Poetry

Witches whisper of partnering
closely, carefully, dangerously
in the dark
with certain gods
or goddesses
fickle or willful, playful or demanding,
surging with power.
I found the scat of a large animal
full of claws and fur
of the animals it devoured
on the trail I walk daily
between the house
and the driveway.

Habdur, "the inviting
here and now",
"the space
of invitation",
waits
at the Nexus of Possibilities,
calls
at the Crossroads of Multiverses,
cradles
in the weaving of the Thousand Thousand Ways
we could have lived,

—to have love,
to feel love,
to hold love,
to make love,
to make use of love,
to know love,
to magnify love,
and yet
never to fall
in—

When the poets of old
wrote of star-crossed lovers
they were partly right
and partly wrong ...

"the way he cries out for the majesty
he's lost,
give me that longing!"

Grandma taught us all
that her sickly parents
sent her down
to the old-timey version
of what we all came to know
as Pic 'N' Save
with a pocketful of nickels and old-timey coupons
to buy old-timey expired food
so big girl Grandma could portion out little pieces
for her baby sisters and brother
and make her own birthday cake
every year. She did it
all by herself.
Grandma never cries,

The name of my land is Habdur.

Please,
take me back
into the soul of poetry.
This is my prayer.

If I ended up
spending
the rest of my life
like this—
making more space
for you

On good mornings, I wake
and start with faithful work
to build the wordless place:
two mugs of coffee, two slabs of butter,
cushioned space where a body
can recognize itself.

When you go for walks with my ex-girlfriend
I feel so violated
like you're digging through my trash,
recycling my stuff.

Somehow after I concede
to the indulgence of breakfast—
that is, food and time
spent with buttered coffee
and a quiet soak in the pool
of my sadness and anger
and melancholy longing,
slow and still enough
to watch the mud settle—
I feel like myself
and I can't quite remember
the cause of my complaint
though gathered facts still
await my soul like piles:
a good day's work,
somebody to love.