Aquarius Timpanogos. Sun, cattails, and clouds. January 2025.
The First Universe was You (Maybe one day it will all make sense. This is probably just my hubris talking.)
You were the first person I saw —visually—as a Universe
I had been feeling it for a while– this idea of the infinite
In the love I watched women Give to everything, everyone
Around them, the spiraling arms of Stars– known, each in their own sphere
I heard it in my head, when you Explained: I am trying to love myself
In essence, “I contain multitudes,” and I Chalked that line up to some god from
Our shared past-religion, but it turns Out it was Walt Whitman
Describing women, of course, he was Describing himself and thereby all
Humans, alike in our vastness, and then A friend’s husband died, and I felt
It all over again, this idea that we Are these very fragile, very short-lived
Phenomena, and yet, somehow infinite, And don’t forget that must explain
How your trip was my trip, or I took A part of your trip as my own trip
Like a feather in my mushroom cap Like a rose in my funerary lapel
Because I am enough was what your Psyche told you, and I am here to
Infinite down on that memo, that factor: I am enough. You are enough. Multitudes.
You contain multitudes which is why Making decisions out of temporary
Information must feel so hard. So, Take my hand. Grab my spiral arm
Arm in arm. Here we go. Forever Into the Unknown. Universe.
Glass Greenhouse. Neighborhood. January 2025.
Arms
To have the arms of the Universe flung out before You. I’ve seen it with my own eyes—one arm rolling Sushi with her son, another arm filled to the infinite with stars Held comfortably under her daughter’s climbing shoes. You are made of Everything—darkness and light– the stuff
Jeweled into the eternity of now, this moment. Universe, can you hear her? Like listening to nuclear fusion With a stethoscope—the breath, the pulse, the beat, the Mother-heart giving life to all existent things, and even things That may no longer be. But that act, the fusion at the
Core of the Universe—every opal clouded nebula, a nursery Every blazing Azure star, a new creation, can you imagine if she Knew she needed to become something new, and altogether Different entirely. What if she knew that her core was burned Out, her fuel exhausted and all of the stars, all of the
Beings that rested in her consciousness would once again Become so much dust, so she died. She gave up her Old form, her life, her arms spinning off into the horizon She simply couldn’t go on fusing life together in that way Explosion/Implosion it wouldn’t matter which way the
Translation took place, but the Matter of it all would always, Always remain. The actual physical atoms of all she gave, all She shaped, all she sacrificed, forever encoded in the stuff of Galaxies, dwarf stars, and solar systems we’ll never lay eyes on She knew it. Yet, she wept anyway, despite her knowing
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
Neighborhood walk. Image, my own.
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?
November windows. 2024. Image, my own.
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.
when fall begins to crystalize, like any change, the first real storm front moves in, the leaves which scudded about yesterday are frozen to the sidewalk, gathering in browning-yellow scrolls, little edicts of what is to come, they thaw and scatter again across streams and gullies where the thin water still wants to feed the living thing before being silenced in ice, or leave monochrome sepias on pavement, the Hunter’s moon, high and bright illumines the grass, reedy wisps along the midnight walk, the dusty path where the air cools, snappy, crisp, that breath of winter’s coming, flora seized red in its death, clinging to branch and vine, each day more dried and dead, ruffled and flurried by immediate breezes, sounding like Japanese paper fanfared by a round and excited toddler, portents of the next season soon to fall in golden droplets of summer’s dreams the ocher aspen leaves, in sheets and flakes of fiery autumn light dazzling and freshly disconnected from their source right before they meet the dust and decompose
Sun, Sky, Beach, Life. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
Strength
Growing is a season of its own, one of loving kindness rooted in faith one of far-seeing vastness, while standing in sacred spaces. For whatever waves, winds, and ways that will ever-continue to toss and take their course, stand in your gifts and rest in fullness, plentitude. Delight in bounty and abundance. Move from ire to the rich roundness of the good in all living things– circles of true compassion and empathy which connect all creation– human, animal, plant, living, all animate with atoms as the entire universe speaks the soundness of its existence, the tenor of being, the voice of living and the lived
Ocean, Tide, Tree, Coast. Oregon. Image, my own.
Point
when i am in my brain and heart i realize this is the goddamn point
Woods. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
Conscious Living
What is it to be alive? In the rich, abundant world A sterling jay’s deeply Decked sapphire feathers crested head nestled in the magnolia bush outside my window the air as thick as dew, yet moving as if on an unheard music suspended by the wind’s unseen breath
and ocean spume, spurl, churn TO be part of Earth’s respiration tide, current, wave, flow, coast where Earth’s breath meets land-sand, rock, tree, stone every piece of physical particulate of the confirmation of all alive and breathing beings, being moved smoothed, rocked, waved, rolled over and over in the sea’s bosom
Stones and Seal Carcass. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.
Ocean
I used to think I wasn’t an ocean person. But these rocky, cliffy, craggy knobs of sea-shorn trees, smooth stones and crusty conglomerates crab shells, jelly-fish skeletons, strips of kelp carcass, and clings of driftwood really wrap me into the rhythm of the tide
In my line of work, I get to see things And hear things That many people do not, Will not, see and hear Personal narrative: a genre Used to tell one’s story To put your truth into The World, tell your Life to the Universe Of all living things To say, to see, To be seen To listen These are very tender Moments—actions, braveries Moves—today a young man Quietly said to his classmates Boys want to be Beautiful Too, boys want to be Given flowers and trust And the opportunity, To be Vulnerable Boys want to Be seen and soft And before you scoff Please know that to put Eyes on this young man He was “normal” Which doesn’t exit But he wasn’t some standout He wasn’t crying to be Noticed in a needy, cloying Way he was sincere Brown eyes shining And serious, he said again, Boys want to break down Boys want to be treasured And saved, and tendered Boys are complex and Layered, multi-faceted And so easily shattered So easily loved Beautiful boy
Lacrosse. Image, my own.
Melt: for the hottest October on record
things melt like banana popsicles on hot sidewalks
hearts at the cuddle of a tender puppy’s nuzzle
sun as it sherberts into sunset, dreamy scoops of carnelian, fuchsia, crimson
water being sublimated into sediment, becoming sludgy mud
metal silver when heated to one thou- sand seven hundred and sixty-three degrees
falsity as you live in truth in the world as it is, not as you wish it to be
light refracted and gloriously dispersed through water into the entire color spectrum
butter bubbling, sizzling in the fry pan in anticipation of the next repast
bodies into one another, warm with the savior-vivre of desire
Aspen in October. Image, my own.
Sitting in Cars with Moms
Listening to music with abandon, shake it Hearing a favorite podcast in a vacuum, rapt Slumping over the steering wheel, emergency Crying, tears pouring down cheeks, salty Praying as if there is no tomorrow, apocalypse Laughing raucously with a friend on the line Changing the ka-billgionth diaper on the seat Resting the eyes at the thought of dinner, cook Wanting for a touch a hug a support, embrace Kicking back the seat for a true nap, snooze Reading a book while a child is at music lessons Waiting for babies in the carpool line, patient Scanning a prescription before returning to sickness Sipping a drink in silence while ruminating, Pondering the existential crises of humankind Yodeling to an Oktoberfest hit, hot 100 Brushing back the hair, mustering a smile, love
Rabbit Brush. Image, my own.
Hope Feathered in Me Today
Rose like an owl in the dark of night. Off on an important measure. A simple key into what is Take no more than you give.
On this day we celebrate The now— the moment— what is As it is what we have to celebrate Looking into the moon-face of our children
Listening to their dreams. Holding a lover after a frozen lamp-lit tramp Into the pitch-dark night Drawing lines across a page,
A stone, a landscape to remember Each leaf outlined, sepia veins, Each intricate brace of existence a Falling into one another– hope
Refined + Rugged 