Purple Cashmere

Seven Minutes:

My present today is a nubby purple cashmere sweater that has been regulated to pajama wear.  Blazing hot sun disappeared and it’s cool again.  I would love to live where the weather never saw ninety degrees, much less 110.  Give me fog and wool sweaters, a knit cap, drizzle.  The type of weather where a hot bath is appreciated.  The long cloudless summer is approaching.  Sometimes cumulus clouds appear on the far mountains on the other side of the lake. But here, it is endless blue skies from June to October as a rule.  Monotony.  The rattlesnakes are coming out as they do each year at this time.  It’s common for one or two to be seen at my school.  Friends are reporting their presence at their homes.  If you walk at Anderson Marsh, you can hear them in the rocks in the early mornings.  They could be the rhythm section for a mariachi band.  Trato de apprender castellano en mi coche en la manana cuando manejo a trabajo.  The nice lady and man with the beautiful Spanish diction never get frustrated with me.  I feel my head is very small.  My brain is at least.  But I need big hats.  So I’m back on that drizzle day in my large comfy cap walking along the beach with my hands in my pocket and breathing.  I can wear my ratty purple sweater.  No one will care.

My Heart is at the Window

 My heart is at the window.

I lean with longing on the sill.

I am at the edge of expectation,

Waiting, waiting

to see the future form, the grace

I have wished for, the humble steps

of hope, the whirlwind ready to kiss my cheek.

My heart is at the window,

I have been here so long,

the horizon has been hidden by the leaves’ ornamentation, by pages of years, by my too small courage.

My heart is at the window.

I pray that love sweeps down the lonely road

and breaks open my heart, so sadly patient,

into the seizures of a streaming sun,

shattering me into the light that taunts my vista.

Galaxy Girl

There is a question next to her,

a small dog’s face,

loyalty to what she carries,

a cluster in the sky.

She is a new constellation,

lead by nebula light

and a galaxy brain.  ‘

Shy girl hiding her face beneath stars, exposed with her large naval,

all the dark matter of her belly, the crook of her arm, womanly hips.

I am in love.  I believe she would carry me to the dimensions of dreams,

through the night as minutes pass.  Call her Midnight and be done.

A Poem for My Sister

My sister Gwyn has been gone almost 8 years now.  She’s been on my mind a lot lately.  Though Celeste, in Heron’s Path, is not a bit like her, Gwyn did inspire her, the relationship between sisters.  She was the bright one, I was the dark.   She’s not in the collage, but I made it while she was dying.  The little boy is my dad, Leslie Eason, picture taken around 1909 or so.

For Gwyn

Madonna is all dolled up. Her glittery eyes look down at the baby

resting in her henna hands. The Queen of Heaven’s ready

for Mardi Gras. Instead, the graveyard stones slant below

her sparkling gaze, too quiet for a party, too white, too gray.

In the other picture, four dancing-girls do what they can

to divert  barbarian hoards on horseback, spears full tilt

as they rush in for attack. The girls dream of feet free

on desert sand, far from the soft red carpet of the harem’s floor,

far from the bad manners of these sweaty men.

In the morning, I look through my scratched lens

and sit with Andrew as he drinks chocolate milk.

Must I meditate on death with this child at my desk?

On the decal of the shuffle skeleton on the car we passed?

The white rose so quietly growing on the vine?

My sister drowns in a hospital room. In her morphine dreams,

divas dance on the walls.  From chairs by her bed, little black boys

speak to her of heaven.  I pray her rose unfurling.  Her petals.

Her wings ribbed with glittery adornments.

I think of deserts carpeted with red flowers, the mosaic spots

on butterflies, girls with bare feet spinning, All things transforming

and unfolding. I write HEAVEN in my book and underline it twice.

The Moon Man Falls from the Sky

The stars pinched

as I tumbled down,

Their sharp little edges

cut me from heaven.

My sad eyes blossom

under my mask,

seeing how far I’ve fallen.

My heart blooms hard.

I’m no longer in your sky.

My round dreams once raised the tides.

My body is awkward at rest.

Mother Eve and the Garden in My Body, Part 2

I was with a friend a couple of hours ago sitting on a dock stretching into Boggs Marsh.  We were in a garden of tules with redwing blackbirds, ducks, a goose, and frogs disquieted by our voices.  Muck of the marsh below.  The remnants of yesterday’s storm floated above our heads, blocking the sun, and a wind chilled us until we sat on the boards that soaked up the sunlight slipping through the clouds.

She said, “You were eating your maleness yesterday.”  I laughed because I didn’t know she had read my last entry, but also it hadn’t occurred to interpret my dream that way. 

We both admitted we have never felt feminine, that a sense of beauty, physical or spiritual, was somehow not embodied in us.  Not that I’ve felt  . . .  I’m giggling as I write this . . . manly.  Just to celebrate womb and breasts, natural grace, the clay that has made me, doesn’t come naturally.

I’ve always trusted my head more than my heart, sometimes with drastic consequences. But the head has felt safer, in general.  Perhaps movement brings emotion and so often with them chaos, the tension I wrote of yesterday.  That wonderful freedom I woke with, the woman who lives deep in my gut, the grace of simply being, is gone today. 

But the gift of the dream, experiencing the lifting of anxiety, of the silencing of the small voice of dread that has been my companion all of my life, has helped to reinforce what I know on the surface of my consciousness, on the surface of my skin, but don’t in the depth of  my body’s knowledge.  This shell that surrounding me is not my true self.  That spirit of yesterday morning, open and strong, really resides inside of me. 

 Eve, blamed for so much, lived in a garden.  And then she was banished, and the shell descended.  I would love to believe that the garden is beginning to grow again and that she’ll return home.

Mother Eve and The Garden in My Body

This morning I dreamed that I was pushing away an unwanted sexual force, a rape, and I had strength to do it.  To my surprise, I looked down and found I had male parts, but just as suddenly I started to shed my skin.  I ate it,  feeling it nurture me, until I had what I needed inside.  My skin kept peeling. The more I pulled, the more whole I felt.  I  transformed again into a woman.  I felt a sensuality to the core, my heart opening as though a Georgia O’Keeffe flower blossomed with lily folds and pure white desert light.

I often wake with anxiety.  This morning, there was a deeper peace, a peace within my body.

Mother Eve whispered her garden wisdom.