Crossing the Divide
 
 She walks, as if from a dream, into your life,
 ribboned hair unraveling, brown eyes
 like cups of tea, come to whisper
 a secret into your trembling ear.
 
 You try hard not to listen, clinging
 to your calendar, your achievements, 
 your loneliness, until the silver ache 
 of it all spreads through your limbs
 
 and she holds out her hand across
 the ravine, and you see how the chasm
 is not empty, but filled with a rushing
 river, and you can swim until
 
 you become fish and flow, until
 you are the ancient stream 
 emerging from stone, 
 until her face becomes yours. 

 
 
 
 “Peace Comes from Dropping Slow” 
 (after WB Yeats)
  
 Do you count your heartbeats
 hoping for a million more?
 Or number your breaths, sharp and quick?
 Or the steps you take across
 this glorious earth?
  
 Until one morning you see how time
 is fleeting but also impossibly slow?
 That time is best counted in moments:
 sips of wine spreading gladness
 through your limbs, blush
 of breathless conversation
 while embers glow, waiting
 to be stoked and set aflame.
   

  “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved” 
 (after Nazim Hikmet)
  
 I never knew how much I loved
 heavy rain on a Sunday morning
 curled in bed with coffee
 a Morse code tapping the windows
 telling me I have no reason to leave.
  
 I didn’t realize how much I adored
 peonies until one May afternoon
 I spent four hours photographing
 the bouquet you brought me
 for no reason on our dining table.
  
 I never knew how much I cherished
 the alchemy taking place in kitchens
 until I mixed wheat and yeast together,
 felt it sticky in my hands,
 and from the oven emerged bread.
  
 I didn’t know how much I loved
 this sagging body of mine,
 until one day the mirror showed
 me not scars and marks, but a story
 of what it means to endure.
  
 I never knew how much I loved
 the forest until I walked so far
 and so long my arms were coated
 with moss and my life became
 a fairy tale written in the snow.
   

  Handless Maiden
  
  The world conspires to sever our hands
 a hundred different ways, leave us
 unable to embrace, to reach,
 to tell us at least it wasn’t your head,
 be grateful for that.
 
 You’re still alive and allowed roam free,
 and instead of staying to live an artificial life
 fed from false riches, you choose 
 to go into the forest,
 her long branches all around you
 the scent of damp earth fills your nostrils.
 
 You somehow know once you’ve lost the path
 you’ve found your way into the dark pulsing
 heart of life, to the place that does not sever
 but offers healing as freely as a rushing spring,
 cold and brisk on a hot summer day,
 and you try to drink it all but realize
 there will always be more water
 than you can take in. 

 The overflow is the point,
 and you kneel down in front of it,
 in your deepest bow, head tilted to earth,
 hands re-grown and submerged in the icy rush;
 and you remember this is what it is to be loved,
 to drink from love, to swim in love
 like the sea that suspends you,
 to breathe it in like summer’s first lilac
 carried on the breeze.
 

 “Where Are You From?”
  
 I stumble over this pleasantry each time,
 born in Manhattan, raised among
 steel spires and yellow cabs, parents
 long dead, no siblings either,
 west coast dweller for twenty-one years,
 first in San Francisco, foggy summers 
 and bridges in every direction,
 Seattle beckoned with forests 
 and sea, I learned to love the rain,
 until Europe called, Vienna
 where my father’s ashes are buried,
 red streetcars, imperial presence,
 finally to Galway, Ireland, 
 on the edge of the Atlantic, fierce winds
 each winter and rain that buckets 
 and lashes, stories by the fire,
 stones that hold prayers and sing,
 far from American shores, 
 the Otherworld so close.
  
 

  Every Day Has Its Dog
  
 Dog of Monday
 rolls in grass, legs flail like salmon in a cage
 Dog of Tuesday 
 bows deep before me, calls for frolic 
 Dog of Wednesday 
 wet nose directs my hand to fur, chin, ears, belly
 Dog of Thursday
 curls nose to toe, black crescent on blue blanket
 Dog of Friday
 dreams of the chase, taste of feathers on sleeping tongue
 Dog of Saturday 
             tail wags at homecoming, a tiny flag in heavy wind 
 Dog of Sunday
             leans against me, sighs, eyes large and brown.