that's mrs. mediocrity to you

Blooming is a matter of survival. You have to do it, no matter what. It doesn’t have to be big or bold or pretty or showy, it just has to be done.

Even if you’ve been trampled or blown over, even if you’re lying in the mud, even if you’re dying of thirst, even if no one will see.

You don’t do it for the sun or the praise or the perfume.

You don’t do it for the sky or the attention.

You don’t do it for the hummingbird.

You do it for the release.

Open.

Even when it hurts.

Let the world wrestle you to the ground.

Stand up and offer the beauty of resistance.

Find the light seeping in through all the cracks.

Silence is not the same as consent or cowardice or indifference. Silence is a sign of strength. Silence means you are listening.

Breathe in. Grow again, taller. Find a way. Take the path you need, or the one you can find. Keep going. Blooming is a matter of survival.

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The crows and I have tea every morning, rain or shine, smile or sadness, awake or still mired in dreams. I am drawn to the world outside my tiny window, a world of birds painted bright on a backdrop of trees. The shape-shift of shadows as we pass through the seasons offers up a daily dose of impermanent art in one corner, the place where no one ever sits.

Soon, I will be out of doors as much as I am in, and these walls will talk to each other. I wonder, often, what they say behind my back. Sometimes I catch a whisper when I walk around the corner, or crash through the door with my arms full of groceries, and hush! becomes an echo of everything I’ve missed.

A house is always telling stories, but you never know which are fact and which are fiction, so you label them all tall tales and let them bob around up high, near the ceiling, and watch the spiders eat them for breakfast.

Late at night, sometimes, those same stories will drip down the walls like tears, and I’ll remember a day long past. I’ve lived in this house almost 30 years, more than half my life. There are words shoved deep into every crack and crevice, and all the dust is made of promises. It’s a tiny house, and someday I think it will burst with the memory of all the lives that have marched on through, in life and in books and in my imagination.

I never thought I’d spend all these years in one place. Never thought I’d still be staring out these same windows with the eyes of an almost-old woman.

We’ve grown up together, this house and these birds and this creaky laughing body of mine.

Beneath this sky that holds the sun that draws these ever-changing shadows.

It’s my job to sit here, to watch and to listen.

The crows and I have tea every morning.

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i drove to the mountains once
because i couldn’t leave you from here

i tied asphalt ribbons in my hair
and sang louder than 12-ton thunder

but everywhere i went had already been touched
by the same sky i’d left you holding

in a balloon the color of loneliness
tied to your wrist to mark you

as the strange lost child
i could never reclaim

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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Also linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics,
with the rhythm of the road.

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This post is part of Reverb 13:

Day 4: What have you lost, what are you grieving?

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I sit in the dark of very early morning, pondering this question.

The truth is, I feel I have no right to answer.

The truth is, I feel blessed by the fact that I’ve lost so little. That I have so much.

Not material things, because the truth is, that is not at all where my wealth lies. When it comes to things, I have very little.

But when it comes to life, I am decidedly rich.

The truth is, I’ve yet to experience the kind of earth-shattering loss that will make me grieve for years. There have been a few bumps along the road, friends, and pets that I loved, truly. But all the people I am closest to, all the people I hold close in my heart are still here, in my life.

I could talk about other things I’ve lost, things like time and youth and innocence. But, no matter.

The truth is I am so glad to be here in this life, so happy to be alive, so in love with the beautiful mess that surrounds me, that I have no time to grieve small losses.

I know that someday, this will change. Someday my heart will be broken in ways I can only imagine. Someday there will be devastating losses. This is a truth I cannot escape.

But today, just now, I can only sit here in this chair, in front of this dark window facing east and wait for the sun to rise on another day, a perfectly boring ordinary day that I will do my best to cherish.

Today, just now, I’ve lost little. Regret almost nothing.

I am here.

And I will make that be enough.

In fact, it will be everything.

you cannot deny the light

the way it colors everything
with the existence of shadow

i see hope in the mirror
of cracked faces

something deeper than darkness

some glimmer of innocence and
arbitrary renewal

random patterns weaving evidence
of participation

the glow of reverence

your compass leads the way
with no reflection

crazed crackled map
of delicate edges

leading to your last deliverance

this moon keeps showing up everywhere I turn
in my words, my bedroom window,
the music that plays through my dreams

on a good day, i pretend that this means something
a sign of some connection or some secret
between mother nature and myself

on a bad day, i think it means i am obsessed
with things that don’t exist
and just like the gravity that holds me down
there is nothing to be seen but consequence

we don’t float away and therefore, gravity exists
we don’t see a hole in the sky and therefore,
the moon is made of cheese or stardust
or some old man’s twisted smile

i don’t want to hold hands with either
i just want to look up and be glad that magic exists
i want to walk off the edge of a cliff and know that I will fall

but there is no correct answer
your moon is the same as mine and the same
force keeps us earthbound

oh, i know you’d like to offer your own interpretation
you dance and i fly and we pretend again and again
that this is something other than science

and in the end what keeps us grounded
is not the dinners and the datebooks and the deadlines
but the final knowledge that we cannot hide from the moon
nor can we float out into space to offer up a kiss

she will always be there, longer and older and
higher than any one of us or all of us together
at night the tides she pulls run crazy through my body
over shores i cannot cover or expose

she is adversary’s ancient echo
drawing us in and under and over ourselves
nothing trite or romantic or representative
of anything other than existence

the cold hard truth hides in all of us,
lit up and made golden by a sun who knows
little more than violence

this moon is anti matter that matters
more than she will show

rhythm and bone
in sky’s last cradle
hollow heart rocking
to and fro

we mark the passage of
time like it matters

your sand
my glass
our history

none of it can be claimed
owned
held onto

still
you extend
cupped hands
to a clear blue sky

trying to catch
the simple version
of this story

but sand becomes glass
and i see through you

this is the clearing
in the forest of forever

the sun warms my skin
even as it’s magnified

neither one of us
wants to burn

yet we lie here
singing songs
of ritual
and habit

until we’re buried
grain by grain

side by side

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Linking up with the fabulous dVerse poets for Open Link Night – join us!

i need to eat and you’re not hungry
we are mind mirror
life miners

asking hope to keep promises never made

i feed you prawns for breakfast
and there is never enough

you are sage and i am curry

you are silence and i am angry

you have too much and i
get lost a lot

of course I don’t blame you
for accepting what was offered

i am
quiet
standing
balanced

blown but not destroyed
by the way of things

you need to eat and

i am hungry

plate, fork
salt, knife

round table

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Linking up with the fabulous dVerse poets for Open Link Night – join us!

For as long as I have lived in my house, some 26 years now, this has been my view. Some years it is corn, others wheat, but always this old, broken down shed with its very own sentinel of tree. I have watched thousands of sunsets through this silhouette.

Until yesterday.

I was away all morning, and when I returned, both tree and shed were gone. I’m guessing that the farmer who owns the field needs the space to boost his crop, last year we had a terrible drought, and I know it was rough for him. I can’t blame him for doing what needs to be done.

But there was always something about that shed that spoke of days gone by, and that one lone tree in a field full of corn was always the first thing I could see coming up the hill, guiding me home.

Once again, and without warning, my view of the world has changed. And while I know that change is the only thing we can really count on, I will miss the comfort of this familiar sight.

I’m getting the feeling that 2013 is going to be filled with surprises. So I’m going to buckle my seatbelt and settle in for the ride, and see where it takes me.

Because you can’t fight change and the world keeps turning and the sinking sun will still be beautiful.

And I have lots of photos to remind me of the way things used to be.

Every so often, I will walk to end of the driveway with one in my hand and hold it up for just a moment, remembering.

And then I’ll go back inside and catch up to life, before it goes zooming by.

with the posture of a perfect impostor
the kind that can look you in the eye and make you see
blue
when it has already been established
that green is the color
of tomorrow

and

i want to kiss your neck
nuzzle in a little
settle down

get to know what makes you

tick

tock

and which words are your favorite

but of course
we both know
you have already
erased them

covered them over
with hatch marks and
strips of black
marker

no looking back
no turning the page
no deciphering
because

everything you say
is code for someone
who isn’t
gone
yet

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Linking up today with the fabulous dVerse poets for Open Link Night, join us!