Flowers

wind-tickled orange California poppies
ruffling out of the window boxes onto the lawn
volunteer aster, knife-thin petals a delicate periwinkle,
tipping out of the ceramic planter onto the sidewalk
white drops of yarrow speckling the back fence line,
crimson-tipped columbine as yellow
as french butter standing in long grass
purple-bloom phlox creeping over the pavers


you know, flowers bloom and grow
where they have not been planted, too
it’s not just the weeds of the world that take
hold and root–out of sorts, out of place–
flowers find themselves in some of the
most improbable places: limen, margin, crack, hole
pocket of forgotten places, like the weed
flowers rest, crack, breath, green, open, bloom, home

Infinite Instant (Value)

Hyper industrialized technocratic capitalism loves stuff– get, earn, buy, show, own = exponential power
Earth teaches that dressing expressly shapes us as we go– shift, season, roll, expand, contract, grow

Your value will never come from what you get, own, amass, pile, stock, hoard, cling
Your value, the infinite essence of you– water, earth, atoms, stardust, synapse, consciousness–

Universe, the stuff of, flashed here, together, for one finite instant– alive and visceral
Power bred of getting only leads to the black hole of eternal indifference

Mom’s Sitting in Cars

She tells me it is one of the few places she can find rest

She sits in the warmth of the Spring sun at the base of the hike

She’ll get out of the car in seven minutes, but, for now, she rests in the green house
of the driver’s seat

Light dances in the long grass, breezes sway the pregnant grass seeds, winds finger
the cat tails

Lace wings, newly hatched, flying ants, and common house flies wind, wind their way
over oak leaf, aspen branch, sweet pea petal, sandstone pebble

Out the window, I look to see if our van has come back after her departure– haste, rage, let-down–
seas of disappointment rush in as she opens the door to the house to go.

She breaks the seal on the silence, the lack of support, the non-existent help.

Into the Clubwagon, her umber hair half-swept from her face.
There’s no other way to describe it. Despair, weighs on her shoulders
Description fails to detail how lonely she really is. Her eyes wide with heaviness.
Now, hours later, she pulls back into the drive. A modern composition of woman,
She sits there. Still. Her face shadowed by the van in the glare of the street light
on the corner. Torn. Caught between love and overwhelm. Between grace and
chores. Holding and letting go. No one is coming to save her. Supporting her family
with a steady pay-check and circles of duty as the house crumbles around her.

I situate my body on the couch in the house like her body in the dark car. Face
forward. Greeting the gulf between every fairy tale and this now.

This is how I begin to understand abandonment.

Learning Love

In the end, it turns out,
love has given us the
power to heal wounds–
ours and our neighbors.
It starts from within,
from sitting with your tender
heart, holding your
Self, with greatest care,
it comes from others, those
who will walk with
Us, sit with us, laugh
and experience joy in
one bubbling, effervescent instant
Love has the power