Weave

December 9, 2024February 26, 2025 | Megan

Hoar Frost. December 2024. Image, my own.

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And now I bow
In the nave
I built with my
Own hands
A force of will
Maybe, and of
Hope, and strength
And love, and
Power, and good
Ness and weak
Ness and sacrifice
And longing and
Grief and beginning
I kneel before this
Altar to my dreams
Before I burn
It down, before
The doing and
Undoing pulse
Through my being
And there it is
Again, my knowing
In the unknowing
That this temple
This altar this
Divine expression
Must ignite, must
Burn, must be made
Into ash, and thereby
Made into everything
That comes after–
The garden, the
Synagogue, the holiest
Holy, of all the sacred
Spaces, filled with the
Breath, the Fire of the
Divine Universe intoned
In your throat, in your
Heart, in your center
Melted to make
Way for something New

Gift

Sometimes the memories
And myths that were woven
Into your childhood become
Magic again to your arcing
Soul. The songs that break
Forth in trumpets. The
Prayers that end in good
Tidings. The trees all
Dressed in snow and stars
Light against long December
Nights which beg gathering
And joy-filled repasts

Roads Taken

Two roads diverged in a snowy wood
And knowingly, quiet and somber I stood,
looking out on the starry, moonlit way
then took the path that had already been trod

With careful foot-fall through the hoary frost,
after the ribbon of travelers who’d crossed
the fork in the road, the decision place
And rather than test the dark and the cold

I took the chance to walk along
where others had gone, and bend my care
instead to perceiving the moment, the present
The here, the now, the trees and the fences

I shall be telling this in an age
from maiden, to matron, to crone, to sage,
I took the road that many had paved
And made it my journey, anyway

Fern Frost. Photograph: Skip Via, West Valley Naturalists.

Braid

dark and light
strands of fermion
behavior spin
good
evil
if they
exist
tethered
whole
to the same
fate maybe
driving Dirac’s
trick
as truth
every particle
we are made of
even distantly
is woven, connected
to the cosmological
horizon, all tangled up,
simultaneously unspun
strand by strand into
infinity

November

November 5, 2024November 12, 2024 | Megan

Every

every Color
all part of all
unity upon Unity
breath After breath
sun Rising sun
moon setting mooN
high in the Wide
Blue bowl of the Sky
star birthing star
miracle joins miracle
death Brings death
life gives Life
bathed In
every Color

Timpanogos, through the window. November 2024. Image, my own.

In Memoriam: November

While the geese continue to fly south
Crying, cawing in the early white billows
And pillars of sky, the snow comes in
Little promises, licking the ground like a prayer
The branches in the woods become
More bare by day, raw and line-worked
Wiring out against the frozen landscape
In stands and thickets tromped and tread
By silent, fervent feet, over and over again
Now the waiting for winter to truly take
Hold, for snow to come and bind up
Scattered grasses, still the scratching leaves.
A memory of Novembers, a palace of dying,
Nostalgia of hearths and firesides of
Rooting, resting and acceptance

Palace

tides, ever shifting
ever flowing, ocean
wave upon wave
turning over universes
places of refuge

Midway Mercantile. November 2024. Image, my own.

She Burns

No one seems to like it, they
claim her strength is admirable
that it’s a protection to her
and to them, she’s not sure
she burns, like a kiln stoked
into an inferno, she burns like
molten earth just exited from
a magma chamber, bright she burns,
a dragon girl who never wanted
to hurt anyone, seventeen
hundred degree flames hiss at
who she is near, causing a
tremble, a stir, she burns because
she knows that women, for
centuries, have had to grow
small, small and insignificant,
accessory and accompaniment,
to receive life, she can’t ever
let on that she wants learning,
love, expression, voice, power
no those gifts are reserved for
others. She burns like the forge
meant to melt metal, meant to
make paper towel racks and
weapons, she can choose wedding
colors and a matching fascinator
she can choose rugs, mugs, décor,
clothing. She can choose the height
of her heels and the blaze of
her eyes as long as she stays
thin, “nice,” and modest
she complies, and writes it in a poem
where will she go with this fire?

Refuge

From the moment everything broke we wished for a place of peace and refuge. Another person is never a home, only your own skin and bones can hold you. Another person is never a place except for you are your own place inside your sinews and blood streams and heartbeats. A house can be so much more than a home—a refuge, a covering, a landing, a carrying, a place, a palace. But it would be nothing without you and the warm, bright, dark burdened and unburdening beautiful people who surround you—in sorrow and joy, in tears and laughter, in silence and singing. What is a place? A person is always a place– a place for the heart, body, and mind to attend—a place of love and horror, a place of welcome and displacement, a place of empathy and disgust, a place to be thoughtfully alive, in, inside. The heart of the house is the person who beats inside, who braves the storm to return, who lies down on the floor to pray and bless the space because it is all that holds back the outside, all that protects from life.

Prayer

please, please, please
please, please

Peaches

September 16, 2024September 16, 2024 | Megan

Benediction

Candlelight wavers in the silent brush of the ceiling fan
Night air sinks into currents of cool water brought up
From the little creek, the smell of river paired with even
More oxygen lifts and falls on a fleeting breeze, fresh and sweet

Whatever music and magic there is to be had in
The universe is happening right here inside my home
At my table, it happens in moments like these, in every
Pocket of the world tonight– right here, right now, breath easy

Big Dipper. Again and Forever. September 2024. Image, my own.

Horǎ

In dream, the night is thick
with cricket symphony
the grass stalks golden,
long and chilled in the
meadow, above the sentinel
oak the stars prick blackness
like reverse needle-work
intricate dance, flowing and fire,
thousands of light-years away
yet seemingly so near

The tent is simple and
the lashings have been tested
in a storm that whipped through
an hour ago, howling
at the white flaps of canvas,
smattering rain onto the party
but the air now returns to dark stillness.
Lanterns, re-lit, quiver
and sway in simple
atmospheric breaths

I hug my sister close,
smile at a friend across
the way, eyes connecting
and story-telling for just
an instant and then
I am physically
swept away, time suspends
its relentless snick, and
in that instant we spiral
as one

Limbs outstretched, grasping
and firm as we reach
for one another, smiles,
countenances as wide and
open and awed as galactic
arms around and around
We swirl in an ancient pattern
of love, mirrored in the heavens
templated by earth
and actioned by humans

Under the open-sky,
beneath the tent, midst
the lanterns, our heat
rising in healing, and
celebration, and joy,
an eschewance of hatred,
a ceremony of
transcendence and light
through the ages

Plexus no. 34. Gabriel Dawe. Amon Carter Museum, Austin, TX.

Peach

Oh. My. God. Let the sweet
nectar drip over your lips
and down your chin

Why contain this
experience, the velvet
skin, the wet flesh

The fruit of summer
realized, the sweetness
and pleasure, stunning

“We have to beware of the extent to which liberal individualism has actually been an assault on community… when the genuine staff of life is our interdependency, is our capacity to feel both with and for ourselves and other people.” –bell hooks

Interdependency

Oldest: “Mom, mom! You’ve got to come look at this moon!”

Youngest: “Mom, let’s dance to this song right here in the kitchen.”

Oldest: “i love you” “u r srsly weird”

Youngest: “don’t die”

Oldest: “goom, can you send me five gold dubloons for wendy’s?”

Youngest: “Hey, do you know where my hazmat suit is”