Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
​ when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

​ - Tony Hoagland

​If I began the story in the middle
you might be able to smell the nixtamal, the earthy lime
of corn masa, and the tortillas rising on the comal, warm
hands flipping them into being. You might be able to feel
the spot where my long golden ribbon pierces the crust
of the Earth, thrust down through oceans and tectonic plates
even before they were dreamed into existence, looped
and woven into the shape that holds it all into place. You might hear
the rushing of feathers slicing air as thousands of angels fall
through the gap in space that birthed it all into view, each one
bringing a thread to the weaving of life, the matrix of this new world.
You might smell the smoke of the tlecuil, the oven in which life
is cooked into living, matter kneaded into feeling, formed
and pressed with fingers, breathed upon, gazed upon, made
to be something new, something transformed
from nothing to this. And here we live now, in the whole
of creation, remembering, forgetting,
and remembering again, nestling into the weft
of the fibers, yearning to be touched
by her hands again.

​ - Emily Grieves

​With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

​ - T.S. Eliot, from the Four Quartets

​It's not about becoming a slithering "Goddess" wearing feathers in your hair... 

Its not about the "power" of how enchanting you can seem 

When you swirl those hips and hypnotize the wild eyes of oh so many men...

You must shed those pretty layers

Peel off the skin of your appearance

Unravel your addiction to performance 

Drop beneath the surface 

Feel the ripple of that current that lives underneath

In the Deep...

You see...

There is a Supple Secret in the Serpent of your Spine. 

A Liberation Revealed

A key inside a hidden lock 

Nestled in the space between your Vertebrae

Sssssssssssssssss

Yes. 

Do you know the Truth that was whispered into Eve's ear? 

The one that turned Heaven and Earth inside out? 

Sssssssssssssssssss

This is not about the glamour of your performance
Or... 
The indulgence of a pleasure that is sticky sweet like candy

You have known Drunkenness 

But have you ever been Awake inside the nectar? 

Sober and Lucid in the Fullness of Love? 

It's in the cracks in between. 

Known only through language of circle and spiral.

Unlocked with the key of that twisting bending S.

Yes. 

Infinity lives here. 

Inside the tiniest drop of subtlety. 

Known through the technology 

Embedded in your spine.

No, not Ma Kundalini.

This is even before that.

Older than ancient.

The Holy Grail. 

The chalice of Fulfillment. 

The apple of crazy wisdom. 

You contain the portal. 

You hold the key. 

Vastness. 

Power. 

Liquid Everlasting Love. 

Heaven on Earth is Here. 

The Serpent knew. 

She knows. 

But it isn't what you think.

Of course, it never is.....

The truth has been buried in the Deep Underground

The Resurrection begins now. 

In the secret garden 

Hidden in your Spine

     ~ Maya Luna 

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money -

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.  Remember?

There was no   Nature.  No
them.  No tests

to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don't speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up    to what we were
- when we were ocean    and before that

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all  -  nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one.  No was
No verb    no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is  is  is  is  is

All    everything    home

     - Marie Howe