Crush

Crush. What is a crush? We throw around these words so haphazardly. And yet I feel the truth of it. Dragonflies dance, landing effortlessly in the palm of my hand. My instinct is to close the hand, grasp, much like a two-year-old when you try to take away a toy. But this instinct will crush the delicate beloved thing. Instead I bless it, and let it fly away. And in its absence the air around me shimmers with sharp and sparkling grace. Grace with the shadow of terror in it, like stepping down into the green glow of sunlight through the woods. You never know what is down the path. Our ancestors believed there was a realm of Fae we could pass through unawares. The universe was riddled with sinkholes outside reality. Or perhaps we are now just too sheltered and limited by what we call reality. A crush is where desire and fantasy dance on the wing. Where discovery and fear hold hands and venture into the wilderness. So often I have felt lead butterflies in the gut. So often I have been cut by the sharp wings that fly around me, shattered dream-glass in the whirlwind. I made a choice to play first and not pay first. It is not a choice of selfishness but self-direction. Love when it comes for me often comes with a terrible price. I love and I love and I leave myself behind, beached on the shore while my emotions sweep me off to sea. I sense in this stranger another ocean to open and meet mine. In what bed of vastness can two oceans meet, one filled with sand and moonlight and the lonely song of the coyote the other with cold and bracken and passion and inevitability? I want to dance myself raw in the Sufi spin of transcendental longing. I want to know what the poets know. I want to feel what holds up the world and keeps it spinning in space. And I want to whirl with it. But this dervish dancer threw out her back. Just moving is awkward, especially shifting from sitting to standing to lying down. This gross physical reminder of the limits of my body brings my egret-spirit back down to the ground. I know when I have been dancing too fast and too hard. I know when I drop like a top after gravity has had its way. And this is the time when knives slip in the hand, when blood shocks us out of the dream world of summer drops us back into our limited bodies says remember winter remember age remember your fears are there waiting for you like abandoned clothing after your swim. Stretch, says the older-wisdom. Breathe, be still, you are not on fire, not dying, even though the summer is growing long in the tooth. You will not blow away with the first wind of autumn. And I know my crush will not crush me. I speak the truth that is my fancy. A stranger's voice in the dark speaking to me with familiar words. As if we have been students in the same graduating class, sitting in the same room listening to the same lecture just never having the opportunity of meeting. Every lover, says the Buddha, and every enemy is yourself. Thank you goddess for this bright shard of the mosaic of beauty. I will not be crushed by the force of the ocean. I will not destroy this delicate serendipity that has entrusted itself to me. More later, Blessed be

Poem: Celtic Reconstruction

Since I saw your eyes again I've been living in the woods Even at the edge of the ocean I've been staring at the river in melancholy serenity with the sun on my shoulders and Sandy Denny songs in my head An Arthurian tragedy you and me and she on that rock by the quarry with music and sunlight with the strangers crying for song Since I saw your little girl and she held your hand and she reached for mine and we were three again--linked through time charmed by wild innocence I offered her my wings of glitter and chicken wire but she said no and floated away with my soul under her delicate feet And I am still floating 500 miles and nigh one whole moon away from that moment when I saw your eyes again when my heart cracked open when the world was not the same Sitting by a river at my lunch break with reflections of factories in the lazy green water in the blast zone between past and future Writing you something I cannot call a love letter Still there is passion in my pen Still you have made me a poet again Called me from exile in my crystal caves Set fire under the cauldron of soul stirred it to roil and roll with vision And I hear your music in the wind whipping the flags to frenzy And I am swallowed by a wave without sense or momentum And once these elements fueled a great industry rivers powered mills and love milled poetry from incandescent longing And I wait for the day when I will see you again sit at your table share bread and brew and salt with your wife and daughter Remember our innocence its shimmer of sunlight and pain on rocks and water my throat swelling open with the words to a forgotten song