To the man on the Beverly bridge

11.25.16 

As my car approached you, surrounded by flashing red and blue lights

I knew something was wrong.

We didn't know yet, until halfway across the bridge

And there you were: grey hoodie

your caved yet rigid figure

standing on the bridge railing- 

Grasping the streetlight pole

like a life vest

But delicately- only one arm wrapped around--

You were ready to let go.

Even though your head was down

hidden

And I couldn't see your face.

As my car took me across the bridge on the opposite side

I cried for you

I cried for you to know

That I love you.

I prayed to a Jesus I don't know exists for you

I cried out loud 

My tearless, painful cry

With weight in my heart and stomach

That everything happens at once

Everything is happening at the same time 

A baby was born every second you stood there

In the cool damp air

Your hand icy wrapped around the pole

A soul left a body every second you stood there

Your mother thinking of you

Loving you unconditionally

No matter where she is or was.

A mother cannot un-love her child.

It's a one-way street, no backing out of it

No matter what happens

No matter what goes wrong

No matter how many times she fucks up

She will love you

Unconditionally.

And my car passed you, also 

just

happening.

And I cried for you

I wanted to scream at god

I wanted to hold your cold hands

in the damp night

I wanted to cry real tears 

for once in my damned life-

But the universe doesn't make many choices.

It just exists.

And so do we- for a mere moment

a second--

Just long enough to matter to someone else.

Just long enough to matter

to someone else.

I do not know what happened to you.

I don't know if the 12 cop cars did any good.

I don't know that I can face the morning news if you decided to let go.

When I drove back across the bridge several hours later,

You were gone.

The lights were gone.

As if nothing had happened.

It almost didn't occur to me to think of it, The silt of it still clogging my brain

But even so, I drove quickly past like I have done

So many times before tonight

And I didn't think of you

Until now, 

Lying in my bed

Wondering about you,

Crying for you

Closing my eyes looking for you

Your figure burned in my mind

You hooded stranger

Who knows exactly what it feels like to be human.

I share this experience with you; unwillingly it seems

And with so many others:

We're a tiny spoke in a huge wheel spinning out of control down a metaphorical mountain of an endless universe-

How can any of it matter?

But you remain here, in this moment, in my bed as I live for you: alive.

And your life matters to me, if it is over or not

It matters to me.

I am lying here and 

You matter to me.

You and I share

that darkness

Standing on the railing

The late autumn night sea air drenching your grey sweatshirt

And chilling every molecule in your body

Until there is no feeling left besides 

A lacking

That empty silence of a soul in mourning

For what it's lost: itself.

The hardest part is the hopelessness.

How can any of it matter?

The answer is not discovered.

The answer is created.

It does not matter. I am a tiny thing amongst billions of other tiny things

Amongst billions of enormous things

Black holes and red giants

Expanding space

Uncharted sea depths

Parallel universes

Where one of us has chosen to let go-

And one of us has chosen to take the hand down

To hold life like a plain face,

No charming smile, no violet eyes

And say: I will love you, again.

I don't know which iteration of the universe I am living in-

But I love you

You matter to me.

Novemer 9, 2016 pt.2

There is something heavy about today.
The atmosphere is moody, holding its breath;
afraid to let go because the unholy sound
might break the world.

The clouds are pregnant with water
ready to crack open and are
looming darkly with the crowning
of a new era, again and again and again and again

I am afraid. I am afraid for Decency
I am afraid for Compassion
I am afraid for Empathy
I am afraid for Forgiveness
I am afraid for Love

that they will be snuffed out
crushed under the the weight of hatred
drowned out by the chanting of warfare
trampled by the storming indifference
strangled by the weeds of anger
burned by the arson of otherness
buried by despondence.

How do we continue to seek Decency?
How do we enact Compassion?
How do we entreat Empathy
to be a part of a world that
so often exiles her?

Come back to us, Forgiveness.
Flow back over us, Love.
Let the clouds split open and pour
over us and wash our eyes
to see that

We need you, more than ever.

November 9, 2016

Early this morning, history began a new chapter.
Many people are weeping. Many people are angry.
Many people are crying out from all sides wondering
how we are who we are; why we are who we are-
and just as wordless: Who are we?
Why are we?

But I walked to the ocean,
I sat by the ocean,
on a rock by the ocean
this morning,
carrying my heavy heart down to the water.

With every wave the ocean spoke:
"I am still here,"
Then a deep breath in- the pulling
back of the tide, then-
"I am still here,"

There is a comma there, a pause
Just enough for a breath in and a
breath out
And with each exhale the voice kept saying,
"I am still here,"
I started to breathe with her
Over and over and over

Sometimes loud, very loud, with a
booming voice and many white
bubbles breaking
over the piles of seaweed and
spraying tears up over the rocks.
The sucking of air afterwards was just as chaotic.

Sometimes though,
the exhale was soft;
Gaia God's fingers caressing
the infinitesimal rocks of her sand,
grazing the skin of her love
whispering,
"I am still here,"

little t's

I looked back one day

and instead of the dutiful structural wall

I expected to be standing, marking the path I had been walking

the past few years:

each stone set on a foundation of Truths

most little t’s, with some big T Truths

God is Love, and Love is Real-

But that day, whenever it was exactly,

I turned around and found a little gremlin

was smashing around making a mess of it all-

even the foundation stones were crushed.

I wept, grieved for a while.

I was angry some. Heaven disappeared

and god was a deepening mystery

I read philosophers.

Nietzsche has plenty to say

But so does Abraham Heschel

and how Wonder is all he ever asked for

and god gave it to him.

I take this back to my wall.

Caputo steeps in the weakness of god:

unstable, barely functional-

I take some of this back to my wall.

Grace Jantzen reminds me that Deconstruction

is a way to reconstruction.

I take this back to my wall.

I wrestle with the gremlin for a year or two,

then decide to take a break because it’s exhausting

spending every moment in existential skepticism

and I’m just tired, damnit

god damnit.

yes, god, damn it, please.

If you’re there, if you have any power left

damn it.

and I’m just gonna take a break

and if that’s okay with you,

I’m gonna just let this go for now

so I can start breathing normally.

I go from being angry

inside the eternal dark night of my Kierkegaard-ian soul

waiting for the rubble to make itself a wall again, to pave itself

ahead of me, and

getting angry when it didn't—

To just letting the world happen to me;

listening to the words of poets

Who have long gone before me-

“Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Rumi.

Who have known things closer than I could explain,

“Let everything happen to you; beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Rilke.

Who comforted me in my state,

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body

loves what it loves.” Mary Oliver.

Music saved me. Theatre is my Church. Art is my prayer.

Words have so much power if you let them.

So let them.

And then, one day, you may find yourself

asking those small, eternal questions again;

the wall crumbly but giving it a go-

the gremlin tamed and even cuddly. And then

meekly, like a child whispering in her mother’s ear:

“I love you,” to which she responds

“I loved you first.”

On Growing

1

it feels like cold liquid metal climbing your neck

sealing off airways

solidifying your upper vertebrae

and brain stem into a

silver statue

while your jaw spasms

tilting your head backward until all you can see is up

muscles tightening, backing into a dim corner

and it goes dark.

Sometimes it’s just for a moment-

I’m sitting on the stairs in front of the kitchen door

shoes on, ready to go

but something invisible grips me

and I can’t move my body

Sometimes it’s for a long time- days even.

Laying still, crooked but frozen,

a week of night sweats still in my sheets

as the only protection I have from facing myself

and the possibility of the world.

it makes breathing hard, burning like that

it makes you sink into the floor like lava--

the kind you’d avoid as a kid

hopping couch cushions and chairs--

is now what your body is made of.

disappear, wane, vanish, seep away

and every other word or phrase

I can think of to describe

that darkness

and what it makes my head do

I just want to dissipate, dissolve,

disappear--

and then, light.

I can’t explain it

it’s my mothers’ arms

it’s naming green objects in the room

it’s the final slam of the door

or my face on the floor

sobbing into the grass and then

turning over to the sun in my face.

remembering love

remembering breathing

remembering light. life. living.

Remembering beauty and terror.

both things

inseparable

two sides of the same coin

the back and palm of your hand

the curve and the concave

the wave and the particle light

the ultimate paradox

the only thing I call

Truth.

2

There are many things I wish I could do

dance professionally

grow as many botanicals as I wanted

decide the weather

I have my poor-man’s version of my dreams:

I work and stretch my muscles every day

I have a large assortment of herbs growing and

bundles hanging around the house

drying for tea as autumn settles into my stomach.

but I ache to be the best version of myself.

whatever she is.

I dream of her, see visions of her

sometimes catch glimpses of her:

early mornings with coffee and my dog outside

watching her discover every single leaf in the yard

and carry it triumphantly over to me.

I should treasure my possessions

like she does:

delight in every single leaf in the yard.

My lemon catnip tea from my garden

and my bundles of lavender hanging

upside down.

Be in awe of my body holding on through waves

that can crush bodies alive.

To stand in awe, that here, she is:

in the mirror, post-anxiety attack

after crying or anger or joy

after laughing with friends or burning a candle

to look her in the eye

to stand in awe of her

of that version of me;

no better than five-minute ago me

no worse either,

and say

She

is the best version

of me.

3

I came home today with

a bundle of oregano that took two hands to carry inside

a fistful of thyme, a skirt-full of lemon catnip,

a fortune of lavender blossoms and four tomatoes.

There are still five bell peppers swelling

and three dark purple eggplants dropping slowly

from their leafy perches

and still a forest of curly kale.

The squash leaves are withered

and the sunflowers stand their mournful

beautiful ground

only their eyes saw the summer bees

and bunnies

playing in my garden.

They are echoes, those large heads

stalks three fingers wide

of the former days

of early Spring leaning graciously into Summer

I think of my own cycle, echoing the seasons-

echoing the sunflower heads bowed

some of my stems broken; petals brown and dried

like tissue paper.

I was tall, once. Bending towards the sun

I was majestic; colorful; fuel for the bees’ sacred mission--

and I am now cold, dry, like tissue paper

and just as defenseless. Susceptible to water,

damage, fire, frost.

But inside me

are echoes of those summer heads:

ideas floating like bursts of life

the many seeds of new lives that are coming

and one day, I too

will dig deep my feet

and grow again.

to my unborn children

When you hold your baby,

when you look into her eyes and

she looks back without an ounce of fear and you know 

when you hold her

you hold your grandchildren

and your great grandchildren

the whole world, really

because what else is there except

to make meaning out of our loves

to find delight at every new word

to see your own face reflected in hers

to feel the summer earth beneath your bare feet

to hear laughter and crying

to laugh and cry and scream and be sleepless and elated

all together and

too close together for it to mean nothing.

So you make it mean something.

You say aloud to yourself

so you won't forget

I will rise above this pain, I will rise.

I will

choose love over indifference, I will

be surprised by small things

delighted and inspired

by fingers and elbows and

the smell of her baby hair and

the taste of the first snowflake and

heartbeats and the way the afternoon light is

just so across the living room floor—

These things, you will tell your child,

are the stuff of dreams. Here, god. Here, Love. This

is living, this

house, this soul place where your 

heart can lie down

without an ounce of fear; this

is where meaning is made.

Not discovered like gravity-

that was hidden: there all along until

the apple fell--

but instead: created, whole and real

and new in

one step, one sip, one tooth, one root, 

one breath at a time

again and again every day

until the end of time

which is god 

which is unending

which is eternal

which is how long I will love you.
 

Three years: Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.

Yesterday marked three years since I was told I had cancer.

Thoughts and words borrowed from many references, and I thank you for them.

1

Other than those two roads diverging in the yellow wood

one leading one way, the other another 

I don't believe in judgement day 

with the heavenly armed forces

pulling you up or pushing you down.

Other than those roads in the yellow wood-

what paths are before us?

It's the same woods and the same earth, the same

fiber holding it all together- those tiny atoms pulling and pushing

for or against, that gravity

of an eon echo burst that cast us out sideways

from hydrogen into

whatever we are.

It’s just legroom we scuffle about in

existence is so fragile:

temperature and speed all just so,

any more or less and we’d still be the unadorned element

H

Space is a precarious place.

There are stars burning who’s light won’t reach earth before I die.

The sun may have just exploded, just now

and in 8 minutes and 20 seconds

everything will change.

and yet somehow,

stay exactly the same

trivial, a clump of atoms inside a Red Giant and

burning until there's nothing left but void. 

It's all the same woods.

And we won’t know what’s beyond these trees

till we get there.

2

Shuffles and shambles to survive, while I 

struggle to figure out 

what that means anymore. Is it

carrying my bones to and from my bed? Is it

the space between griefs? Is it

holding a chive blossom in my hand?

Watching the sparrows fight at the feeder?

Pouring coffee?

Some days it’s too much, it's too much of

just crushing these goddamned osteo-lugnuts

rusted shut, full of shit made

in a factory somewhere

I lie half awake

Panic is my predator and she has her way with me.

I am food for Dangerous, Despondency, Despair

I have nowhere to hide

No more good face, no more God face

no more comfort that this will actually turn out okay

as I watch on like a horror film:

"Don’t go up to the attic. DON'T GO UP TO—"

But she goes anyway. See, the script is written this way

because the bard say

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances”

But it’s the exits,

it’s the exits that are final.

3

The basil's spicy scent still on my

hands

and the marigold petals will begin

to light up our summer salads.

I’m peering like a four year old,

peeking fingers through the fence,

waiting for the beets to sprout, as they should

while I look on

They whisper, "Nothing doing. I don't belong to you.

I am not your play thing. I am the great earth."

Majesty is happening under ground, and

I have to praise that.

I must give thanks unto

the worms, the feeders in the dark

who quietly, discreetly, till the soil and nourish

while nearby seeds also quietly, discreetly, creep out of their casing

and push with noiseless childbearing cries and

bear down into deep roots, reach arms up in love to the sun

To the bees committing their altruistic ritual:

"Serve the world, serve the world."

I must give praise to these little ones,

inside my doubt, inside despair

Inside the death and death and death of cells

Inside cancer, hunger, murder and space

the unending explosions of atoms: 

Praise.

To the mustard, the broccoli sprout,

the fruits of the great earth.