What Resides

 

 

 

That little cottage

   sitting on a dark hill,

overlooking

what once was a silver place,

as moonlight

guided all of the spirits

to their destinations.

 

That little cottage

   which stands lonely now,

when it was abandoned by the Wind.

Only silence has come to claim it,

that silver tongue, slipping through the windows

and all of the cracks in the floor

   which never speak,

which stand mute and pervasive in that dark place,

in the shadows behind chairs,

echoing the smoke stains of the heart.

 

The closet door stands open,

the only words left in this house, telling me

You once shut this door on yourself

   and lived here,

in all the hidden corners of a child's closet--

I was the doll.

This was the paper boy come to claim my Night.

 

I closed that cottage door and

   locked it.

 

Only black dreams are whispered here.

The tall grass sleeps against the wall;
we speak and listen in turns.
I have to wonder how I sound to the tattered ground leaves
and the buzzing nets in the shadows--
I am sure,
  as I speak of many things that my textbooks would rather not say,
that the grass doesn't understand why I pace on, fretting about
  islands,
     or the oceans between them.

I pause for breath in the sleepy shade,
a humming place where I enter the ground
and the grass hollows after me,
speaking as a tunnel:

Why would anything wish
  to prove that it is nothing?
We have known for eons
  that each blade stands apart from the rest--
But we are all counted as carpet.

Shall I tell the grass that it does not exist?
That its roots are only in language,
   and without my voice, it would simply be a sliding thing--
slipping into everything else.
No, dear grass,
you are only a carpet that I made, when
I decided you were for walking.

I know the grass laughs.
It laughs as the air laughs back at me,
throwing pale echoes in my face.

Dear soul,
you are not the worm,
you are not the sun.
 

When I see you --
    dreaming --
I always find a way
   to warn you,
be careful,
    be careful because
you might get sick
    and die.

Careful,
I seem to recall
   that you were sick once,
sick and dying.
You got better, though?
Or is this still before?
   Before that thing, that thing that happened,
the bad thing
 I can't quite remember why
     but why do I feel
like I haven't seen you
  in such a long time?
I've missed you.

What happened?
I've missed you.

And then sickening, cringing,
   drowning
as I remember another dream,
a dream within the dream
   where I woke up
and you were gone,
    a long time gone,
so cold and gone.

It was a dream
   where I faced you last,
some otherworld
   where your shade
         met mine.
Because what disturbs me
    is not that it might be you,
or from you,
    or of you,
but rather nothing like you
    except the stubborn child
of my mind,
    a child past--
insisting,
    shouting,
         yelling
that your silhouette is something real.

I touched it once,
   knowing it was a dead woman
dreaming.

Somehow, she never
   came back to life.

In this way,
   we are walls,
built of brick and clay.
   Strong, to hold the difference
as a floor
    differs from a roof.
And yet some of us are floors,
   happy to support,
to be the firm tiles or boards
   that the rest of us may
        walk on.
Even less of us are roofs,
    nor should we really need them --
those tight capped
     locked down
           gates against the stars,
     a lid to block out sunlight,
few plants can live indoors.

It is in this way we are walls,
   keeping separate floor and roof,
Holding carefully the beams
    so that none may tilt
          or splinter --
For without walls there is no shelter,
    no place from weather,
          lock nor key;
with no walls, we are all flat
     ongoing lines,
        indefinitely.

A softer gold,
   and suddenly the eys
        are seeing,
the wind has cooled,
   and I remember fading things,
like the strength of winter,
   a season close to death,
        if death is anything
             like sleeping.
Or freezing.
   They say death is nothing,
        the onset of nothingness,
    like a disease.
But even a disease is living,
   even a disease grows and evolves;
death is always the same.
I don't know where it goes,
   that nothing,
that empty that spreads from empty,
     only that it must be
          different from winter,
because all things return from winter,
                  except the dead.

Wind Chimes

Does anyone hear
   the tingling
oh sweet mingling
      of the bells?
When the wind
    blows around here,
we hear a
  flutter of fairy dust
and of tiny footsteps,
   dancing
oh so laughing,
just the passing
   of the
 bells.

I have searched harder, found more, wasted less, and yet I'm still behind.

But is there such a thing as wasted time? I am constantly reminding myself that every footstep I take is necessary. Every new bump along this road is something I need to pay attention to, to notice for those who don't notice, so that at some point I may teach them what they overlooked. I have asked to be some form of messenger; I don't know what that entails, but some people seem to be born with it and I would like to think of myself as born again with it. Thus, life teaches me. Life teaches everyone, but I have always been a good student. Some just absorb faster than others. Sometimes I think I've been here before, and this is somehow all a way for me to remember what I'm supposed to already know. It's like a crash course, a quick review before the big test. Except there is no real test. A test is something to dread -- this, I look forward to. A test is something you worry about passing. This, I feel as though I already passed.

Wasted time... but everything I run across is necessary. Wisdom isn't supposed to feel light and flitty, or uncertain -- wisdom is universal, I think, and contains that same universal feeling of deepseated, indescribable confidence. That thing that says -- "this is how it is, how it always was, how it will be." That unerring judgment born of experience. I want wisdom, but in my eagerness, I forget that wisdom does not come from rushing, but from waiting. Wisdom does not come only from experience, but from the joining of experience and observation. One must reflect, look at themselves and ask who and why.... always always always, why.

I am ready, and yet I'm not ready. I know I can do it, but I don't know what I must do. I feel that push, that push push push... and yet what direction? Where is the road? Faith is blind, and I don't know where I am walking, only that I must trust I will be led in the right direction. That is the easy part. The hard part is waiting.


I look back on wasted time --
yet what is when,
 and what is wasted?
Can you count minutes like they're money?
Can you buy back one more day?
We're either pushing pushing pushing
   or crying stay, stay, stay....
but in this life of 'stop and go'
  we haven't time to break away....

Does a flower waste its winter?
Does a redwood waste its youth?
Who am I to tower
   when only anthills 
can be moved?
  I would seek a greater hour,
a higher time,
   a better place --

But out of fear of wasted words,
    I'll hold off
          for one more day.
  

All I have are pictures,
and pictures don't forget.
For all the thoughts inside
I haven't found the words as yet.
Despite these past eight years
your gentle voice prevails,
inside my mind
I try to find
a reason that entails --
Or justifies,
or thus explains
why your soul was taken,
why it had to be my love,
what longings have awakened.
What lessons of this world
were taught to ordinary me --
I search inside,
Hypothesize
a reason this may be.

I was alone
  in the circle,
around smiles and laughter --
Sometimes it seems
  like I belong on a border
     somewhere,
between you and him,
between them and they,
Somewhere closed,
  not open,
    like the words they say.

Love me for my rock,

My stone,

My brick.

Love me for my mountain peaks,

And my crooks and nicks.

Love me for my pebbles,

My sharp angles,

My shallow graves.

For my winding trails,

My steep pathways,

And dark caves.

Love me for my innocence,

Love my for my stature;

No man is a mountain,

So I ask --

Please love my nature.