​It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid
of books, getting ready to retire,
to move some place smaller, more
manageable. We’re living in reverse,
age-proofing the new house, nothing
on the floors to trip over, no hindrances
to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,
a small table for two. Our world is
shrinking, our closets mostly empty,
gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,
the bells and whistles. Now, when
someone comes to visit and admires
our complete works of Shakespeare,
the hawk feather in the open dictionary,
the iron angel on a shelf, we say
take them. This is the most important
time of all, the age of divestment,
knowing what we leave behind is
like the fragrance of blossoming trees
that grows stronger after
you’ve passed them, breathing
them in for a moment before
breathing them out. An ordinary
Tuesday when one of you says
I dare you, and the other one
just laughs.

​    - by Dorianne Laux

​Dear Human:
You've got it all wrong.

You didn't come here to master unconditional love. This is where you came from and where you'll return.

You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty Love.
Crazy love.
Broken love.
Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of...messing up.
Often.

You didn't come here to be perfect, you already are.

You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.

And then to rise again into remembering.

But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.

Love in truth doesn't need any adjectives.
It doesn't require modifiers.
It doesn't require the condition of perfection.

It only asks you to show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.

It's enough.

It's plenty.

    - Courtney A. Walsh

Come,
sit a while
in the seat by the window--
near the birds, who have shaken off
their dreams and opened themselves
to this never-to-be-again day.

​Today we won’t be asked
to bumble along the beaten byways.
For Uncertainty has come;
she is our unexpected houseguest.
Put on the water, set out the homemade jam.

Uncertainty will listen with us
as our bagels pop
from the toaster’s dark mouth.
As the teakettle wobbles
on her deep blue flame
and the coffee grounds weep
their pungent bittersweet sobs. 

The truth, of course, is
that although she’s Mystery’s Child
with no history and no proper name--
she has always been with us.

If you wake in the night,
you can hear her hum as she busily
prepares our day. She is the one
who wakes us each morning,
to drizzle new questions
into our imagination, new stories,
new colors and light.

The wind is her breath.
Her body is the water
we bathe in and drink.

Uncertainty, with the soul of a gypsy,
knows the unpaved roads
to gratitude by heart.
She is our barefoot dancer
come to show us a multitude
of ways to bless the ground.

But of certain things--
like tomorrow--
she knows nothing,
and because of this,
her love knows no bounds. 

Come close now…
she waits, like she always has,
to give all she has--
a love for each of us,
as silver as tomorrow.

​    - Prartho Sereno

Time to be the fine line of light

between the blind and the sill, nothing
really.  There are so many things

that destroy.  To think solely of them
is as foolish and expedient as not

thinking of them at all.  All I want
is to be the river though I return

again and again to the clouds.
All I want is to stop beginning sentences

with All I want.  No--no really all 
I want is this morning: my daughter

and my son saying "Da!" back and forth
over breakfast, cracking each other up

while eating peanut butter toast
and raspberries, making a place for

the two of them I will, eventually,
no longer be allowed to enter.  Time to be

the fine line.  Time to practice being
the fine line.  And then maybe the darkness.

​    - Carrie Fountain

​Assume it’s in the kitchen,
under the couch, high
in the pine tree out back,
behind the paint cans
in the garage. Don’t try
proving your love
is bigger than the Grand
Canyon, the Milky Way,
the urban sprawl of L.A.
Take it for granted. Take it
out with the garbage. Bring
it in with the takeout. Take
it for a walk with the dog.
Wake it every day, say,
“Good morning.” Then
make the coffee. Warm
the cups. Don’t expect much
of the day. Be glad when
you make it back to bed.
Be glad he threw out that
box of old hats. Be glad
she leaves her shoes
in the hall. Snow will
come. Spring will show up.
Summer will be humid.
The leaves will fall
in the fall. That’s more
than you need. We can
love anybody, even
everybody. But you
can love the silence,
sighing and saying to
yourself, “That’s her.”
“That’s him.” Then to
each other, “I know!
Let’s go out for breakfast!”

​    - Jack Ridl

​The Calling

In third grade I kept raising my hand
desperate to be called on
even though I had no idea what

the answer to the question was.
I only knew that to be called on
was the best thing. And isn't that still

the best thing--to be called on?
And all the days of uncertainty
and the lonely nights, the ends

of all the ropes, the whole house
of cards collapsed, now become
an answer to any question

that life conceives--like how the purpling
of dusk lingers between branches
after the sun sets, or whether it's better

to sit on the soil or eat warm, crusted
bread. How lucky to be chosen to answer
for the chickadees who stay all winter,

the daffodils that bloom too early, or a gull
tattered on the shore, wings half-buried in sand
each of us a grain, hands held high,

called on to notice it all, and answer.


Speaking in Tongues

It's funny what you don't have
to worry about--last night, after
a few warm Spring weeks,
the mercury fell to the 40s,
but today the corn shoots
poked their rolled green tongues
out of the garden soil. And while
the dryer we bought was a lemon
and in principle a ripoff, it still
works well enough. Which is
to say that, while my small
reactive and conditioned self is still,
more often than not, in the way,
the love that is living me and you
and the corn and the dryer--
the whole mercurial mystery
of it all--is already there, just
waiting to poke through the cold,
the unjust, the broken-down
garden soil of us with its playful,
green, giving and forgiving tongue.


Sky Writing

The wind dictates a memo,
fleet and legible, brailled
on the surface of the pond,
read by lilies and water shield,
telegraphed through stem, root, mud,
into the dreams of a turtle.

The message is clear and a little forlorn--
don't forget me, dear--I miss
the way we touched, moist and close
in summer. The pond itself is never lonely,
shows its moods skin to sky, sequined
in sunlit shadows, its depths unsecret,

transparent, receptive to a fault.
Whatever stirs the mud--turtles
reborn to spring, worms that burrow--
the pond takes note, allows, embraces,
the way the eye holds the world,
the way you might love your enemy.


Death Was Gentle

I asked Death to be gentle and she was,
knowing how terrified I'd been of her.
She took me to the soil, the bright womb where
all life is born from dun decay and rust.

And then I knew the one I'd feared was Earth,
whose every fold and wrinkle I adored.,
whose creatures were all siblings of my birth
whose beauty fed me still as through a birth-cord.

And so, to have been made of Death herself,
to sojourn on my mother, as matter--
nature, with no need to be another--
rock returned to beautiful rock in death,

from one whose terror told him not to be,
now I'm at home in life, myself, and free.

​    - Chuck Madansky

​I grew up in a family that did not tell
the story. I am listening to it now:

Even the morning you see a robin
flattened on the street, you hear

another in a tree, the notes
they’ve taught each other, bird

before bird before we were born.
And elsewhere, the rusty bicycle

carries the doctor all the way
across an island. He arrives in time.

Somewhere his sister adds water
to the soup until payday. And

over the final hill in a Southwestern
desert, a gas station appears. No,

the grief has not forgotten my name,
but this morning I tied

my shoelaces. Outside I can force
a wave at every face who might

need it. We might
spin till we collapse, but we still

have a hub: Even at dusk,
the sun isn’t going anywhere.

We have lamps. The story insists
it just looks like there’s only

enough oil to last one night.

    - by Brad Aaron Modlin

​That sprinkler is at it again,
hissing and spitting its arc
of silver, and the parched
lawn is tickled green. The air
hums with the busy traffic
of butterflies and bees,
who navigate without lane
markers, stop signs, directional
signals. One of my friends
says we're now in the shady
side of the garden, having moved
past pollination, fruition,
and all that bee-buzzed jazz,
into our autumn days. But I say wait.
It's still summer, and the breeze is full
of sweetness spilled from a million petals;
it wraps around your arms, lifts the hair
from the back of your neck.  
The salvia, coreopsis, roses
have set the borders on fire,
and the peaches waiting to be picked
are heavy with juice. We are still ripening
into our bodies, still in the act of becoming.
Rejoice in the day's long sugar.
Praise that big fat tomato of a sun.
​
    - Barbara Crooker