Heartsong

Your heart, like a slow and yet fierce
waterfall, running over my limbs
in the rain

So moves me, so sends me to the sky,
that I am quickening, quickening,
my own singing sound in my chest

Then talk to me, talk around or
straight to the point, but to me,
or sing

Like our words together, form one song

Love Sonnet

when your face
caught
the sun
i thought
you had given me
some tulips
opening
like in poems
i’ve read
about hands
and hearts
opening

Mother Angel

Of truths that I might sing
You speak. From near and far
At once. No ocean separates us;
No sky divides us, you in heaven,
Me on earth. You simply speak
Like an angel and I listen.
But it’s the answers to my questions
That I most enjoy and need.
So I speak too...

You

change:
I leap beside you
like a child
skipping to catch up
to her father
on the way home
after he's picked her up
from school:
this is a change:
I am buoyant
to be beside you
I can be buoyant
with you
I can change
and you're still there

Tree Dance

branches
swaying
like winter branches
but green
as grasses
leaves
like little dancing ferns
shaped like hands
caressing the wind
branches
delicate
as dancers' arms
delicate as arms
branches
like my arms
dancing
my hands and feet
playing in the air
my fingers wiggling
like leaves
waving in the wind
i dance for you
delicately:
like branches
growing outward
from a tree trunk
my dance for you
comes from my center

Winter Light

the pigeons
have all gone
leaving footprints
stark as morning
on the ledge
this frosty fangled day
when the winter sun
runs like water
over the window

Before Spring Comes

before flowers and birds
comes our anticipation
when feelings seem to roll out
a carpet of our own inner green
sometimes rainy or warm
but -- the important thing --
more than that --
it is something given,
to be treated with such care
so that, rather than overwhelming us,
we ride these bursts like horses.
soon these wonderful signs of spring
that we treasured as children
become a source of power
and focus. so I say to myself
that poetry now is more
than an emblem
of change. it's a necessity
that we can all ride
until summer.

The Princess and the Pea

For many, it goes like this:
Sunrise, moonset
Soft sunglow as they rise:
O softcool morning
O muzzlesoft night
Hail, gift of dream...
Skies of leaves fall
Petal -- leaves fall and fall
A day goes by, seasons pass

But for one, a princess, locked in a story,
Things are scattered, awry.

She says,
"My spider plant, sprouting flowers,
Tiny and light,
And then their growths, green, white..."

And then she cries, throaty-tight,
"He says he loves me,
But he says it is not right."

Thus the princess, waking from a dream,
Into another dream, and another:
"They piled the mattresses on, On only one pea."

There are so many more under me.

Christmas Cacti

"The bookcase in the corner
Is composed of many shelves"*

In the window, a reflection
Of a bookcase; it is daylight --
How can this be?
The colors of the books,
More the colors than later in the day.
The way this happens is this:
The sun shines in on things,
I guess, then we see,
See them in a corner of the window,
The same corner where they shone inside.

My plants
Near the window
Are reflecting colors too:
Reflecting, doubling, too.

Bloom now, O Hot pink prisms!

*So my mother wrote, and published, in Playmate,
at age eleven. I can't remember the whole poem.

Voices in the Kitchen

no table today --
but a crowd of people
swarms in our chairs
like a family

you made it all happen,
for years
before i can remember
this went on

the talking
the refreshments
and the happiness:
a June morning

this not much of a poem:
but you still say
just talk

Tick Tock

thinking over years
minute by minute
dissecting time
into minute portions
makes me see
how whole
i've become
because
i was whole
during those minutes
not knowing how
they would add up
to hours
or how those hours
would add up to days
but minute by minute
i held on

A Celebration

my few ornaments
decorating bookends
huge wooden carved elephants
from somewhere
in the far east
handmade ornaments
dead mother
ever-creative-sister-in-law
red and white
my simple decorations
that's all i have
i hang them
weeks
before christmas
i saved them
from ages back
every year
i get them out
hang them
on my bookcase
never a christmas tree
have i
but all this
no longer rings true
for i have you

popcorn

hey
i found some popcorn
let's have popcorn
measure oil
measure kernels
measure
measure
a hot oil smell permeates the kitchen
popcorn's ready
popcorn's done
we sink into quiet rumination
fingers sifting through shifting
snowy seas of splayed kernels
hands hovering over the mounds
of creamy stars each unique
we nibble
we gobble
we eat
together
such is peace
on a Saturday afternoon
when we don't have the money
for a movie

Winter Scenery

i’m lonely today
the pigeons
have all gone
leaving footprints
stark as morning
on the ledge
this frosty fangled day
when the winter sun
runs like water
over the window
and throws
a tent of light
over my tree
captive as a butterfly
stiff in a golden net
there frozen pods hang
few now -- where
in the fall
they hung there
in cascades
plentiful as fruit
now fluttering
like dangling
may leaves
turning
in the wind
o you homeless pigeons:
did someone
take you in?
could you tell me
where to find
such succor?

Labor Day Wish

as summer rounds into fall,
like a swimmer who turns back,
having crossed the lake,
i wish that everyone i know
might have had my summer
but i suppose
they might wish, impossibly,
that i could know
something about
what summer is like for them
lush and greeny, breezy fresh
and bright,
and on and on
into the fall

Winter Trees

seven stark trees
in a triangle
of remaining snow
brush the sky
like angular dancers
in taupe leotards
arms reaching
toward heaven
the dance
one of waiting
a winter wonderscape
complete with dancers
i reach out
and secretly touch
the cool bark
of a tree
and i look
for the meaning
of the metaphor
the meaning of
the swaying branches
the dance
one of waiting

4 bernstein

they said i had to forget you
my knight
my knight in shining so shining armor

"i don't regret these cliches"

she said
who said?

my ex-husband, gentle though he is,
gently said "he'll never reciprocate",

the new psychiatrist, yes, a woman
she said "it has to end"

the therapist, always, until now, sympathetic, said
"when the boundaries between what is real and what is unreal
when they weaken you seem to call to him"

i am calling to you
"call me back, call me back"

but maybe he'll open the package

Third Avenue

In a room beneath the eaves
Three eastern windows let the sun in
A jungle of plants grew in a corner
And books galore shone like magic

There I lived in the shadow of Behnam
Sultan of the East, kind like daybreak
In those day after day days
When night answered morning like an echo

I made friends with the angels
And muses came to tea
My salon was famous in heaven
It was -- oh -- my memory fails me...

I moved a short walk away
To a room like a cabin with a quilt on the bed
And a friend who stays to dinner
And settles down with me at night...