home

Standing by the gnarled old maple tree,

The path to which is worn bare

By countless others who, like me, make the small climb from the park to visit it.

I sat here the day I learned my family was divorcing, and on an early date with the man who would become the love of life, and at eight months pregnant, and now-

I wonder if I will be able to keep coming here now that so many people love this place too. Displacement moves toward my family like a visible tide; a funeral march.

So let it come. The relics of my life are gone. The childhood homes, the secret groves, the family places, the manufactured home by the ocean.

What was that I swore at 18, backpack slung over a shoulder, leaving home?

Home is a living breathing being. Its form can change. 

Grief is the bone that holds our love together, and only what we love can save us.

To live is to grieve endlessly even as we are simultaneously broken open to the beauty and tentativeness that is living.

I offer the maple my thanks and turn back..

Dream

Last night I dreamt of a Tsunami.

The waves crushed everything dear to me and sucked my body into wild churning saltwater.

I struggled to keep my head above water, gasping as I went under for increasingly longer intervals until I began to fall.

As I drifted deeper in the water, I saw something solid and grasped for it- it was slippery and rough, with small grooves. I gripped as well as I could, my fingers slipping again and again as it pulled me to the surface and we moved forward. Finally above water, I saw it was a Sea Turtle.

All night I held onto this groundlessness, my fingers cold and aching, regripping every few moments over and over, but managing to hold on; failing and then finding again the rough shell, unsure how long I would manage.

Just as morning came I felt the softness of sand under our bodies.

Exhausted, I crawled, shaking, onto the beach and collapsed beneath an enormous tree. I laid on my back without the strength to move and watched the branches sway in the wind. The tree was endless, and on every branch was a nest filled with nestlings. The birds were so plentiful they looked like flowers. My mind was quiet.

This was when I heard growling.

A wild dog stood inches from me, gums pulled back over its teeth and hair standing on end. I looked into its eyes, and it lunged at me. It slashed at my chest and I began to bleed, but I continued to stare into its eyes. A moment passed, then it relaxed, turned, and left.

This is when I awoke.

The Reach

Hand over hand

a dirt stained body rises.

Hand over hand

clinging to the coarse woven fibers;

Skin burning with every red inch.

Moment by moment giving up

and holding on.

Hand over hand, rising above the canopy.

inch by inch into daylight;
The breath a chant, a prayer and plea.

The expansive sky in defiance

of everything once believed to be closed.

Terns drift by on their long migration.
To the endless world, the climber offers a small cry

merging in a wild chorus with every pitch.