I never meant to be a housewife

I thought my life

Was not about this stuff

in my head

yarn and dandruff and bits of timber

a tangled knot of inadequate kindling

all too ready to burn

and i

always looking for the nearest

fire extinguisher

(ah dear lover,

did i not tell you?

your gaze is as good as the spray of baking powder

on the flames of anxiety - for a while.

Even you

can't keep them subdued

forever)

I thought my life

was about the Poor

or at least the Planet

doing something (anything) useful

for these Burning Times

and the Great Imbalance

between carbon and oxygen -

the graves of the Sacred Dead

Mighty dinosaurs and Great plancton

have been plundered

the thieves rich in property and fine cheese.

Now the living butterflies

who took eons

to learn the art of transfiguration

(to kill their own caterpillars

then fly with grace)

are driven into the exposed graveyards

by greed, short-termism and other human sins.

i thought I

would come up with something (anything)

to help such precarious precious life.

instead

i've become a good baker

without sugar or wheat;

well-versed in onions and bones

making nourishing stocks;

i'm quite competent

at running a healthy clean kitchen

on a meagre budget;

skilled at listening to storms of abuse and fear

and saying a few kind words

to the shattered mind and the hungry heart

of people I sort-of know.

I never dreamed of

such humble housewife abilities.

They came about while

i was making

other plans.

Still my nightmares

are of caterpillars

turning to maggots

and rainforests

stripped to deserts

and a dark-hooded stranger

from palestine

knocking at my door

because there is no room

at the Inn;

and I

might be so worried

about the raising rye flour

that I may not

offer them

a warm bed

for the

Night Within.

May the deep waters fill you

May the deep waters

enfold your daffodils

So their bouncing heads may lift to the sunshine

their petals open to the bees and the wonders of children

who know that they themselves (though made of clay) are just spirits,

dancing in the wind;

May the bounded rationality of your 7.5 lb head

rest into the warm seas of possibility

and discover that it is attached to none other than your own body

which still knows how to float;

let your gaze rise to the heavens

the stars that brought you here so long ago

and breath

May the ice cold fears in your belly

be exposed to the warm sun

running into rivers

that will smooth the sharp rocks of your muscles

loosen the terror in your gut

nourish the dry stream beds

around your eyes

so that the King Salmon of your soul

may come alive

and remember

how to swim

(even now, even upstream)

with such

bright shining joy;

May the deep sea

where all is dark

bring forth its mystery

into your being

breaking the ice sheets

that for too long have paralysed you -

and may they

in their melting

be gentle,

not too hard in their crackling

but instead bring you to new

stable shores

where you may find such beauties

fit for the king of the lillies

who needs no gold cloth

just his own honest

shining

beauty.

Stock

On our last day together

I bought beef bones from the butcher

thick red and white angular bloody joints

raw meat still clinging to them

You watched me

envelop them in water

flavour them with onion and garlic

then nestle them onto the quiet back burner

for a long slow simmer.

On our last day together

I made a stock

you would never taste,

Plopping thick spoonfulls of the cow's life

Into soups and stews -

This stock -

my bridge

from one life to another

from our past to (my?) future -

that this body

you stroked grabbed caressed held loved

into health

might be properly nourished

on this

blustery dark cruel Febuary night

when I

must

eat

alone

those rare questions

there are very few questions

that have the weight and heaviness of a stone

large enough

to change the course of the river.

there are countless little questions

that we run over

smoothing them with our burbles and our chatter

those stones at the bottom of our rivers

those questions create

beautiful ripples and eddies

and ways of sweetly running together

but then

there are those questions that hover

above our waters

with a presence

thick and mighty

a gravitational pull

that forces

the stones to re-arrange themselves

that forces the waters

to undergo choice

to find a direction

a form a shape a pattern

new and different.

Those questions

are posed at a distance

we feel the shadow of them

looming

for quite some time

but we skillfully

avoid them answering

by rushing

but they will come again those

words

when we are ready

(and when we are not)

again and again until

one day

becomes today

the question is posed.

i did not see this stone.

was i hiding from it? no, i just

wasn't ready to hold it.

such stones - they need careful holding.

but then i rounded the bend.

and you saw me.

and who you saw -

it startled you, too.

so much so

that you let go of the stone you had been slowly polishing

will you...

(how did i not see this moment coming?)

all i could do

was laugh

as the fishes in me

swarmed

as the octopus

came to attention, tentacles suddenly poised

as the clams and oysters and mussels

snapped closed

and the little barnicles swam quickly through my arms

the stone was dropped

the waters parted

there was nothing to do but

sit in silence.

will you....

Never have I been asked.

Gratitude amazement the light shined brightly

on foam and wave and current - looking back -

i have come such a long way

we have traveled so far along the banks of these shores

and now this, this invitation

just as I thought I would go the other way

the swarms of fishes, they looked

they saw such a vast beautiful lake

familiar yet utterly new

we had never been here before:

I have a thousand yeses for you.

But the octopus

she has just come out of her cave

and the mussels and oysters and clams

are only just learning to open

to feed on proper food

not just sand and grit and plastic -

(I have only just begun cleaning

the damages of the oil spills)

And there is an ocean!

The octopus needs a very large ocean

the mussels will need fresh food from far distant shores

the barnicles

are seeking.

They are seeking

a whale.

You my love

you my love

you my love

You do not travel as much as you used to.

Were it just a question of fishes:

perhaps.

(maybe in the future?

after some high sea traveling on my own?)

but really

the barnicles

need

a very strong young whale

to take them deeper

than they have dived thus far.

I have only

just discovered

about leaving the harbor.

Just for today

I choose to trust that there

are other Stones

that might someday

be dropped

into the deep silence

where the whales sing.

And so these questions

come to us when we are (are we?) ready

and they hover

then they drop

embedding themselves into the plates of our souls

changing the shape

of our oceans.

You, you are so bright.

a silver diamond you shine

as your question sinks itself down

nestling itself into the soils at the bottom.

My question still stands

you whisper as you walk out the door

So does my answer

I murmur

when he leaves

the fishes protest.

i am left

gasping for air,

drowning in myself;

these waters are not yet calm.

but the mussels practice opening their shells

the barnicles are beginning to look

for that whale.

and the octopus

oh the octopus

she has not

returned to her cave.

raining, today

it is raining today

i give up all semblance of working today

instead today

i surrender; today

i can only practice feeling (my way towards myself) today

the rain dances lightly on the skylight in the day time

white clouds, white water, white wind

the day when all i can do is listen

a few cars, children at school, soft breathing

the day all i can do is sit here

somehow i am still breathing somehow

despite everything because of everything today

i let the rain be the tears

that still cannot fall

as i sit and stare

today is the day you

asked me

the question you have never asked

oh, how we've talked about it

words gently falling around one another, all sides

like the rain

white words, white laughter white answers.

but then today

you opened the skylight.

the rain is wet

the wind is cold

the whiteness quakes the soul -

you

asked the question.

Water

is so sacred.

yet we

who hide ourselves in houses, behind windows

so rarely drink

so rarely feel the rain.

speaking of fear, softly

face soft with kindness

wet with tears

we spoke gently of fear.

fear:

of not being able to 'do it' alone

of loosing my best friend

of causing irreparable hurt

of the longing ....

fear:

of never finding a love like this again

of the meaning being taken away

of the light disappearing

never being lit again.

separating intertwined paths

untangling thick webs of relation

leaves

weak legs, soft boundaries, constricted throat

so much naked vulnerability and long silences

comforting hands and murmuring 'my dears'

tears and sighs and long-distant stares.

i am forced to believe

that there is, somewhere, a light

that can not be turned off

no matter who, or when, or how

the door closes shut.

from behind fig trees

he knew

When he asked the question

he knew the answer

he must have known

that is His perogative

to Know -

to Know us better than we know ourselves

Where are you?

(Oh, how many times I have asked that of Him!)

but in the Garden he asked it of them

who had tasted good and evil

and suddenly

knew shame.

The shame hides me

i hide in the shame

from the shame

around the shame

I will destroy the glorious fig trees

in expression of shame

creditors, debtors, debtees

invoices bank statements unopened letters

bottles relationships colleagues unfinished

broken promises

boxes of cake, scores of chocolate eaten at midnight

carbon footprints, oil addictions, squandered lives

self-starvation, stealing, manipulating

viscious laughter, unacceptable and unacknowledged pleasure

warfare, germany, rwanda, china, bosnia, columbia, mexico america

who is the real abuser

rapists mascurading as security guards and (their) women cast out -

cast away -

grown victims of pedaphilia hang their heads

(as if the victim is at fault) -

our shame

litters this precious planet

a plastic island, a thousand species dead,

the mourning of silent springs

sounds like the whistle of wind through dry weeds

where once was lush pastoral land

before the oil was stolen from its burial chambers

and the climate changed

He said,

Where are you?

But he knew, he knew!

Why must he ask us to come forward?

Why must we of our own accord

step forward

from behind fig trees

and announce ourselves

clothed

announcing our shame and our bodies

such naked vulnerability

the girl who did not want her father to see her

the boy who did not know how to be a man

the fear of being cast out

(if you see me you will surely inevitably reject me)

the fall

An invitation:

Where are you?

To be seen.

To know good and evil

and to learn

that actually

you are good

that really

you are loved

and all that stuff

is just stuff

because we have already

survived the fall

we have already

been known

as beautiful.

To be broken

and discover inside

the sweet pink flesh

of figs -

this too surely

he knew.