven is the water in a highway mirage

ii.
think i'll start writing that musical now.
the one i have talked into existence
assuming grandly that if thought indeed becomes reality
it's so very there already
i feel so terribly alive in that thought

iii.
a bright windy day 

after so many days immobile with heat
so maybe it's time to kill off somethin'
to celebrate a new beginning

chop down a tree maybe

a weird subtext to the brilliance of this day 
like that not-so-subtle message

spelled out by the siblings
a couple of nights ago
withhold the prescription
when pneumonia comes
so she can die
she keeps saying she wants to die 
so, like, let nature take it's course 
the old person's friend and all that ...

i look up into the spread of these 300-year-old trees
that are still coursing life
that live with me and my100-year-old mother 
and the very idea of helping death 

sounds like nothing natural even to this parched earth 

sounds like martian words for immoral
and i have no rosetta stone for that

iv.
wind screams through the oak
in the middle of the dark
out here in my sanctuary
a dead branch crashes and clatters 

on the corrugated roof of the cantina
but the old ivy on the giant oak clings on

even now in the course of things

even at midnight  

green shoots are comin' on with no quit

spirit moving among the lichens and decay 
foahevah, my sistahs. foahevah.

for you

o dear God. there we were,
bent at our altars to life
being and doing the daily things
weighing our worth 

as if lives were made whole 
by luck or by sweat
when it was all grace.
were it not for mercy

we would have arrived back home 
as accomplished as two motes on a dusty sill.
but here we are
light as angels

dumbfounded by love
tripping over all of the rules of this life.
perhaps it was the plan
we had to come this far

to know how precious it all is.
even without another day,
it would be enough only to have
these moments

knowing who we are 
and holding hands.

while moonlight is still warm on the bed
and moonshadows play on the floor
a silent form moves
in my dreaming house
its hands feeling along the walls.
is this an angel messenger
concerning itself with
the soundness of my heart?
the strength of my soulseams?

am i in trouble? how would i know?
where are fat cows and lean cows in this dreamscape?
and for God's sake where is joseph when you need him?
behold i promise to do yoga and granola
and carefully ponder the mercies of this life
until sufficiently fortified against whatever must come...
but please God make it short and sweet
because i am already up a tree
full of nuts and mischiefs
and there be bears out there...

finding, knowing, being

how do you come to know
spirit and flesh
as two beings, not one?
what springs from the heart
and mind to tell?
look at your hand, and whose is it?
why are you in this body and not that one?
stand in the wind, know the chimes
stand on the porch, know the pungent rain
there streams a centering warm blueness
that unfolds and washes over
thrumming the panes, drowning out words
and a feeling of presence
from the awesome unknown
comes to comfort and reveal
bends your soul over the anvil of humility
smiths it in a world of difficult people
strikes you with the thousand tiny hurts
and quiet miseries
pounding out the hardness
until your being vibrates closer to true
in the asking and telling
and doing of love

steely aqua and tawny pink 

smoothing and gentling
glides the morning

an osprey sweeps in high wide circles

the silence of dolphins curl the surface below

a fisherman tends the water's edge

two great blues stand reverently by

the waves offer themselves endlessly

now it comes up all shimmery ivory

and beckons a walk on the sands of eden

...

so before i'm thrown back out on my own

where change and uncertainty loom without a plan

where aging and mortgages and medicare happen

i'm still morning inside

i feel magical and full of wonder at how it will all go

something bids.

we can do this life thing

let's get on with it

there's an osprey out there in my beach world
slinging herself high and low in a brilliant sky over the roiling surf
and she hunts tirelessly, in effortless circles, endlessly
swooping, gliding, striking, climbing
slicing the sky in sweet clean arcs
inscribing grace and terror on the may morning air

and there's a haunted mindbeast in here, in my writing world
looking out from behind round glasses and giant porch windows
where i write and unwrite terrible, helpless lines, endlessly ...
taped to the desk lamp there's a picture of you
sticking out your tongue,
pulling up your shirt,
rending my heart with your irreverence.
what a mess i am. and then i remember what this week is all about.
so off i go for a walk out where she hunts,
to feel her energy, to be hawk,
to attempt soaring out
and look at things from somewhere else for awhile.
so to live this moment, so to write another day,
scribing with a lighter spirit after the wind has had it's way with me.

things not unsaid

all of these little messages i leave for you
the clipped typeytypey emails shipped off into the ether
the txt msgs thumbed on a tee-tiny screen
the words from my lips into the little phone holes
after listening politely to all of your instructions

God knows how they stay together in little strings of sounds and letters
how they do their little word lives
how they get from here to there without utterly losing it
how they keep from pressing forward and getting pushy with each other
how they simply and obediently line up and go on as they do
carrying their little bundles of emotions dutifully
not stopping to untie them and sort through what was said
not rearranging things to make better sense
no, they just carry on, the little words
sent from me to you
arriving somehow pristine and crisp or soft or languid 
as when they left my fingers
or slid off my tongue

but when you notice them is another thing in time.
i suspect by then it is all a mush, an untimely revelation
of things said or written. oh well. there they are anyway.

in my mind's eye i see
the clouds of these little electronic nothings
fluttering in the nearby magnetic space
waiting for you to notice them
stuffed in the mouth of an emailbox or on a cartoon speakbubble
languishing in an audio backroom waiting for a tiny door to open
and beckon them to dance and sing into a willing ear
these messengers of love and play and musing
of small anxieties and sweet nothings
live and move and have their being
in this life i share with you
i never know if you get all of them
or even most of them
but if only one gets through
you will have yet a few precious words more
on top of all of the long looks between us
over and above all of the wondrous other moments
you will have these words
tumbling out of me in text and subtext
saying over and over
i want all of you forever
all of you
forever
all of you
forever

screw good friday.

what on earth am i doing here.

life is stupid ugly.

all that heartbreaking everydayness. why should i care.

 the meanies in this world are big. arrogant. indifferent. 

why go out and get myself killed for loving.

i think that's what happened, actually.

for shit shure he didn't die for people's sins

because Love doesnt do that.

we imperfect ones are who do that.

we kill.

we maim.

we pollute whole oceans and defile the good earth.

we are the only ones capable of being not-God.

God please.

dont make me love people who don't love me.

let me just be skinny and beautiful and perfect

so i don't have to be fat and dumb inside.

so i can love me.

so jesus can still be alive and laughing in this world

without me killing him every time i forget 

that he is in all those other people

and me,

that i am made of the very Love 

that i long for.
i can't bear that.
can't bear it.
Love and Mercy
please be known to me
in the breaking of everyday bread.

as fresh and whole as the beauty of i and thou formed

from the Sacred Cry over each new soul 

from the Infinitely Profound into this great world

so are we loved, infinitely, profoundly... 

still and forever does that Love always come 
called or unbidden

and is never not ours, nor far
but here ...waiting, holding, knowing

standing at the door looking out in the garden for sign of laughter
spring has created its usual riot
and i'm about to miss it

taking care of the soul is a hands on job and i'm so weedy,
overgrown and brambly with thinking
some days i'm half-starved for wonder

its well past time to be  digging around, poeming, watering
all the brownish looking things inside...
hoping yet to scratch up green on a deadish stick...

looks promising... will have to work at it. risk sweating.
getting my heart all muddy.
come love. bring your spade.

another day, another valentine

thing is
love is just as real as rocks


or socks or a fox or a box


people know how to deal with rockses and sockses and foxes and boxes


love, not so much


if we could only see reality for what it is
maybe we could get to know love better
and maybe even know how to live it

song for tura on her 100th birthday - feb 4th, 2011

mama, you are a wonder

you laugh so easily

you always look to see 

that nobody's left behind

mama, you are a picture

sittin by the fire

talkin to people i can't see

waitin at heaven's door

but mama, you're not goin there yet

we've got a little more time here with you

and while you're still here

we'll play a little dominoes 

listen to roger's sermons 

laugh at something we said

and you'll say ''my stars''

and ''land sakes''

and have a glass of cabernet

every day at 4 o'clock

mama, you are a wonder,

you laugh so easily

with people i can't see

waitin at heaven's door

but mama, you're not goin there yet

we've got a little more time here with you.

there is always so much to say that can't get said 
and much more life that waits to be lived
there is time but only enough to take care of this moment
wherein i do what i can for everyone here
and yet i think and hope and pray for you where you are
and wish i could be two people
because there is more to life than just making do
and what waits is a life of passion 
that would never be on hold

now finally in these november days

life begins to shed some of its grimness

and music falls down the misty sky

in ancient hypodorian, o come o come...

it is your tenderness filling my heart that pulls me on, 
and nothing less than the fullness of joy beyond sustains me.

whose feet are these

slipsliding in the ocean of all that is,

what catches up the breath

in the flow of everyday things,

lurching the heart to fear?

so close is love to fear 

and no seam to follow one way or the other...
only a slight lean on the spirit to guide the craft.

this was a hard risk many days, for both of us,

a leap out of the boat for no apparent reason,
other than for love.

of such is the curve of this kind of grace 

precious as foam
on the long wave homing to shore.

the understanding

taking care of what's Good,

shoved as it is up against Will and Greed,

does not have to be a matter of eeking out a life
in a tiny crack of light.

but there is that.
and one grows slitty-eyed at wondering
what to do with a conscience that knows
its own little accommodations.

as in, how can we let people live on the streets

covered up with cardboard

and drive on by

without smelling the reek of our own shame?

without feeling the pearls choking our neck?

 'they're underprivileged anyway, so this works well for them'...?

how can we not put the heads of british petroleum in public stockades 

for an ongoing kill in the open seas,

the appalling ten-mile death plumes still soundlessly suffocating the deep?

the barrier islands abandoned to their stained and putrid deaths,

the people of an entire way of life sacrificed,

and we do not hear the screams of these ghastly silences?

how can a president of conscience so dishonor himself,
transfixed as he is between starving his people with corrupted hope
and hand-feeding the corporate maw at the altar of power?
where is our holy anger?

 what is all of this love left undone,

  that we too would exempt ourselves from the work?

  from somewhere within the Deep Nudge,
dwelling in salty pools of Light shining behind the eyes,

  Knowing leaks out, as now, and flows along the mind
and pours out on this kitchen counter,

where we sit in our communal quiet, 

you spooning your coffee,

listening to Keillor and Paynter,

i keeping by, tapping out lines,
examining the quality of my fury at joining the collective tacitness
 wherein we have excused ourselves from dealing with reality.

we know that who we are here on this earth, in this kitchen,
is sacred,
and we know that who we are
in the extended consciousness happening out there
is as sacred to our life as our own heartbeat.
so if we do not do That Thing That Changes Us...
the Thing We Were Given To Do...
then
we must live with ourselves
inside.

he looked out from old eyes and a knit cap
in 95 degree humidity, in downtown Austin
standing on the median with his cardboard sign
a simple message to cars passing by ...  "need help"
and i was on my way to the vet to pick up the family dog
found so many years ago,
in the middle of another road and another life...
and it was going to be a hefty bill this time.
$398 for an ear infection and overdue vaccination.
so, how much for the man?
all i had was a twenty and change.
it seemed unfair, but he wouldn't know
that i would be paying more for the dog,
and i handed it to him out the window.
it was easier than holding on to the anger at reagan
for all of those he turned out on the street
in the 80's... the ones who can't hold a job
and can't afford to be poor and bipolar
all at the same time.
out on the street
we are all just people.
and we have to take care of each other.
because what else is there?

where the red dragonfly silently hangs over on a reed
preying the mindless mosquito,
and the stiletto gray cat waits underneath, still as death,
slitting her eyes at the silliness of blue jays...
the birdbath quietly holds its small dark mirror.

the dramas of a hundred toad lilies 

have been told and told and blown and bled out,
the sweet freckled blooms long since
cremated in the texas heat.
dust to dust.
all of it lies dirt still.

until dinner is served.
a suddenness of jaws and
tiny beaky screams
strikes a jagged edge to garden life
that even lightning could admire.

nothing compares to the local preds
with murder on their minds.

it's the best i can do. tell you stories
about what goes on in the garden.
in 99 years you've pored over that bible
until there's no good plot left to discover.
and the stuff that goes on outside the window
is still cracking new with possibilities
if i peer at it
with dragonfly detail
through half-closed cat's eyes.

i can do that
for you.

redwood

there is no pretense about 2000 year old trees.

they are what they are.

and they are magnificent. sacred. 

a presence beyond any words to dignify.

it burns a hole in me that only four percent 

of the original coastal groves of these giants remain.

four. percent. of perhaps the largest trees on earth. 

all the rest were cut down. 

all.

what is it about us that condemns greatness

and draws a crowd to watch it fall? 

our bland, middle class american 

stumbling around

wearies him.

he is so healthy, at 70 something,

and weary of his island life,

the years he drove the school bus,

and now the fund raisers for the library,

playing a clumsy lewis carroll 

to two rounds of applause

and a goofy jacob marley

delighting the kids.

he's tired of all that.

he wants monasticism and a woman in thrall.

he loves rachmaninoff and caol isla

finds great beauty in derelict merchants

hawking the boardwalk.

he rails at a gagged culture

that fails to nurture our nascent inner sweetness.

he doesn't see that he has it all.

doesn't know how to revel 

in the bounty of his own goodness,

the culture of his own soul.

the only culture we've got.

we don't just live out there.

we live in here, out there.

molar living on the cusp

all of my teeth are 64 years old
but tooth #19, a lowly molar,
is acting up... on account of there's
a dark hole beneath one of its roots 
big enough for even a musician to make out 
on a smoky xray that never fails to animate a dental type. 
and this one--an endodontist-- is lively about something 
where nerves and bone and tissue carry out their tiny lives in #19. 
i give in. just do it. and then everything fades to buzzy. 
i don't remember. it was the extra gas. i guess. 
he keeps talking through the haze, explaining 
what each new sound is about, as if it will reduce the anxiety? 
enhance the experience? 


there's a jaw expander holding my mouth open, 
and a sexy little blue spandex skirt stretched around #19. 
dental theater. 


later, in the afterglow, a new picture pops up on the screen. 
so many little white lines where the sleek hair-thin canal tool 
snaked in. 


the modern millie in me appreciates the irony:  
lighter by $740 and yet in more pain.


the pioneer woman in me, with 
native intelligence still intact, 
thinks snake bite and oblivion
could have been a reasonable alternative.

mid-dream,

the notes fly past the pillow

and hurtle down stairs

where the sodding proper manuscript waits

buried mid-mulch on the music shelves

by the bench.

i can make it that far with slits for eyes

enough to jot down the code

dit dit dash every good boy does fine

some wavy chordish looking blots for bass. 

harmonic hints. not much to go on.

but enough for trying it out. 

like riding a new trike.

you know how it's going to go but

there's no substitute for taking a spin.

and that's why the piano plays 

at dark forty around here.

it's not exactly because we can't sleep.

but the effect is the same.

i'd like to think there's genius 

in hearing notes and writing them down

but it doesn't take enough agony.

and no one will hear it, except the ones 

with pillows over their heads.

but when it all comes right--

when what is in play 

is what came to mind--

then what else is there?

other than other dreams,  of course,

and others' dreams...

and the rest of life, 

out there.

which is, still,  all of it, music.

ends is means

making good 

in the real world

is living in the how

                              

mother's day leftovers

i.

the savory pungence of the daughter's cooking

still lingers all over the house.
'faith of our mothers'
indeed...

most days faith has
nothing to do with it
and everything to do with just hanging on.

and here we were laughing

while so many dire things threaten... 

here i am, required to live
all the way through the smooth silky easy
minutes and hours and days

in a stone and mortar house
under the oak trees,
with these memories,

to make meaning
in the work of my soul

ii.

and across the way is another one like me

in the subsaharansomeplaceorother...

with no lesser thing to marvel, nor is

mothering any more or less poignant or beautiful, 

nor the smell of cookery by younger hands

a sweeter more savory memory

so i look far far far and

her look comes back

with the same knowing 

how it all just is
and the deep goodness of it
the way we are made

fairy and old blush and souvenir heavy and pouty with rain,
secure in the many blessings of being born roses...
this late spring day hangs low,
and drips,
and seeps into the soul,
a muddy balm for winter's rawness
and a momentary protection
against the summer heat to come
when even the the limestone will lose it's cool
and the garden abandons all restraint when the sprinkler turns on

golden calves

Episcopal Barbie. The new face of episcopal evangelism...with "black" Bishop Barbie and ''latino'' Deacon Ken coming soon down the diversity pipeline. Too sweet. 


It's surely a labor of love spending over 100 hours sewing her little mini-36-24-36 vestments, using fabric from an actual clergy shirt...BUT  I cannot for the life of me fathom a serious commentary--much less serious heads nodding agreement--that Episcopal Barbie is a sign of hope in what Walter [--. Russell Mead] calls a faltering, gasping, near-death church in his little debbie "Faith Matters: Will Barbie Save the Episcopal Church" ... 


"...This, frankly, is a tremendous relief.  Every now and then I am tempted to believe that the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States is in a death spiral ...  As it moves inexorably toward expulsion from the worldwide Anglican Communion,... I sometimes wonder just where it will all end.


But then I see something like this.  There is still hope; we Episcopalians still have a message to the contemporary world.  We are ‘fun’.  We dress up.  We are PC.  We have incense.  As a church which has borne Christian witness in this land for more than 400 years falls to pieces on our watch and around our ears we have hundreds of hours to spend making vestments for dolls."


THIS from a foreign policy guy at Yale who writes for the Wall Street Journal AND the New Yorker?  I thought he was someone with a little gravitas. Turns out he is a batterfried fluffball. 


Talk about lost opportunity. The new Episcopal Goddess is totally sans that ''bad'' kind of diversity --not one Transgen Ken or Bi Barbie anywhere on the horizon to muck it up. This baby doll is the perfect All American Alleluia. 

One week after Easter Jesus we've got Evangelist Barbie. I say, there musta bin a u-turn somewhere. We're back in the OT with the golden calf.  

the other easter

light is only light because there is dark
love is love because it perfectly repels fear

surely the spirit of christ risen 
cradled the soul judas sacrificed 

to become the darkest knife ever to trace
  a bright seam of blood on That Good Light.


and so we too are cradled in christ's love
when humility calls us out and forgives us our daily treacheries 

so this is what i learned at breakfast:
that the freakish zing of a very ripe strawberry
can break the flow of everything--
and to miraculously close the shocked eyes that  
so nearly electrocuted the brain  
reading the Baptist Standard about Ken Starr 
as a potentially great president for Baylor...
gawdamighty, what a fookin disaster.


mouth and mind agape, the strawberry as catalyst,
suddenly jumping up are letters in strings
spewing from some thin corner where sits
my muse of rare inklings and mystic wisdoms.


panic. no writing tools naturally 
habituate the kitchen bar,
so nothing comes to hand for catching 
wild tribes of raucous lines
racing like monkeys over the canopy of mind 
without a backward glance.


all gone, only the receding tails
of epic lines that came once, whole 
an english major's paradise lost 
for want of a pencil stub 
and the back of an envelope.


even tho i had been only 
a lowly music major, 
now i was mad,
so i ordered an ipad. 
and i think i'll name it 
the jabberwok strawberry.
and wouldna joyce be pleased?

the cameraman said 'think bliss'

i knew what he was thinking...a quiet room
misty fog lingering outside the window
enough wood to last 
no phone
a little ooolala...
and i was thinking
a quiet room
enough wood to last
misty fog lingering outside
...and writing, writing, writing
which made me laugh
which made him smile...
'perfect' he said 
to his laughing mary magdalene
for the vestry wall

song for a standupforjesus rallythesaints candlelitelovesongfest

we are made to be who we are
God's people, God's people.
only to be who we are
God's people. 
all God's people.
and like the stars we shine
and like the oceans are full of the heavens
we are God's people
and like the warm sweet rain gentles the earth
we are God's people. 
all are God's people.