a ritual to start the work week
Towers made of hope can’t help
but crumble, buckle under
the strain of constant
storms. Those bricks are best
for front walks and garden walls,
paths to set in the ground
to guide our first steps
into the world and low
borders for our sanctuaries,
hold their lines and their growth.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
The snow can’t help
but fall. But
in this blustery aftermath, flakes
wander and dart in all
directions, some aimless
and meandering, while others race
down toward inevitable crushing or up
in some cosmic defiance. Lost
in this confused midair rush hour,
still
more hover and float, apparently
unsure which destination will best
suit their fleeting needs, keep
their crystals intact, help them
find each other, firm up and form
something more.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Guts twist ’neath spindle
fingers, nervy and clutching
for tornado’s end.
Sun behind and clouds
ahead as day wanes: the sky
ripened for rainbows.
Pretty assassins
nod unknowingly under
blankets of poppies.
Worry not, my loves,
of rising evil: ice melts
when mourning dawn breaks.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Head down, horns forward, hooves dirty:
much to do, much muck to push through.
The self distracts: the mind a maze
made to unmoor or unmake you.
But muscle knows the truth, the work
of cog and gear, how spring and stud
balance, the place where plate and wheel
meet and make soft hands tick and turn
over etched faces, meter each
moment on this endless onwards.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Years drip from the eaves
like last week’s snowfall,
melting slowly together
into a flat glistening glaze
of yesterdays and some-time-or-anothers
that slide over and through each other,
transparent and slick, before
congealing into precarious daggers
that gracefully grip the roof edge, each
preparing to suddenly plunge,
sink its glassy hand into
whatever soft and fleshy crust
waits below, or simply to unmake
itself one drop
at a time, that is,
to fall one way or another.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
To heal a broken heart is to release,
remove each pin that pokes out from the fist-
sized stuffed tomato locked away inside
your chest — one by one — to squeeze it back
into beating, press the blood to pump
again. Every needling betrayal
excised is a stone of sea bird hanging
from your neck, its feet stained by your footfall,
dropping back into the sea, shrieved by some
quiet prayer — words you speak but mostly
to yourself, let go from the heart that held
them, clenched them too tightly and for too long.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Joy bursts electric, all sizzle and hum,
through the early darkening of not quite
winter, a cold still yet to settle, night
unfallen, shroud in hand, waiting to leap.
We make these promises, loop them around
drying boughs, weave and circle them, stand them
in icy windows, line our roofs with them
in silent refusal to freeze. Flame and
filament link us in the midst of this
premature aging, remind us of all
we’ve left to give, of the pantries to stock,
bowls to fill, hands to take into our own.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
And so you continue, perhaps,
begun somewhere else, already
sewn into our souls, some
sort of constant
possibility, perpetually
out of sight, out of reach. But
maybe today you begin
to be more, a big bang
building a universe
of attention and adoration,
your planets set and eager to orbit
an existence we’ve wished
into reality. Perhaps. But sometimes
stars burn and fade like matches,
we know, don’t always grow
into fires that change the ground
they’re set upon, into giants
that generate their own
gravity. But maybe this
new polaris you promise us
is finally ready to rise and join
the galaxy of bright spots
we worship, whose
small smiles center us, emitting little
glimmers our lives
already revolve around.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
Pluck-marked time passes
into strum-lingered minutes,
discrete fading into infinite,
minor ideas developing into
movements and revolutions,
keys that turn the ignition
and unlock cluttered passages,
minds and mines mapped, made
open and ours, opened hour
upon hour, flowers unfurled
and scribbles rewritten into
pixels and bits, bitemarks
healing into scars, becoming
permanent, we imagine.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
A breath of glistening
fairy slippers, this last gasp of dew
doused ruby leaves, left
along escape routes or
peeking from under strewn
homes, shimmer sequined
silver at sunrise as rays
reach between barren
branches, all toddler fingers
after their mother’s neck.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
The silent transit
of an obsidian-ink crow from power
line to dead
branch to limb
still shedding its fading
jack-o-lantern-colored costume
arcs east-to-west over
the property, an inverted sun,
void-bird marking the morning
with its passing. Cotton-puff
clouds appear gray, lazily
cruising across the jay-blue
sky reflected up from the black
mirror of the car hood
as an encouraging breeze
sets the leaves whispering,
eager to find the place where
their ends make a beginning.
love notes
a ritual to start the week
