So many

Thoughts, feelings, actions, messages, desires, triumphs, defeats, attempts, champions, wins, moods, niggles, memories, friends, peoples, contraditions, persons, voices,

So many voices.
I must hand them the speaking stone.
I must hear each voice and think on each voice
and respond thoughtfully to each voice
and when they come so thick and fast

I lose my footing.

Right now

Oak carries his brother from the darkness
awkwardly through the gap
then adjusting

Finds him a quiet spot with a gentle one
to tend and wait
while Oak himself must share his strength with many

But ever, the king leans,
so slightly,
perhaps just one iota of attention,
toward the quiet place of Holly.

In this way are the People held,
by twin kings who—in this story at least—
save one another.

Now and then a day of silence

Without voices, snores, music, shows, papers shuffling, laundry washing
And the precious hours of quiet seep into my heart
To renew old paths by walking down them again.

Not even the literal sound: right now no one else is stirring, snoring, sighing in their sleep.
Yet I feel their presence—their wonderful, warm, love presence—and I designate a thread of attention poised to follow their moments, their movements, their meaning.

But when the house is just for me
—and the dogs—
I can attend to other things, inner and outer and defying that binary.

They’re home now, sleeping, which is best;
and I will savor the next day of silence when it comes.

Oh, May,

I’m after needing you to stay
and not pull back into cold rains.

I’m after needing warm and green and grow
and an invitation to dig my toes into the grass every time I look out the window.

And I look out the window often.
I’m holding on very tightly to it all.

I need you, May, to help my fingers open.
Then we’ll see about my heart.

Rising, waning crescent

She’s white and quiet this morning,
a glance through branches of bare trees
simply a neighbor in the forest, gathering her night herbs and nodding to me as our paths cross and our days begin.

Another woman sits up quietly,
pulls her cloak about her and rises.
“I have the watch,” she says, and listens while her brother makes his ablutions.

That will be this morning’s story.