December Updates

The night means dream to wake, the night means

stop. It means space heater & Jedi snuggie.

What about the end makes us enter it alone?

The night means I won’t see pawprints,

how one back leg drags snow like an exclamation

or a blessing. The night

means lavender unicorn hair trailing

wool socks as I walk. Night means grave

magic. Unable to snip those yarn tails, I offer nothing

except myself. I know my offering

is nothing new, so many use the night to hide from

sunlit hours. To bribe. With only four true emotions,

how can we burn out for the count so quickly?

The night means blinds closed tight,

lock in to let go. The night means skin scrubbed clean,

night means bug zappers & zombie blues.

The night means an unknown slouching towards us,

the night means stop. But that is a lie

that guts my lover as if a wax dissection model.

The night should mean more than partially alive,

I know, should be more than a partial savior.

So, Night, tell me how to enter you

as flame  not cinder        as more than ash & fume.

The law is the law, some might say,

a fixed constellation, & yet,

who gazes into the black-out of absolute

& what gazes back? Without witness,

is anything alive? Without witness,

is anyone to blame for rolling through

a four-way stop sign?

By which I mean, who listens

to sagebrush or asphalt, thin yellow lines

beneath our tires, tank top straps

or closed eyelashes, the lies our eyes invent

(all that long-dead light we wish on).

Tell me, my friend, when we interpret

stop as yield, who gets harmed?

Is it like calling shotgun, touching noses

in not it, whoever is first wins?

Yield as a reluctant stop

or a reluctant politeness. Is stop only

conditional if unchallenged?

What of the female body drunk

& passed out?

Do stars yield to daylight, wildflowers

to wind force? Does grass yield to our weight?

Our weight to choice?

Don’t tell me context is only an excuse. 

I won’t believe you.

Look at the birds in the sky . . .

Are you not worth much more than they are?

—Matthew 6:26

I’ve been pondering this cloth of God

lately. It seems to matter now.

The fabric dark-night blue and endless

spreads out on the sewing table,

straight pins holding paper patterns in place.

I notice its surface is smooth,

and tiny red and yellow splotches

dot the deep color

like comets and flashing asteroids.

My mother died recently.

The thin tissue paper that traced

her hospital gown is gone,

the pins taken, too.

My own dress, matronly calf-length

and loose-fitting, sags with me.

I wish the cloth were softly quilted,

lined with warm flannel,

and I could be cradled in it.

Maybe we are small planets

locked in orbit rotation.

Maybe only the animals are free, I wonder,

as a plain brown sparrow launches

from the feeder, arcs over a broken branch,

and grabs a ready updraft.

Is it wrong to want a life without pins,

a form that can fly pattern-free?

Must we be loved so very much?

            stretches/twists/breaks/snaps/curdles/

fades like a Bindi after bathing

or Mehndi after days.

How did the thread wear out, dissolve?

I am on the carousel of submission,

whiplashed from one to another, deciphering

the self from the other.

Can stitches be repaired? Like a

good wool sweater worn at the elbows

or a marriage frayed at the edges?

Ariadne’s thread rope-walking

through the Labyrinth to, and not from,

the Monster.

Ariadne is also Arachne, who devours

her mate, weaver of a web which is herself.

The foible of string unwinding,

a gift the fates have stitched and unstitched.

A single track, coiled, recoiled, on itself.

The ulnar artery connects the ring finger

to the heart.

[new stanza, “The Red Thread” by Shaheen Dil]

The Kalava ties one to another for all time—

so many reincarnations.

The crane dance performed at Delos

and Mount Fuji, intricate, deliberate.

The Kimono ceremony and Gai Halud—

lit up with red.

Who can lust after eternity when the ring

of recurrence spells a spiral,

coil shaped, infinite line,

the endless loop of a mobius strip?

What is knotted/repeats/doubles/broken/fantastical?

All tropes overlap—

the language of narration is borrowed,

stuttering and inarticulate.

The red thread leads everywhere, both

inside and out of the Labyrinth.

What is not God is imperfect.

Shall we go again?

The wind dictates a memo,

fleet and legible, brailed

on the surface of the pond,

read by lilies and water shield,

telegraphed through stem, root, mud,

into the dreams of a turtle.

The message is clear and a little forlorn—

don’t forget me, dear—I miss

the way we touched, moist and close

in summer. The pond itself is never lonely,

shows its moods skin to sky, sequined

in sunlit shadows, its depths unsecret,

transparent, receptive to a fault.

Whatever stirs the mud—turtles

reborn to spring, worms that burrow—

the pond takes note, allows, embraces,

the way the eye holds the world,

the way you might love your enemy.

The day begins gray,

no pink above the lake.

Just trees in the distance

that have begun to shed

their leaves. Your love

is tiring of you, or

are you tiring of him, or

has love itself become

a tired thing?