Living Dream

(Not the) Erotic Dream

Your cherry red lips dripping with

Cheap wine and expensive beer

kiss me, lover

fine tune my body like a delicate instrument

play that  jazz piano in your cool and drunken way

my heart dances

my lips sing

my fingers trace the lines of your body

you reach out to touch me

Take off my leaden burdens, and weep

Twilight

The sun crosses the sky

Earth rolls away from the sun

Like tulips opening and closing in day and dark,

I open and close

Because she is so impersonal- Ama d’a ala

the great mother

Through her fire, she renews completely

the garment world, each night

I breathe in, she breathes out, I breathe out, she breathes in

snatching the copper vessel from my hands

Like a shadow-fox slipping between sound and

the smell of spilt ceremony tea

She is the queen in the field

lighting the altar candle

A yellow warbler flies in the temple window

leading the call and response

 A stone heart lies hidden on the soft moss growing

stars! and florets and clover

The blue expansive sky, the color of light, the illuminating

deeply familiar dream of the black spider

In this place, in a velvet chair, in her infernal grace

the wakeful world has presence

I sit in her doorway, the mouth covered with leaves

Trees in the wind creak like an opening door

Breath

Sitting on the earth in a circle of musicians

Mountains of colored clay crumble into sand

I am holding and playing my clay ocarina

And the melody is haunting and familiar

Woman of clay and wind, creased and crumbling

A willing companion ’til the end of days

Another is remarking that the clay ocarina must feel honored

It’s been sitting on the altar all these years

Thank the Path

Hiking the back woods, an odd thing happened.

I realized that though I’ve walked these trails

a thousand times before; nothing looked familiar.

And though I knew where I must be-

I had no idea where I was.

Maybe I was seeing with new eyes (as was suggested)

but I think that everything: leaf, stone, grass, tree

was not the same as it had ever been before. All was changed

and is continuously changing, as am I, as are you.

Those who think that things stay the same

are not open in this moment.  They are behind

with old experiences and faded impressions.

This is not the same rose your father gave you

at graduation, or you carried down the aisle

in your sister’s wedding, or that blossomed

on the bedside filling the room with its essence

the morning your mother passed away.

This rose presents itself to you.

Touch its gentle petals; breathe deeply its life scent;

see this living being burning in its divinity.

I thank G-d who illuminates my path.  Those who hold

me up along the sometimes overgrown

and convoluted way.  And the very path itself!

The decomposing leaves pressed in mud,

the bright orange salamander scurrying away

from dropping acorns, the tiny spotted toad

leaping onto my hand and off again,

the mushrooms that open as flowers

and the flowers that turn to sticky burrs.

All this is new and now and me, honored here.

The Way

Step right and to the center and she will be with you.

I will find her among seashells and stones.  My favorite

will be the intricate conch shell; 

she has never seen one like it, so well formed.

And turning it over I will notice: it looks like a castle, calls me to listen,

through lips and breath loudly calls me to prayer.

The baby says “rock.”  He says “rock” and he says “bubble.”

These are his favorites; one so permanent, one seemingly magical.

(Which is which? He holds them both.)

These are his favorites but he likes bikes even better.

I set forth as a pilgrim on foot.  Evening

signaling to my ear- they are here and hungry, bizzy and many.

Soft mud and slow walking, 24 pounds of baby on my back.

He picks tiny fir cones off of hemlock trees.

He says “bye.”  To the trees he says “bye” and “more” to me.

Through ferns, under dragonflies, across beige leaves

becoming earth. A snake shakes or hisses from inside

the cracked rock, keeping me alert and company,

shooing me on my way more quickly.

The way smells of rot and life and growth.

“Step right and to the center and you will be with her,” the Guide says.

The Guide looks out and says “journey,” perhaps home can be replicated here.

Looks out from within, so the seeker believes.

Why on earth does God look out?

If ever I do find her again, it is that she will come home to me-

through the front door or back; there’s one brass knob for both.

And for 30 days she will be found in the castle of the conch shell.

(I have never seen one like it!)  So seemingly permanent and loud.

The Way to glide and Step

There is only the dance

In elegant ellipses he leads me

With a sturdy arm, upright spine

A graceful gait

Gently, to the pianist’s evocation of beauty

He is dying (and I am dying)

I am supported (and he is resolved)

The parkayed floor is round

And diners clink their glasses

At the dance

We are very much alive

A Nation of Children with Wings

In your fierceness- I see your clear eyes

In your limping gait, I feel your pain

A person will trace the progression, never lifting a finger

All the way to the final bird flying

Bearing the sorrow of life-- by recognition

That it is a gift

Kiss the Unknown

So, this woman walks into an

antique store to find something precious

There are three things (I assure her)

Mystery, Life and Death

Love and Fear- Trust (is the third thing)

Partnership, Institutions, Self

When the secret shelf of the box

Is pulled to the side, faded script is revealed

“Lilly, Lilly, Lilly”

Lift up the crescent blade

(Full, and new- making the three)

It’s happening on the third floor!

Come for the gift of your inheritance

Celestial Imagination

I know Avraham as my father, shooting hoops and praising the Most High G-d

when the ball swooshes through the net.

And surely my mother’s spirit is from the beginning of the universe.

When HaShem first said to the angels, "Let Us create Humanity a river of reflection,"

her smooth voice was heard.  Sh'ma- Listen!

We are all students of the spoken secrets and deliberations, but Shoshana was special

because she is a true teacher.  You may have seen her sipping white wine and smiling

supportively, but I knew her as a matrix of light, housing rays of God-shine: immortal

soul beginning time.

What is there to say about new beginnings and older dreams that did not quite come true?

These moments of not knowing  next from never, remind me to remind you:

Every fresh idea is worth cultivating.  This is true.

You say Moses is the highest prophet. We walk the earth in the same boots, he and I,

the same size even!  We stand the same height and our hands are similar.

We sleep under the same sky, though outside the worlds collide.

It is that war in heaven, you know.

Thunderbolts cruising the sky carry a reflection

of light sparring darkness in crackling cycles, where people die on streets

and others watch all these colors flashing on the television.

Step out into the energy of night- drink it in with true vision,

dripping, chilled under the stormy veil of a full moon.

Devorah seer in mountains of sagebrush, down a cobbled walkway- a spirit in the place

heaven meets. She says this is why the sky birds come to me:

to remind me I am free.

She is my sister and sparkling. "bright and strong from your heart to your mind,”

I say.  You are free on earth to heal!

My brother left while more and more soldiers fled across the threshold of death.

"We tried everything to heal," they proclaimed,  "positive thinking, sharks cartilage,

on the merit of prayer and strong motivation, mindfulness, devotion, willingness

for no will, denial, refusal, and complete surrender."

Was he King David?  His features looked the part.  And talk about charisma,

I saw shining fire all around him, in and out of rain.

In verse the psalmist wrote, "Have faith and trust the cosmic forces will purify you."

Believe in your own story. Close observation of life reveals great miracles.