Friday, November 30, 2012

MADAME MOON

Painting by S. Auberle

MADAME MOON 
Would we love you as much
if you didn't leave every month?
You're not a fickle lover,
we can count on your return
yet o that loss, that shrinking
of your voluptuous body  

every twenty eight days--
something old and lonely
inside us wonders
will you really return?
Might your mountains
call you one last time? 
to settle down there--
no more Earth voyages?
Who could blame you? 
Sometimes the journey gets long
and settlement in one place
can whisper enticingly, 
yet, looking down each month
you see our little lights below
begging your return, to illuminate 
one more time our lives,
our losses, our loves
one more prayer to be our lamp… 
please, Madame Moon
push back for us again
that long and lonesome night.
 
~  mimi

Sunday, November 18, 2012

GIVING THANKS

Photo art by S. Auberle

GIVING THANKS
Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another,
we walk here in the light of this unlikely world that isn't ours for long.
                                                                          ~  John Daniel
Friend, the road is the destinationso they say, but my destination this morning is a sunny meadow.  The air is crisp, a bit of frost lingers on leaves beneath my feet and a little north wind teases at me.  Across the field, and into crow-talking woods for a while--I am warmer in here, out of the wind.  The trail winds deeper through tall trees, past old settlers discard heaps.  The crows and I converse for a while, then, wing to wing, they fly off into late autumn blue, and I return to the dry grass meadow and its ancient apple trees.  Here and there hangs a yellow or red globe, a bright spot of color in the dead branches.  Garlands of bittersweet drape their bright orange against a cerulean sky.  Small, abandoned nests dot the trees and a mud-dauber house hangs heavy in a branch, its swirls and patterns  exquisitely fashioned.  At my feet grasses are hollowed out, where deer have bedded down in the night.  A dog barks somewhere, far off.  I am just another child grown old, yet my heart still beats, lungs take in air, legs carry me over the land--what gifts--what blessings!  The fourteenth century mystic, Meister Eckhart, said if the only prayer you said in your whole life was thank you, it would suffice.  And though most days I question whether anyone is listening, today I kneel in cold grass, whispering my two word love poem…over and over and over. 
~  mimi
It goes without saying, of course, that I am immensely grateful for many, many things in my life, most importantly--my tribe of loved ones.  And grateful to be spending this beautiful holiday with some of them, so once again, the road beckons...Happy Thanksgiving to all...

Thursday, November 15, 2012

CROW INK

Photo by S. Auberle
CROW INK 
Crows know.
They take their black
raucous selves,
fire up that attitude
and never look back
at their abandoned nest
high in the pines.
 
I wonder sometimes
if our lives
might be no more
than the art of crows
written for awhile
on the sky,
then in an instant
erased by the wind. 
~  mimi
 
the title poem of my book...seems like a good poem for this time of year...
"Crow Ink" published by Little Eagle Press, 2009


Tuesday, November 06, 2012

NOVEMBER

Photo by S. Auberle
(taken through moving car window)

There is always that last day,
the one you never want to see
and yet, what is lovlier?
This is the day before the day
when November settles in.
This is the day out in the woods
when last silver moths
are winging from moss to leaf,
the day of the last chorus
of swans in the bay.
Today ladybugs are making
their small journeys,
today last leaves are letting go,
tumbling down to the beckoning earth.
This is the amazing day
I watch a proud mink
trotting into the forest,
fur gleaming   dark     wet,
a fish in its mouth
wriggling in the ecstasy
of November's little deaths.
 
mimi
 
(first published in Crow Ink, 2009, Little Eagle press)