that's mrs. mediocrity to you

and here i sit, waiting for something i’ll never have and
my mind keeps screaming about wasted time
and the words are all stacked in the corner
neat as a pile of laundry
and my heart is always racing
even though
there’s no time to begin

four walls and one window and i am cold
but never frozen and two crows just flew by
to remind me of balance

as the sun pokes it way through a cross hatched horizon
painting colors with a brush of no hurry

spinning yarn for another day’s sweater

i found an arrow on the floor
three days ago
and just left it there

pointing southwest

it didn’t seem to be meant
for me

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Everything around me crackles with electricity.
January would be silent, except for your anger.

When the whole world is frozen,
even a white flower becomes prism.

Last night I held a piece of glass to the moon,
hoping for eclipse.
The dead of winter whispered giggles of mockery,
and I walked back inside, bruised
but never broken.

I keep reading about survival.
Already, we’ve forgotten so much.

It used to be that everything was relative,
but now, everything is virtual,
and you can’t fake the smell of narcissism.
(I meant to say narcissus.)

Our collective soul is starving,
and we feed it the new truth.

Suffering was always meant to save us,
and laughter is a sky
filled with birds.

they say lightning never strikes the same place twice
but what if white light wakes you up every morning
and sometimes it thunders in the dead cave of winter

but the moon
rises up through the trees
even when frozen

and silt settles on everything
after a flood
concealing what lies
beneath a smooth surface

and magic makes no sense
but neither does reality

the miracle is that any tree survives

holding out bare branches
in forever expectation
of life going on

just the way it does

even uprooted

even split wide open

even silenced by
a lack

of wind

.

.

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listen

to the mockingbird

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open

.

just like that

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this morning
the world is blanketed in snow

a veil of white to hide
all the ugly places

a marriage of reality
and need

.

the birds have all
gathered in one corner

waiting to be tossed back out again
scattered through the sky like rice

black on grey
or red on emptiness

.

there is no waiting
now

only tricks of time
and miracles of motion

.

steam rises from tea
on a round black table

the hungry hawk
draws circles
in a sky of pale

remembering blue
with a crooked smile

ever wistful

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may you be surrounded

by the love and light

of family and friends

.

peace and smiles to you

xoxo

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glitter glow in your eyes

.

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.

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the tangled webs

we weave

form the beauty

of life

.

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Each flower defies the odds and pushes on.

We want to make the world our own, but there is no survival without constant adaptation. A rudimentary concept, yes, but we get all crafty about it, bury our heads in the sand, pretend we can send down roots and stay in one place forever. But the earth we stand on keeps revolving, and the sky we reach for is filled with light that is already older than we are, no matter how long we may live. Sunlight takes approximately eight minutes to reach the earth. The light from some of the stars we see is 400 hundred years old.

So if, for some reason, the sun ever goes out, we wouldn’t even know for eight whole minutes. A short grace period, yes, but I kind of like the magic in that.

Time may be full of tricks, but light remains steady.

Which makes it so much easier to stand alone in the dark, making wishes on stars that have already lived through more lifetimes than I can imagine. Silent witnesses to a multitude of births and deaths, joy and anguish, storm and smooth calm sea.

If you think that a flower is fragile, imagine what it takes to push up through dark soil more than 10 times your height, and reach for a sun that will always, just barely, outrun you.

Miracles and magic happen around us, all day, every day. No one ever said it would be easy. No on ever said we wouldn’t have to fight to stand in the light. No one ever said that anything lasts forever.

Each moment is precious.

And we forget that eighty thousand times a day.

So take one second and look at a flower. Or a baby just learning to walk. Or the old woman dragging her cart through the grocery store. Or even the young man, in such a hurry to get where he’s going, that forgets to hold the door for her.

I’m glad to find hope is so stubborn.

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