Notes from a seer: On seeing in wholeness, poetry and aikido

In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight. ― Ursula […]

Poem: Chicxulub

The lips pressed together, that low sound in the throat not quite a word, any word, a subtle soughing of the wind over some outcrop, a trick of geography. We laughed today and struck down the pins aiming our rocks like gods with meteors snuffing out triceratops with the spin. Maybe joy is a matter […]

Poem: I hid my anger somewhere

They mock women’s anger, box it sweetly in sugared pink. Only children know fists don’t have an assigned gender. We burnt the box of our grievances on the lawn one Christmas, they who were full of anger and me as cold as a December night. But the raven cries, “Where is your anger?” The battle-sow […]

Poem: Peredur’s prayer

O Bright Gods of my questing heart let these weary feet rest in cool water let sleep wash the sand from these keen eyes restoring their sharpness, knife to a whetstone And may this prayer suffice for all the prayers that I neglected, all the praises left unsaid, all the rituals undone let this journey […]

Poem: Fox tracks

The fox tracks threaded the brambles — I think you would have liked to see them offered commentary pertaining to dens and season, assigned motives — You were never the one looking for omens. (That was me.) I pay attention to such signs: tiny dog-like pads on the mud track. I once asked you what […]

Poem: In Brighid’s hall

So I came, unexpected, your hands curved around the cup, flowers at the well-rim — leaning back on that brown-plaid couch, the kind I haven’t seen since a girl, rough as rope against a soft hand but warm as flesh. You enjoy this new development, hope I knock more often. You offer advice, listen as […]

Poem: A note to Brighid

You’re a prankster, my love: I started this book upside-down. I always take the hardest way, although I bristle at the slide of ice, raise cat-hackles at any suddenness. Here’s what I meant to say. (I hear your laugh.) O Brighid, I am too long awake this night to watch the snow fall. (That’s what […]

Poem: Mother-Night

These long hours ink-black, the roof box collapsed no finger traces the spiral in the grave — no white monument hunches at the river bend only tissue-paper light scattering frail — They say the Mothers will carry us with backs broad as mares, cornucopias tumbling out goodness at our benighted feet but I can’t see […]

Poem: Before solstice

The ravens wrote themselves against the snow ink on white branches, night on bone. Even absence can form itself into the simulacrum of presence. The shred of sky a blue ribbon binding gray hair beyond the fingers’ touch how hands yearn to cup an elsewhere summer boughs heavy with leaves and acorns but night writes […]

Dream poem: The churches

The houses with their eyes sealed against me looped on the hills. I look for the old graves, the monuments marking who we once were, stumble on a concrete pond choked with green. The brick churches empty and closed-eye dark sanctuaries of silence with locked doors and a broad road leads out from them, open […]