You may feel sweet and affectionate to the touch,

sporting so pungent and perfect a fragrance,

look inappropriately wild of color, heaven-hued,

in your pinkling glow of impish immaturity.

You may wink but an eye, lilting out

your childish humming in Spring-borne perfection,

and sit, alluring and still, batting new-soiled lashes

in expectation, summoning your lovers.

You may catch us staring and return a wink,

a petaled exhale, whimpered and whimsical,

breathing deep your own headiness,

oh silly girl, so boisterously quiet.

You may be all of this and more,

but to kiss your lips, folded and full,

is to kiss the longing lips of heaven.

It is God teasing us with a daffodil.

Picture found here

I see you, eyes cast down in pocked and weathered faces,

cheeks sunken from polishing what could never shine.

Your overseers, harsh and bloated with their assumed fame

cast a sneering glance, a gaping maw of greed,

lusting for lust’s sake, all in the name of (g)od.

I sat at your tables, supping with your sons, your daughters.

I touched your withered, your lonely and broken castaways.

I drank of wine, once pulled from a well, but

unsatisfying for those who just wanted

to celebrate a little longer.

Yesterday, the smallest steed walked on branches and twigs

heedless of the hypocrisy, of misunderstanding, of misapprehension.

Those same roadway gifts will soon be yanked away

in favor of heavier trees and a few nails.

Oh, how you would have been better to keep your coats,

to water your palms, to soak your dirt-worn feet

than to waste such extravagance on a lie.

Now, I look out over the dim Jerusalem skyline,

so large of breast but small of heart –

and weep.

Image found here

You’ve walked this way before,

aloof, spendy in compliments mirror-bound.

It helps you face a faceless day,

reflected back at you,

with nose in your face.

The trouble came when you looked for

the first time

and saw only smoke,

a haze of unknowing.

It perplexed and fascinated, stunned and

silenced the breath yet to draw.

Then you turned away

just long enough to guess at what you saw.

Picture found here

I’ve been treating myself lately to as much John O’Donohue as I can get my hands on. And, since he was hospitable and richly forthcoming with his output, it is readily available and just, oh, so, nourishing. Please read slowly. Read again and again. I did. It’s so worth it. Enjoy…

Wind Artist

For Ellen Wingard

Among the kingdom of the winds,

Perhaps, there is one of elegant mind

Who has no need to intrude

On the solitude of single things.

–

A wind at ease with the depth

Of its own emptiness, who knows

How it was in the beginning,

Before the silence became unbearable

And space rippled to dream things.

–

A wind who feels how an object strains

To be here, holding its darkness tight

Against the sever of air, ever eager

To enter, and with a swell of light

Dissolve the form in its breathing.

–

A wind from before memory

Whose patience will see things become

Passionate dust whorled into sighs

Of ghost-song on its wings.

Still,

and again this garden of song,

this palace of ground, bewitches me with her gaze.

I sit, befuddled in the ridicule of a sky, sadder and

more miniscule than she earlier hinted.

No matter. Sing little clouds, hum your movements

lightly, and don’t commit to more than

you’re ready to say. This lyric only pretends

to be finished. You’ll have so much more

to sing when the squatting creatures,

alive and aloof and stretching,

rejoin your blustery repast. Maybe now

break down for us your new composition,

fugal and off-center, like figures of speech,

hunting after understanding. Like inside jokes

seeking audience with the uninitiated. If sing

you will, then sing you must. Pitch out your best pitches

still dripping with notes muted, buried and forgotten

but now tied to a syncopation, meant for dancing.

Direct us, oh choir of mismatched muses and bring

a good crescendo to boil where once there was only

silence.

For a friend, lost, but soon to be found…

Catching up with her shadow

Her mornings started with the same walk

she took from back door to fence and out to

*

the field that rimmed the property. There she met

herself on the return and never spoke more than

*

the simplest of hellos. She left that to the meadow,

slowly sun-soaked and ready for feet and the hamstrings of early day.

*

She’d walked this way before,

aloof, spendy in compliments mirror-bound.

*

It helped her face a faceless day, reflected back at

her, nose in her face.

*

The answer came when she looked and, for the first time, saw

only smoke, a haze of unknowing.

*

It perplexed and fascinated, stunned and silenced

the breath yet to draw. Then she turned away

*

just long enough to guess at what she’d seen.

Enough time had passed to make return possible.

*

Now, the smell of time in her nostrils, the caress of grace

under her feet, she returned in time to 

*

catch up with her own shadow.

Sometimes we sit, alone

in the rimming moon. Our sighs move upward,

quelling cares that rise like smoke and buffeting our hands

with the bones of night.

Sometimes we sit, alone

in the startling dusk. Light-profusions

scamper like wayward souls and tickle our bones

with tales of mourning love.

Sometimes we sit, alone

in the meddling dawn. Mid-sentence laughing

from brooklet stars too shy for dancing

when noon arrives, shirtless and boasting.

Sometimes we sit, alone,

together in maudlin midnight’s tepid kiss, too quickly

passing to pass from view without leaving

her mark of satisfied leavings.

Sometimes we sit, alone

in the rimming moon. We compare eyes

and glance knowingly beyond

what they normally see: the other.

Painting, “Anam Cara” by Lynn Weekes Karegeanneas