Spine 1 & 2- Lest we forget how fragile we are

Recently, my life partner was thrown from a horse she was working with. She broke her back- I found her in the pasture, crumpled, face down and not moving. She has struggled back from that lowest point miraculously and will walk again, will do all again.

My thoughts have been infiltrated with the weeks of Doctor chatter about spinal injury, paralysis, trauma, and titanium. The imagery below is a manifestation of this infiltration. The blue vertebrae is "L1'- the one that was shattered. Titanium rods were installed with screws in T12 and T11 as well as L2 and L3.
























As I thought about this piece (watercolor and ink) I remembered that a spine-like image had appeared in my mind's eye once before, long ago. I dug out that drawing, created in 1994. I caught my breath upon closer inspection... the metal plate in the drawing was at L1.
























Whether an early premonition or an eerie coincidence, the imagery has become deeply significant, as have recent events and the miracles that have steadily followed them.

Agate Hunting

solo beach-combing
our loves spread out before us
agate hunting

diminished by waves
precious gems ground down, down, down
rock, stone, to pebble

Night Tiger Redux

Night Tiger

seeing

I see that the soil is compacted
while barn swallows
tailing the bush hog
exploit my labor for lunch.

I see that the seed won’t take
that the pressing
pressing
pressing
has turned my field to stone.

I see that the steed won’t stand-
green broke, needing a bit.
Eating my hay,
in an ungrateful way
resisting
resisting
a role.

The old floors they creak and groan
harmonizing with bull frogs and fox.
The dew, she’s falling.
Our carriage, stalling,
in the cave of a hot summer night.

The screen door slams with a bang
and a poem floats with the moths.
What’s forgotten can be found,
what's broken can be bound,
but not without light
on the break.

late June fireflies
many a fox is hunting
midnight shrieks and moans

Sherpa

Your totem
your talisman.
Around your neck a pendant
an assistant
to your ascent.
I felt your chest heave
your breath come short
your heart race
your mouth go dry
as you summited
as you reached the rarefied air
of your accomplishment
your stimulus
your actualization image
your climax
your Sherpa
left now
on the ledge.

This "stop you in your tracks" quote was nested in a comment on the Old Mossy Moon blog, written by a fellow Detroiter.

"There has to be someone left to reflect that childhood is still owed dreams born on the breath of angels."

From The Walking Man

As the dust is dampened
captured by the dew.
As the birch and sweet grass burns
along with you-
I will spit into the flame.
I'll never be the same.
And I will not leave the fire
until its through.



"With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."
George Eliot
Middlemarch

stump smoldering still
long after the forest fire
anniversary

it is only our vanity bleeding

"Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again--this is the brave and happy life."

~ J. E. Buckrose [Annie Edith Jameson] (1868-1931),writer

Manse

Born in a house of glass
I.C.U. for an entire childhood
as ushers and vestrymen
monitored
the babies.

Cool walls, first props for first steps
smudged with the grease of growth-
later, tapped upon curiously
then pounded upon furiously
as adolescence settled in.
Looking out.
Seeing in.

They would not be satisfied.
The monitors.
We would not be Gods
or God’s children
or even angels.
But neither would we hang
from someone else's cross
for someone else’s guilt.

And we left the glass manse
by the back door.
Escapees.
Defectors.
Exiles.
Refugees.
But I still have the key
to remind me
of failing to be
PK
or PC.

what might have been lost
oh, that which is lost
what it all might have cost
what it's already cost
is nothing
was nothing
is every thing
every
no
thing.

She-pirates?

I was amused to see these and many other paintings of she-pirates on display at Surrey's in New Orleans, on Magazine St.

Fly High Jolly Roger!

Voyageur

To set forth in the mist
on glass reflections
of a world that never was
shimmering, beckoning
a siren call.

To paddle out further
then the old man says is safe
and tempt her
Gitchee Gumee
with the bait of another wraith.

A daredevil, red and white
a treble hook in the depths
wedged into igneous
a rusted reminder
of trolling with impunity.

My paddle dipping deeper
in starlit Superior
j-stroke swirling eddy
truth and truest north
the last voyageur.

Jolly Roger

Ride
high
Jolly Roger.
Let us fly to the ends once again.
Our parchment was forged-
let us loosen the scourge
and hurl the full force of our men.

Fly
fly
Jolly Roger.
The treasure is lost in the deep.
With swords, a rout-
we’ll hang, no doubt
with none but our whores to weep.

Fie
fie
Jolly Roger!
Why smile in the face of death?
We chose this road
put our marks on the code
to make mayhem until our last breath.


This
is goodbye
Jolly Roger.
A time we all knew would come.
Our powder is wet.
They’re flying fleurettes.
Outnumbered outlaws, outgunned.

Die
die
Jolly Roger
We’ll see you in depths of glory.
No yield or surrender
this fight they’ll remember
and this fire is all that is holy.

Did you love me?
Do you love me?
Will you love me?
The questions of the ever-child.

Did you want me?
Do you want me?
Will you want me?
Eros, in retort, reconciled.

If you could-
If there was no should-
Does that mean you would?
…To be existentially beguiled.

A masquerade
Scheherazade
willingly flayed
standing mute at this our trial.

Oxbow

An absence of temperate
seasonality
back and forth between guilt
and liberty
want and should
gin and tonic
in monsoon country.

The river ran red
brown
full
fast
furious
and we didn’t want it…

Now it is dry
mud caked and cracked
stagnant in emptiness
and depletion
and the children stand
with their toes in the mud
in the middle of a channel-
an oxbow stranded
by dwindling currents
holding only fevers.