need to write

sometimes my soul feels as though it's withering,
sere as desert plants too long deprived of liquid.
writing is my hydrotherapy. only the right writing
will plump and buoy that wispy intangible portal
to life.

intense thirst may be slaked and assuaged
with the perfect word and phrase angled just so
reaching acutely into the depths of being and
tapping, touching, tipping its point on release valves
buried obscurely in mine ephemeral density.

ah. here we are. lost no more. words again save me
from flying ungrounded. Anchor and preserver in
one, a phrase reaches air and I am whole once more.

i can see, hear, feel, breathe, sigh, sit, settled in an
old comfort, a familiar rut. I recognize this in my
bones, my heart, chest, lungs. I breathe deeply,
returning home at last.

48

Autumn nips at
summer's heels and I'm
melancholy baby.

Sprawling unkempt
ungovernable garden
mirrors me
all over the place.

Basil and mint in flower,
just ripe tomatoes
and crowded carrots
signal a nearing end,
while the maize hue
of sunlight in these
shortening days
hints at harvests
yet to come.

I miss the bright
joy and promise
of June where hope
took root
for a time.

A Majestic Demise

My pace is slower now,
leaving me free to notice
white elephant ear fungi
sprouting overnight
on the trunk of my dying
maple tree, the one that
failed to penetrate hidden rock
and establish its taproot.

First its bark grew green-gray
with lichen. Branches,
brittle with thirst, broke off
with abandon. And leaves aged
too early, when they even
appeared at all. Woodpeckers

burrowed a nest for three

into drying pith.

Gusts of wind bode ill for
the giant's fate. Its hulking
mass threatens those once it
sheltered. Soon its
comforting bower will yield
to axe and saw; its
remains to exist in memory
alone.

I will notice its absence
as I did its slow decline,
inexorable fall from
stately splendor to dangerous
decrepitude.

My maple's effort to thrive lays
shallow within grass,
roots bulging and bursting
through as they seek to
slake the deep arboreal
thirst. Home to wasps and
worms, those stout wanderings
failed in their quest.
Not rootless yet nearly as
unstable, glorious maple
now ceases its search
for sustenance.

Now it sustains other, more
alien life. Fungi of many hues
flourish everywhere;
sickly yellow flaps under bark
and coal black globules
where root and earth meet.
Deep orange crust
barricades the open cleft
of this vulnerable majesty
while tiny grey ledges form
climbing walls for ants.

Squirrels chase tails up and back,

thick boughs their resting

place and launching pad onto

wires and mischief. The end rushes

toward us.

Those elephant ears
are not like Dumbo's. They
herald a permanent grounding,
the end of days. No more
soaring above people,
cars, streetlights and homes.

The pace quickens. Still
I am in no hurry
to say goodbye.

Protection

It's not enough to be useful when you need me
and discarded when you don't.
Damocles' sword dangles, pricking me
when I least expect it.

That's the shock. I rest secure
until
I'm reminded
brutally, baldly, boldly
of my precarious aerie.

One step out of line and down I fall.
One heavy footfall and crunch go the eggshells.
Disaster strikes despite all precautions.

I can't close my heart simply for protection.
Don't love so much! cries the wounded girl.
How can I not? weeps wounded me.
It doesn't work like that prolapse valve,
opening and closing, over and over,
keeping out the bad and letting in the good.

My prolapse valve is broken anyway.
I have no screening left. Good and bad flow
indiscriminately.

It's not enough to be there when you need me,
discarded when you don't.
But I have no choice.
Pointless to complain.

Not that you heed it anyway.

I try to build a wall
of ice.
Joyful love melts it.
I can't refreeze it fast enough.

"Run more like a business"

Baby boomers heed the call to
Seek meaning in our lives.
"Make a difference" is the hope.
The entry fee seems low.
Just teach the skills from business,
and make non-profits grow.

Migrants from for-profits say
it's numbers that should matter.
Measure your impact,
count those dollars and cents.
Balance your sheets
and cover that bottom line.

Will that teach a child to read?
Glean potatoes from the field
and fill the empty belly?
Heal illness and end disease?
Give a home to a family and
love the abandoned infant?

Boomers seeks to save their souls
bring their balance sheet to rights
but what is really shifting here?
The person or the field?
A battle rages for the soul of charity,
it's profit versus love.

Balance sheets are reassuring to the brain.
But wise spending does not occasion giving.
Giving is from the heart and a sense of community.
Can a number awaken generosity of spirit?
What do we lose in pursuit of profit
in a not-for-profit realm?

Traveling

My path is tortured, tortuous, twisted and delightful.
Around every turn is the inevitable unexpected.
I see near and far other paths with their rises, mountains, plains and vales
and pine for them. Wistful choices not mine to make.

By turns the yearning deepens abysmally.
Rivers run with lost possibility, fed from my aquifer of tears.
Loss taps into geysers, smoothing sharp pains.
And I keep moving, curious.

On a rise, I turn back to behold an amazing vista,
the marvelous scope of my life. Only then do I comprehend
the landscape sculpted by experience, deeply detailed by pain and by love,
colored by feeling, and shaded by other paths entwined with mine.

David

Omnipresent shadow circling like the hawks you so loved,
constant reminder of what was taken and what was not to be.

The depth and breadth and scope of grief are boundless as I like the mariner strain to see
beyond the horizon, quietly desperate for landing and journey's end.

Is that true? Journey's end is to join you, sweet boy. The adventure's over,
I will have completed the ride. I'm not ready.

Far better to keep you alive in heart and mind, have you share in my journey
with yours so cruelly ended.

We move together, I see through your eyes, I hear your whisper,
I feel your absence. The breadth and depth and scope of love equals the maw of loss.

Ever present boy, you are my shadow. A presence in two dimensions,
the third composed of memory and tears.

Omnipresent shadow, we are joined forever yet not one.
Still, shadowed joy is yet joy.

Intimacy

I'm glad I could be helpful.
I always hope my words reach someone else.
It means a lot to know so.

I'm just putting it into words myself.
Imagine finding yourself
more capable of intimacy than you think,
than you fear.

Now realize I wasn't afraid of intimacy, I was afraid
of losing myself.
They are two different things.

Intimacy is two
people sharing themselves with each other.
Intimacy is only
between "whole people."

Now realize I can be intimate, have a relationship.
I have myself.

Now realize I have uncovered, discovered, recovered
enough to feel safe
enough to reveal
myself to someone else.

I hope that makes sense.
Otherwise, it's not intimacy.
Make the decision. Ask someone.
Tell me you take the risk of getting intimate.

Now realize it is good for you.

On grief

I just wish
I could express what I feel so it reaches air.
So you can feel it, too.
Words don’t express that much, though.
And I can’t speak clearly enough to make anyone else feel what I feel.
All feeling is transposed by our own experiential lens, our memory
filter, our sensory makeup.
Moviemakers come closest. Or
is it musicians?

Do you see the same blue I see?
How do we know? What if my blue is your red?
We believe we are seeing the same thing
so we’re on the same wavelength. But are we
seeing the same thing?
My filter always tells me I see blue as does yours.
Even scientific instruments can’t distinguish for us
because we see their results through our own innate lenses.

So it could be with feelings.
I listen to a piece of music and want to cry.
You say it makes you sad, too.
I see your tears, just as you see mine.
I touch your tears, they are as warm and moist as mine.
Seems we’re having the same feeling.
But I don’t know what your “sad” feels like.
I only know
what mine feels like.

My "sad" feels icy and spiky sometimes, hot and deep others.
And those words barely scratch the surface.
Sadness feels like the end, the absolute “over” state,
done, finished, nowhere to go, surrender
and collapse.
Sadness is relief.
Sadness is unrequited.
There is nothing but it.
It is high and wide, long and deep, shallow and smoldering, obvious and
lurking, creeping slowly into
consciousness to take over as it has already
overcome all unconsciousness.

I am surprised by sadness. I start to cry
and know that I have been sad for a while.
It’s been rising like yeasted bread,
shaping my mood and reactions before I’m even aware that it’s there.
A little shortness here, a hesitation there. My throat
catches, David flashes by, and there they come
at last, the tears of release.
Release, relief, grief.

Does any of this sound familiar?
Does any of it resonate within your core?
Can you understand how I feel by reading my words?
Is your feeling of grief the same as mine?
Or do we just approximate our empathy based on
trust?

It takes a great leap of faith to voice a feeling. To admit to feeling
something to another is the most vulnerable of states.
For you cannot feel my feeling,
I cannot transmit it to you.
It remains within me, mine,
expressible only by words, movement, facial signs.

I trust
that you will have some knowledge of your own similar feelings,
enough for you to cast yourself somewhat into that state
and fish out a bit of compassion.
You cannot feel my feelings,
yet in re-feeling your own, you may approximate empathy.
You may sense my need by recalling your own.
You may give me the space and time and attention to fully feel my feelings
without envying me that experience.

Maybe those who have a paucity of feeling are envious.
I don’t know if there are people who lack feeling,
more that there are people who lack experiences of fully feeling.
I can’t stop to think of why that would be.
Just know that there are those
whose emotional vocabulary
is small
as yet.

Missing David

My twin sister's first child, David, died June 29, 2005.
A brain tumor grew and grew and grew and eventually
snuffed out his life.
He was 6 years, 1 month, two weeks old.
I found him.

His mom tucked David in, kissed him and told him
she was the luckiest mommy in the world to have him as her son.
And she told him he could go.

I wanted to be there sooner.
I knew. Something would happen that day.
When I saw my sister laughing on the telephone, I thought it was OK.
Nothing bad happened.

I went upstairs to say goodnight,
knelt down by his bed and kissed him, saying
"Good night, sweet David."
His eyes were half open.
I called his name a little louder, touched his shoulder, gently shook him, watching for him to wake up, to know that I was there.
He'd asked for me all day and evening.
I so hope he knew I’d come home.
His mommy says he knew I was and it was finally safe to go.

I can't sleep tonight for missing him,
for grief.
I opened a drawer and saw his little sweatpants.
I kept them because I need a piece of him with me.
He'll always be that size.
He'll never grow any bigger. Never.

It's beyond words.
I miss him so much.
I am engulfed by grief.
I'm free to cry, and I do.

I go to the cemetery and just cry so deeply
sitting on that beautiful bench,
looking at the footstone words:
"David Leland Coble, Best Boy in the World."

The worst thing
is that I don't feel entitled to this grief.
I'm just his aunt.
But that's not how I feel.
He was my boy. I was his "almost mom."
He called me Mommy a lot because
I look so much like his mommy and I love him like a mommy.
Like a mommy, I would have done anything to protect and save him.

I have been blessed to feel I would give my life to save his.
The futility of that wish, that desire is deadly.
I feel myself go numb.

I find it so hard to accept that David is really not coming back.
I know it, I see the grave,
I hear the absent footsteps and silenced voice,
I feel the empty arms and loadless back.

resentment, the silent killer

My resentments are holding me back, killing my dreams.
Moving ahead is impossible.
Cries of pain, tears of humiliation tug at my shoulders and waist
craving attention and resolution.

I hate those people, I hate those things.
And I feel it over and over and over again.
Refeeling, re-sentiment, resentment.
Over and over I hate.

I resent Judas and Weasel and Lower-Than-Dirt.
Hard to even think of Miss C.
The look of hatred in her eyes mirrored mine.
And I see it again and again, as charged today as it was so many months ago.
Painful to feel again. Heart-stabbing pain, in fact.

The remedy is to fully feel, fully express, fully accept, fully forgive.
Forget? Doubtful. But you never know.

After all the work is done to erase resentment, memory fades.
Without the sharpness of the pain, memory loses its currency.
So resentment keeps the past current.

A logjam of feelings dams me. It blocks the present flow.
Hardly optimal experience or even Good Orderly Direction.
How can I be in "the flow" with such obstructions?
Of my own making is this dam, with its carefully stacked and sorted hurts and hates and angers.

And yet it has an aura of neglect. Little visited, barely smoothed.
Sharp edges jut out harshly, nicking and cutting my heart at every infrequent pass.
So shall I dismantle this home-made wall, take down the fortress, risk the wounds already endured?

That is the point, isn't it? The worst has already happened.
Refeeling can never be as bad as the catastrophic unanticipated original.
My mind tells me differently. "It will kill you!"

My heart tells the truth.
"These resentments are killing you - and
your future."

about happiness

Stick this in your brain somewhere you can find it:
It takes time and effort to be happy.
Lots of time and plenty of effort.
And it costs something, too.
Usually the price is pain - emotional, mental, psychic.
It does not come easily.
It does come, though.

I held fast to some ideas,
still do, in fact.

If you can imagine yourself some way,
you can be that way. And actually
you will eventually be that way.
Really.

Hope exists in the sure knowledge
that this situation, this reality will change.
It truly will not remain
the same.

I am not the center of the universe
nor do I control my reality. I am surrounded
by independent actors, all
of whom can delight me, surprise me, disappoint me,
hurt me, affect
my course in life presenting me with opportunities.
Opportunities for
there are no mistakes, only chances to learn.

If I could be how and where I want
to be, I would. Since I am not there, I am unable
to be, obviously. I am where
I am supposed to be.
Really.

Langston Hughes wrote: Hold fast to dreams,
for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged butterfly
unable to fly.

I dream.