Joshua Tree

 Scratch
of sandy crust and
mosquito song
Around and up I twist my hands
toward sky beyond bush, bird, beetle

Slaughterhouse
of screeching shrikes
My thumbs the helpless killing floors
of writhing lizards
Their blood runs down my arms

Stumble
toward altars to erosion
who appeared but were not formed
Time forces them ever higher
My roots ever wider

Searching
starving for the water
who fled taking all gods except
the Sun.

She Who Goes

I.
Long have I lain in wait for you,
my beautiful one.
Demons also have waited
Sucking with thin, tight lips
at the breath I gave you.
Even now, one sits at your head,
another at your feet,
a third on your belly,
thieves peering in through frosted windows.
I swear, they shall not have you.

Many years I have watched your
Blooming and declining,
my precious flower,
lovely and rare.

Now, you shall come with me
No one, not even the animals,
Nor your children and their demons,
Can follow us.
At last, you shall know me,
as I have long desired you to know me
crouching just out of view.
Your voice intoning my name,
in lament and celebration
pleading and praising
has been great comfort in my waiting
Only listen now, listen
to my summons.

My arm comes surely for you now,
as my heart leaps wildly in jealous anticipation
Behold, I escort you into my kingdom,
my banquet hall, my home
Go into the earth, and rest in me.

II.
Long have I remained with you,
fought with wild eyes to give you
my lungs, my heart, my liver, my veins
so that I might remain with you still

Now, you are going.
I cannot see where,
it is hidden, dark, airless.
Tell me, and I shall go too
With force past any gate

I must go with you
else who will protect
from lurking savagery
cruel beasts of torment
I am wasted with fighting
as you are wasted with living
Life I hardly know anymore
and will not when you are silent and still

Your breath is thin with pain
mine all too thick with loss
If you go,
my search will end only in
the same darkness into which you have gone.

Walking on the Sea

It is said that Jesus walked on the water, and that it was a miracle. While out on the sea, Jesus then called to Peter, and so long as the man's faith remained strong, he too was able to walk across the water without trouble. So say the Scriptures, and so the Scriptures reveal their geography. For to walk on the Sea of Galilee is truly a miracle - such warm waters could never ordinarily hold two human beings upright.

In the north, however, to walk on the water is for everyone. A few months out of every year, the water freezes thick and solid as far as the eye can see - the lakes, streams, bays, inlets, out to some indeterminate point in the open water. The ice is quite thick - a foot or more - and feels solid as land. Covered by a thick layer of snow, it is not even slippery, and confronts the eye only as a seeming wasteland of open snow - unless familiar with the geography of the area, there is no particular reason to know that water flows dense and cold below these vast, flat expanses.

For most here, walking on the ice is quotidian. It is their seasonal shortcut to work or to school, their Sunday afternoon walk or ski, a fishing trip, a chance to get out under the dark gray sky of their homeland. For me, on the other hand, it is immense and magical - magical in its novelty and immense in its possibility.

Growing up in Virginia, going to college in her southeast tidewater, I never imagined the possibility of walking for hours on a frozen bay, with the icy sea wind cutting across my face. The multitude of tracks attests to the stability of route. They wind every which way - around the perimeter of Laajasalo, heading straight toward the open sea, cutting between the islands and showing the paths of exuberant dogs dashing about with their human families.

What is it like? Sometimes, it is an expansive desert, a terrifying wasteland. The wind blows with forces unknown on land, tossing the snow like sand into drifts of varying depths. Out in the middle of the bay, the wind has managed to scrape the ice almost bare, while on the edges, it is piled much more thickly. It is also a view of the dome of the sky. The landscape of southern Finland is comprised of rocky mounds, rolling hills and and tall trees - an unobstructed view of the horizon is quite rare, unless you are on top of a high point. Out on the ice, however, the darkening clouds hang low in the east, and seem to touch the icy sea, and the brighter clouds run off toward the west. You can almost sense the world turning. At the water's edge, the waves have washed up on the rocks and frozen in place. Yellowed with salt and sand, the waves seem to have leaped up from the water without ever making it back, hanging petrified over the edge of a stone on the shore, reaching long fingers toward the surface.

To walk on the sea is to know the earth in yet another way.

A Strange Place

When will the pretty thoughts return?

Empty,
Aimlessly content.
Being here, now is easy
like biking down a gentle hill
amid pastures and potato plots
Accelerating, but not too much,
Rolling.

Torment comes and goes
An old friend with whom
I pick up where we left off
whose shape changes with the years
but whose heart is always the same and
whose cold calloused hands clasp my face
as that mouth reaches for my ears
with its urgent whisperings
of the time we've lost but perhaps
it's best that I go alone sometimes
but I'm so dear and bright:
beloved!

Peace is a strange place
I only find by stumbling
among the birches and berry bushes
tripping inside myself
on glacial boulders face-up in the sun
leaping the fissures and ravines
of earth's trickling tap,
my worn in ways of going
toward the end, or the beginning.

The Well

Pinhole to the sky -
Dry spaces lit by fire suddenly struck
by fits of weeping into me:
I shall hold it all.
My stomach ever-expanding
bloated, gaunt
For want of things non-existent,
Since ice ages ever the same
Heaving and sighing of seasons.

Be not awakened to these plummeting
Cavernous depths all streaked with algae,
But return to me with desires those
Pieces of earth-core etched with lost grandeur
And your longing will dissolve with centuries
Into iron. 

Boston

A city of ghosts.
Now, for me
Hovering just out of reach
I paid them in grief
Wept and wore ashes
the allotted days, but
They do not rest.

Lie in peace!
For you have found the
Promised Land
the citrus blooming
quaking dust-hills of
All that cannot survive here.
That land is your land,
and this is not mine,
As it takes your shape.

Who could have guessed
Your spiritual strength -
the way your soul could
Span an entire continent

I came here
but for the magnificent un-reason
you awakened in me.
Those three years of long madness
Grateful when you granted me
Ground to stand on.

All around, desire of my heart,
Your orchids bloom
a dark sweet taste melts on my tongue
and music clusters away silence

More than a year, now,
Since you
Breathed this air
Why do you refuse admittance
to forgetfulness?

Once, I feared to be alone but here,
in the company of specters
I envy the flowers
Content to return to the
Dust to which they are already rooted.

A Wish

My desire to know you unbounded,
I seek
a dwelling where I know the
Ground before the air
to curl my hands, Dearest,
around the broken
Places in your line of vision and
The Hunter in me tracking
rippled waters, tracing
your scent still warm along my ribcage.

I am not the healer, the Savior
Merely the muddy acceptance
of a shallow grave in the
field of wildflowers:
decaying matter, lifeblood
of possibility.