beloved.

in his room

tenderly washing the leaves of the philodendron
like children's faces.

walking downtown to the morning's first class i find the back of your arm and nape of neck in the man crossing the street in front of me.

in the palm of my hand, split by a knife

and then there are apricots.

the glory of an apricot in the morning is worth facing the entire world for.

walking up hartford

walking up the hill
to the place where i live
i write six lines in my head:
weeping, i wonder
how it is
that we are all so brave
as to get up
again
every day?

an hour ago, the doctor's hand
on my shoulder, the pursed smile of empathy
(my doctor has what i have)
and she says:
you're just riding the wave.
walking up the hill
belly convulses with weeping
presses against the lumps inside
and pain shines through.

near the top of the hill i see him again
on the next corner.
for weeks now i see him
in the bodies of people still living.
this time i wonder why?
why so often lately?
and another part of my mind gives the answer:
it was this week.
how many years ago now? three.
three years.
does his spirit come then
or does some clock inside me know?

top of the hill
inside the house
the peonies i have been watching
unfurl and shine
have begun to fall open
dying on my altar.

how do we get up? how? how does anyone ever
become so brave? and having done so, how is it
that we can ever close our eyes again?

dreaming at the end of the world

first waking, early, groggy. i had to go back. never felt this before but "i can't just leave them like that," i thought, and i lay back to sleep and indeed did go there again. "them" isn't quite right, either; i was them there, both of them and everyone, but i only knew that at the groggy first waking, and remember now knowing it then. i can't feel it now.

it wasn't a lucid dream per se. it wasn't that i knew what i was there to do. but when i headed toward waking the second time they were safe there past the end of the world, she with her belly big, trying to make the future. they had a plan now, and something to eat. transitioning back to waking i wondered "but how will i get all of my shoes back to the waking plane?"

they seem to be here just fine.

on the ashram path

giving my heart to the wee slip of moon
above the trees, asking her
to give it to you
when she sees you, so soon
beside a different ocean.

on the ashram path

along the path between morning practice and the dining hall a bird lifts, leaving the moth she was beginning to breakfast on upon the path before me. the size of my palm, a dozen shades of brown, with beautiful eye-circles in the middle of his back, the moth flops and flaps, but cannot fly. i pause, witnessing a small pinch in my peace. reverberation of beauty and sadness. i consider ending his suffering but cannnot bring myself to place my foot upon his fat furryfeathery body and his dignity. he will find his own death. we keep company for a while and then i move along.

over a silent breakfast on the grass behind the dining hall i wonder what suffering feels like to a moth.

on the path again an hour later i find scattered mothwings. a plop of bird excrement. ants breakfasting on the nub-ends of the wings where a bit of moth-meat must remain. i consider, pick up a wing, gently shake off the ants, and sit down on the nearby bench where i like to write, a single mothwing at my side to write this, for all of us.

first act of will in dreaming

my friend's young son went over the cliff first. the inexorable drag of the tipping took me and i was over the edge, too. the rocks below, and ocean. seeing in a moment us dashed against the rocks, dread in the pit of the belly wondering how that could possibly feel, and the ones who loved us broken helpless watching from the wide green lawn. everything moving glacial in the body and lightspeed in the mind. i simply resolved: NO. one hand forward and i was steady holding green grass that spilled down over the cliff's edge. the other hand out behind me insisting that the child was there, and he was, and i pulled, and we came up over the edge, grinning, into the arms of his parents my husband the world of the living.

all my life i've had falling dreams. last night i didn't know i was dreaming; it wasn't a lucid dream. but i recognized the place; the height, the bottom, the people watching me fall. when i was a little girl i fell down a thousand manholes. i remember seeing my father look helplessly down over the edge, the light so high up. i couldn't walk over manholes or grating in the streets with ease until well into my third decade. i didn't know all this in the dream, but i knew: no, not this, not here, not this again. i knew i wasn't going to die; i never land. but i simply refused the dread, the whole show. and i climbed out. i climbed out!

i've been reading tibetan dream yoga. one of the foundational practices is to tell yourself in the everyday waking that it's all a dream. whew. and yet after finding myself grow stony and put the book down after reading that, a few days later i was walking down the street in the sun, past the fruit in baskets outside the corner store and i thought with bliss, oh, yes, this *is* a dream.

but the dream turn, oh, oh! what a wonder!

the bedroom mantle

when i touched the dying
drying roses
to save them

they fell to petal
pieces
entirely

beautifully
reminding me
to love the moment

and let it go
let it go
let it go.

love everything
cling to nothing
let the beauty be

what is.

at home

offering a small prayer
that i might age and die
with something resembling the grace
of the roses you brought to breakfast.

after amsterdam

where my body thinks i am, it is night. here, i am pressing my dress for the memorial service while peonies unfurl in long afternoon light.

amsterdam

that the light of the day
was longer than i have ever known
lasted and began
in the time i call night

that i could not recognize the songs of the birds

that the cats would not come to my call
even the animals
speaking a different language

but just like home in the

wisteria in bloom
pealing churchbells and
petal-strewn gutters
everywhere

today is the day grampa did not wake up

i was coming home from the morning classes on muni, feeling both slightly altered and profoundly clear in my mourning and peace. a guy was gawking at me, hard, on the muni platform and then again on the train, where we were sitting across from one another. i drew inward.

after a couple stops we neared the neck of the woods where very nicely groomed men with fabulous shoes began to board. the guy, who was reading homer in 2 books and had his notebook on his lap, was reading, inward. the three men who had just boarded were all watching him. i realized what a fantasy he was, the student reading homer on the train.

one of the men tried to strike up a conversation. he wasn't very skillful, but the guy didn't seem to mind the interruption to his study. i thought about how i never respond to strangers; my response to attraction (my own or theirs) tends to be to draw inward. as i stood before the door at my stop, i thought that i could just walk over to that boy, lean down and ask him if he wanted to kiss me. and that he very well might.

i think if there had a little more time before the doors opened, i might have done it, just because i am alive.

out back, the redwood
wears a sliver-moon
in her hair

california and jackson, a silver-gray morning on which the water matches the sky

my friend lives
on a high hill
in a place
with many windows.
this morning i looked
past the cathedral next door
and the sprawl of skyscrapers below
and for a moment, oh, a moment, wondered
how that vast ship
could be floating
in the air between the skyscrapers
like that.