Fall

Wooooooo!
drunken robins
falling leaves
the world in flight!
yellow
in an envelope of silence
in the woods
woooooooo!
like an out
breath!
or a wind ....

ready

through the lobby windows
i am surprised to see rain
and i go back upstairs to put on my boots

*

it's quite cold today
this early thanksgiving
and i feel ungrateful

i meditated on irritation
while the teacher talked of gratitude
i meditated on disatisfaction
while the teacher spoke of abundance

and i swore repeatedly in the shower
while crying
and feeling sorry for myself

afterwards
i didn't have the feeling of dryness
and tiredness
you get after crying
i felt fine
i put on my nice clothes
i walked down the road
i ironed tableclothes and folded napkins and set the table
with lovely china
and enjoyed a lively thanksgiving meal
with twelve people and two dogs and a guinea pig

afterwards
when i came out into early evening
it wasn't raining anymore
but it was still cold

i am ready for winter

self-conscious

to speak
and risk what happens
to us all

or
to be silent
and dream-believe
i am not-arising?

to speak
risk it all
and then to be silent
and know it

quivering

the deer and the plane

riding my bicyle in the fields
i see a white patch in the distance
among the yellows and purples and greens
i look closer
it is a deer
watching me from across a
stream, so still
then, suddenly, bounding away, higher than
the goldenrod

coming down the path at the university
i hear a sudden noise
look up, and see a fighter plane,
flying so low, i've never see one so low,
taking up the sky
black mass against the blue sky
propellers spinning
i am struck, immobile, terrified
awed

the first thing you think
as you freeze and stare is
will you crash into me?
myself this small thing in the fields
watching, amazed
and then it passes
and you bound away into the fields
marvelling at the strangeness

Birth and travel

I dreamed this morning

Of a long road to water
Bravely trusting in the need of a friend to find it
Bravely travelling
Of the unexpectedly short road back
The long road there, part of the need

Of a house by a flowing stream
snow covered, made of branches and trunks
With wide doors

Of laying my body down next to hers
during the pains and heat of coming childbirth

The centre of necessity
The road there and back
Always waking before the final return

american sign language

signing under the moon and
red yellow green leaves
dusk in the park

signing on the line between
shorn soy fields and the hedgerow
at bright noon

signing in the kitchen
under quiet yellow light
the smell of cooking and night air

sunday night, i write while she sleeps

light remains at the bottom of the sky
deepening to dark blue towards the dome
that holds us all, this autumn night

soon constellations will appear
myself, at another time, in a wide cold field
becoming acquainted with the darkness

tonight, in blankets
my mind tastes applesauce and cinnamon
i wait for her to wake
while i delight in the quiet of her sleep
the gentleness of her body in the dark
as i imagine it in my mind