In Verses & Song

  Claude Monet (1840–1926), Spring, 1886, oil on canvas, 64.8 x 80.6 cm, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.  Public domain image. I turn the pages sideways write across across rather than down — a horizon of light rather than rush of rainfall. Listen to the melody of strings sliding through air, a shifting in my soul with the rising of a cello. Its solo, melancholic and strong an ascending scale climbing rungs of branches to light. A soft break-through a quiet opening of clouds to the music of hopefulness, of humanity’s heart — our hearts born of nature’s breath. The breath that holds in it wings and bones and histories of time: the knowledge of all life, all creatures. The breath that wraps us in warmth, covers us in cold. It is silent, then whispers, then sings the song of a nightingale. Soft and dark, rising into fluttering wind lifting before the dawn. What is this music within us since birth the music that rises with the sun the call of a lark echoing across blue feathered skies?

Wake to your voice saying “Mama, Mama”, to your slender arm  reaching inside the blankets, body shivering in cold gray light.  Wake to you slipping in beside me, telling me your head aches  that the dizziness has returned.  Wake to your touch curling against me, to the soft, dark fuzz  atop your head, to you folding beneath my arms.  Feel the pulse of your heartbeat in mine, our breath rising and falling,  my cheek resting against the nape of your neck.  Feel the flutter of your body against the cold, our bones shivering  into the warmth of each other like caterpillars wrapping themselves into cocoons.  Feel the warmth of time unspooling itself around us, our skin  spinning slower, wider, deeper until the whirl is quieted.  Listen to the shush of breeze outside, to the way light  plays on the windows, stretching to meet our fingers.  Listen to the rustle of the blankets, to the movement  of your long limbs stretching out beyond mine.  Listen to your voice assuring me “I’m alright now,

In the living room, letters spell LOVE   in bright cherry red, the color of lipstick mothers wore in the eighties  of dragon’s blood snowballs  of a shade we once favored when dressing  to go out and dance.  But the color in this space  feels more like  blue-gray, like the spray  of ocean salt, like the touch of rainfall, like something  not as tidy, not as shiny. What does the world know  of these letters of this room  this family, this moment  of this  our hearts —- Let's paint it in lush purples deep greens and wavy blues  fill it with ripples zigzags, silly stripes, funky dots  break apart its letters build them anew.  Pull it wide open, create a nest  of its fragments — then maybe that  thing with wings   will fly in perch upon this new  love/LOVE/LoVe/lOvE/LOve/loVE in all its messy, magnificent  multi splendored glory. Perhaps then this room will feel  like a place we know  a place where  love looks back at us, winking  because love  knows us because love  loves us because l

                                      Foggy Winter Morning, Photography by Dorinda Grever, fineartamerica.co m Brokenness beating through me   settling like rain into ditches   the pieces of me scattered lost within gray fog.   I drove into it this morning, into an unknown  that no longer frightened me  fat droplets of rain, a deluge blinding me as I drove on.   I wanted to stop, for something  to transform this now to then  this after to before, this life  to some other life that was or could be.   How long will this rain, this cold gray fog this winter of my heart last?    When will the sunlight, the green and gold  and pink press through again?    The tree branches stand bare wind like ice against my cheek sky pressing sorrow  into cold, damp earth.   I bend and touch  the wet ground, sink to my knees let my jeans soak in the mud as rain flows around me.   A river of so much life at my fingertips, the croaking of frogs and songs of cicadas colliding an endless cacophony on repeat, r