broken, open, promises

Broken Open Promises

The day you took your vows

I stood beside you and then 

beneath the leaves in a breeze like butterflies

taking flight

my daughter asked me to choose an apple for her

from the orchard and through the forest

she carried it and sang to it

like the last apple of the only autumn 

we'd never known.

It crossed the borders toward home

like a sanctified refugee emotion, and waited

dreaming of hunger,

like a lover knowing a letter will arrive.

Until I opened 

my mouth as if to scream 

and let loose the crackle of thunder beneath 

the thick green skin

I couldn't have imagined 

the sound a heart makes when it breaks open along an old scar

and the sweet art of gratitude 

pours out, filling the distance, 

scent,

between one life and another.

bird-song story

stories beating
at invisible boundaries
like birds against the window.
and I wait
wishing the bird would break the glass
even if
it meant the body and wings
entered torn and bloody
because,,, perhaps,,, then,,,

we will
lift it
from the ground
hold it
gently
and love
its soft
body-knowing
:::
if we do this
it will sing
again.

~
for XX4

Spring Song for Brother God

Spring Song for Brother God

The kind to hide

(hear the gravel grumble and sliding
       (crumble and divide)
as we travel the long road--
from lonely to...
all alone--

the kind to be:::
curious, beastly, preying
on those you wish
to save...

(We)
talk of
God in the wilderness
as if God is not wild,--
tail up///ears twitching///
!/!/!--
behind a bramble of song
until the appointed time
to pin us
with soft jaws
and pensive paws
until we play
like the dead:::
lay quiet, hands open to the sky
and splay (extremities), like prayer,
on the ground.

The howl
(the sigh of the
wild and welcome soul,
learning to grapple, and topple,
yearning to wrap tones around the soft
body of God)
shakes the rain
down from the forest fingers--
a gale of sound and burst of cold pellets)

humble and abiding.