After Corrag

for you, who are tangled,
berry-stained; for you, seaweed-eyed
and skittish in a market; for you,
water baby, moon child, razor-
tongued witch woman--for you, a gift:
i am one too.

sisters then, may the grass
be sweet, crushed underfoot.
may the scattershot stars
become a blanket we, alone, can share.
may we find peace in what enwilds us.
may what was lonely grow
to make the full use of our hearts.



art by Melissa Peck
Read more about Corrag in Susan Fletcher's incredible book Witch Light.

New Music from Squid Pro Crow

Barnard's Star is reborn! Music by Grant; words by me; ambient sounds from the Voyager Golden Record.



Barnard's Star
I send my heartbeat to you,
and the sum-song of my dreams.
Someday you'll unpack the impulses,
muscle-clicks like cooling cars.
Through endless fields of fire and dust
we send whale song, one noisy kiss.
Bach. A baby's cry.

Every other romance will wane
and waste away. Symphonies
are lost without their listeners.
Even the whale reduces
to a cage of bone and air.
But fast to you, Ophiuchus,
one whispered love is dancing.

For more of our music, visit our Bandcamp page.

Homo Ridens

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about...and that was the beginning of fairies." J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Wendy

And what was there to laugh about,
in this prehistoric night? Would the sound echo,
or would the black's nap suck it up
like so much spilled champagne?
And who was it that came along next,
and lifted the star-clad child?
Some vast nurse, who waltzing, swaying,
lullaby muttering, said,

Baby, it's not that funny.











photograph by Tamera

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.

The Letter She Left on the Table

after Bonnie Parker (1910-1934)

"You think I'm still good-looking, honey?
But no, I am faded and spent,
Even Helen of Troy would look seedy,
If she followed the pace that I went."

-from "The Street Girl"



So Mama, I'm going, I'm sorry;
We won't be returning this year.
I'll try and send you more money
With someone who passes through here.

He's not a bad man at all, Mama
but life shaped him wild and lean.
He says that someday we'll be married--
I think we both know what that means.

So Mama, I'm going, I'm sorry;
but tonight the stars all say yes.
Don't forget my love in a hurry;
Love alone will survive this mess.

Volvox Minuet

In one old studio my round instructor
is warming up her knees. Always the knees,
she said. You don't know what you've got
til it's gone. And then the music:
plaintive songs from long-
forgotten instruments.
My hair has slipped
from its braid. My teacher
counts, a hypnotist's trope,
and I am five hundred years ago.
The braid there has slipped too,
but there someone has bent
to mend it.

There is a pond on the way home,
a rich green plate of single-celled forms.
And in there two algae awaken.
A shy current pushes their arms
to preparation. The music begins.

Like new stars we all have been,
so blind to the cosmos and any orbit
but our own.




more about the Volvox algae here.

The Last Battle

"So," said Peter, "night falls on Narnia. What, Lucy! You're not crying?"
"Don't try to stop me, Peter," said Lucy, "I am sure Aslan would not. I am sure it is not wrong to mourn for Narnia. Think of all that is dead and frozen behind that door."

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle



I.
The earth split like a fallen man's skull,
and the burning skies painted every river red.
Everything ended. Stars crashed to the earth
and lay in the grass smoldering,
weeping, mourning their extinguished children.

II.
Embers. Dawn. A door in the air.
We are all blood and dirt. Through the gate,
only silence. If it is teeth and ice
it cannot be worse than this day.
I step through.




photograph by flickr user la fata matta

Driving Home

Orion knelt at the tree line. Venus was gone
from over the barn, and the raw thawing earth
refused my feet. I remembered what I'd heard
about Australia, and how the stars there
are hung upside-down. The winds have changed,
but still no word.





illustration from Bats and Swallows

Pangaea

She was born soft and green, a spot
on the ocean. The night sky bore down
with ten million stars, and each wave wove
her muddy joints tighter.

It seemed like whole aeons, the thick ice
and the flames, the soles
of her feet hard
and cracked from the strain.

Her gaze floated away. Below the stone of her heart
a glacier keened, tore and lost itself
to the sea.



photograph by Timothy Erickson

Waiting, Grand Central Ceiling

Aries, clamber from the sky.
My cold soil aches to break with
A stamp of your hoof, a toss
Of your horns. Frost is strong; your
Star-fur thicker. Dig until
The hole can hold you, love: rest
In the nest of my body.




photograph by Arvin Rolly Antipolo

33: Coming Clean

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;

I copied but did not send it.
I thought a phone call, maybe, but knew
The whirlpool words in my own mouth
Would give it all away.

There is no pressure I have not imagined:
Your teeth on my throat,
Your hair in my hand,
Your eyes on my salted lips. All these

Tide to and from my sleeping shores like trains.
And, too, the gravity
Of my own crumbling, wet face, the heft
Of your apology.

(Once you wrote me a confession, a treatise on starry unknowns.
Wrote it out in one long night,
Found it too true and threw
The whole thing away.
I know this because you told me.)





Original poem by W. H. Auden
Photograph by flickr user tomo.1981
Inspiration by you

Processing

Glance at the sun.
See the moon and stars.
Gaze at the beauty of the earth's greenings.
Now,
Think.

Hildegard von Bingen


Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

attributed to Rumi




photograph by Marie Hochhaus

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 through the fields,
barefoot among the thistles to bring the cows in.
When the stars made pinpricks
in the black ocean above, her heels creaked
a half-moon of floorboards around our big bed.
I dreamt every night of fragrant weeds and grasses,
and knew that when I woke
the footsteps below would always be hers.


Thistle by Cassandra Barney

starstruck (so bright and bitter cold)

I stuck all my stars to your wall;
they fluttered to the floor.
I remember your voice, so sure and pleading,
years ago through plastic speakers.
You sang. Green paper stars settled in my hair
like confetti. We were late.
I stepped from beneath the steady stream of longing then,
constellations of regret in my wake.

The Annunciation

He came at midday and spoke with the voice
of old lovers I would never have.

He said my name. As he turned to go
a feather grazed my cheek.
I watched the floor.

The sun crawled toward its empty bed
and as the chill of desert evening drew near
I did not move.

Gold went purple;
with the first star I was lit.
I rose to bake the next day's bread,
the scent of lilies in my hair.



Art: The Annunciation by James C. Christensen

Feast Day

Feast Day
Today, so many years ago.
I awoke in his mind. I told him,
That hill. There. I said there would be flowers
and he found piles
of Spanish roses on the snow.
I said, show the Bishop. He turned out his apron,
and the world saw what was to come.

They say now I am a symbol, no woman at all.
They say the old goddesses hide beneath my gown,
they say you can see the stars in my girdle.
They say you can see children in my eyes.
They made me a flag and I led them through blood,
and they bombed my home with flowers.

Today I am blue-green, standing on the blackest moon.
Today I smile in my sleep,
and the war goes on in the night.



"One may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe." -Carlos Fuentes

"The Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery." -Octavio Paz