Wind Moving Ghosts

Rain tonight, dark and cold
the wind through the trees
stripping leaves a few at a time
stripping time

This is the kind of night
where the 3 AM sounds might have been you
walking through my front door, standing at the foot of the bed
home coming, breaking up, never explaining,
but laying beside me until morning.

It's hope that
keeps me living
in this ghost world.

September, Nearly Over

Fall morning breaking
Yellow leaves blowing, some of them falling, all of them knowing
Blue Jay is staying, but he's dreaming about going

Close the window against the invading coldish breeze
here to dislodge Summer's last frail soldier
stirring the chimes as it proceeds

The delicate sound prompts a glimpse of you,
All this feeling in just a note or two.

I had such hard blues down there in the supermarket queues...

You're a woman in a yellow dress surrounded by a charm of hummingbirds...

Checking my phone

Leaving a job and turning in my first real smart phone with built in camera. With that comes the anxiety of what to keep and what to delete. Thumbing through pictures of my kids that exist there and nowhere else; wondering if I should go through the trouble of transferring my number to the lesser phone I will end up purchasing; scrolling through the contacts; voice mail.


I found two you left for me some time ago and thought a long time about whether or not to listen before I finally did. In the first, you called me babe so naturally that it hurt to hear. The message was more than a year old, and you were leaving detailed, careful instructions about the type of chicken feed you wanted. In the second, you sounded less certain, more distant. You wanted to tell me about some paranormal activity you thought might be going on in your house. Your voice felt to me somewhere between familiar and strange, and the sound of it set in motion a stampede of memory.


I release you.


A month has passed since I made that vow. You are all around me now but not with me. My hands are not holding on, but something is.

Mysteries

Listening to morning becoming afternoon

I receive the message in what I do not hear as part of the fluid truth of our relationship. We have our injuries, both. We continue, limping down solitary paths now.




You're ambivalent in your attachments - thinking yourself, willing yourself, out of this moment through to an idea of something better or higher. Mine are insecure, and I am left to wonder what is wrong with me that you didn't stay, tripping over roots and rocks.




 I read today that, for some of us, loneliness may be programmed in our DNA. For those people, solitude feels like a wound. I say those people because I don't know if it's my DNA that makes me perceive this deep bruise, or if the bruisings have modified my DNA.




The two paths will intersect at a common terminus. When I reach that place, I will think it is a shame we couldn't have traveled here together in warmth, light, tenderness and laughter, our hands held  securely in each other's.

Indiscernable Patterns of Migration

The second week of September and the hummingbirds seem to have moved on. I kept my promise and fed them through the summer, a ritualized attempt to keep my life connected to yours, but it didn't bring you back.




Everyone leaves. This is a well-learned fact, a biological imperative, a part of the natural order which you have come to understand and almost accept. And yet you still lose a piece of yourself, shed blood. You feel depleted of something essential and burdened by a new weight at the same time.




The leaves are turning, it's quiet and cloudy and humid. I'm greyer, hardly wiser, siting alone, in my natural state.

A Painful Tickle

This fruit fly is a sod, but I'm not going to focus on that guy. My king-size bed is a mockery now and I'm thinking about down-sizing, should the funds become available, in order to create more space in my cell. Distill. Get down to the essentials. In the absence of a Queen, even a queen-size mattress seems extravagant. A twin, however, may signify resignation and a surrender I'm not quite ready to offer.




Students with healthy hair and clear eyes. My nipples are sensitive under my performance t-shirt. What's that about? Source of my nurture, my empathy, my special power - three grains left in a leather pouch.




Send a message to a young man who believes that keeping his guns is actually saving his life despite his suicidal thoughts, despite easy access, despite the incessant whispering through the night. It does get dark, you tell him, but don't make it easy for the demon. Unload it. Eject the round from the chamber. Remove each bullet from the magazine. Put on the trigger lock and keep it secured in the gun safe. Put the magazine somewhere else, and the bullets in a third remote location. Make it a multi-step process with time to think, time to reconsider, time to side with your body and your heart that only want to continue, that want to give love. Better yet, store the damn things at a friend's house for safe keeping.




Sometimes we need to be kept. Sometimes we need a keeper.




I still think about you more than I think about anything else. Most days you are featured in the first thought upon waking and the last thought before slipping away. That's some kind of honor, I think. Too bad it doesn't help either of us.


I want to believe in light energy, in reiki, in the ability to send out my love and make things right.