Lady Suo's Clavicle: A Corollary

after Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.)

That early fall night
When I woke to find
Your sleeping cheek (warm weight
On my shoulder) may never
Have happened,
But the dream is nearly enough.





photograph by Ani Eleuterio

Interlude: Other People's Poetry, Inappropriately Timed Haiku Edition

That spring night I spent
Pillowed on your arm
Never really happened
Except in a dream.
Unfortunately I am
Talked about anyway.





-Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.), tr. Kenneth Rexroth.
One of my favorite poems in every season.

Barnard's Star

after Ann Druyan

I send for you my heartbeat,
the rhythms of my latest dream.
You are just now finding the frozen clicks
of muscles, cooling like just-parked cars.
Through endless fields of fire and dust,
we send whale song, one noisy kiss.

Every other romance
is nothingness now, every whale
a great cage of bone and blue air.
But fast to you, bright Ophiuchus,
one whispered love is dancing.





More about the Voyager Golden Record here.
Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow, tells her love story here.

Solace

The heaviest clouds are memories now,
and each thorn gives up its rain.
I dreamt I saw your shadow,
a flicker at the edge of the meadow.
Every step took me hours and hours,
and when I reached you you had gone.
In the trampled grass where the doe makes her bed,
a damp and budding armful: peony, lavender,
strawberry, thistle.
These are the flowers of my heart,
and in new sun they will bloom.







painting by Cassandra Barney

The Wrong Way

Don't take this the wrong way,
she said, but I love you.
And inside the lettered breath
of every tongue-carved syllable,
the truth in whispered ink:
I do. I do.








photograph by Alison Scarpulla

A Reading from the Letter of Joan of Arc to the Adolescents

for Sunshine

God knows it isn't easy
being fourteen. Breasts alone
are strange enough; don't get me started
on the tinny chorus of expectations,
the fire in your dreams. It has taken me
more than a little time to get it
but trust me, when you feel your heart thrum
strong and sure in your chest you will know
what breasts are for. When the king plants
an iris in the swollen dark earth, when your mother
lays your armor to sleep deep in the ground,
you will see how your brave bright love
was never the wrong choice.



photograph by Charlotte Miceli

Shiva's Granddaughter in Late-Night Meditation

"Barn's burnt down--
now I can see the moon."
-Mizuta Masahide

With every sunset her appetite grew.
She prayed for the pipes to burst,
for a fire in an electrical storm,
an unlikely New England earthquake. She dreamt
of her bookshelves embedded
in beating hearts of flame,
the good white china crunching in fragments
beneath the smoldering rubble.
And, miles away in the dark,
a secret hand to wipe the soot
from her tear-damp cheeks.




photograph by Mark Allanson

Interlude: Happy Birthday, Cassandra Barney

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one miss Cassandra Barney, my inspiration, collaborator and friend. Take a minute today, if you will, to cruise over to her blog and send her birthday wishes, or just think glittery thoughts in her general direction. She works hard, plays hard, dreams hard, and loves hard, and I only hope today is all that it can be for her, that she is inundated with affection and children's drawings and good wishes.



Thistle
Hard work, love that endures hardship, defiance, protection

I never saw my mama’s feet sleeping.
Mornings they trod a triangular path:
garden, fire, table.
Mid-day she walked in circles sewing,
mending our dresses as we read our lessons.
As the sun set she strode stripes through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars pricked holes
in the black paper above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around the big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.