completeaccident

1 - New Fall It rains, and boasts of snow behind; the wind kicks wet feet through the leaves. I toss and turn, bruise myself on the miserable kernel of my heart in the sheets. Come home while I still know my name. I can't lock the doors for fear the locks will change and this place we made will be lost to the fall. 2 - Late Fall Hard frost, no word. If it snows, will we be stranded apart? Everything on the balcony died. I brought the pots in, jealous of the sun on their crumpled faces. The drive to work is all fog. The grey fields and I wait; we have both been cultivated. There is nothing to do but watch the winter come. There will b

I know now that this is a land of longing, the birthplace of quests, and it yet lacks you. For my part, I have worn the wide plains shiny with looking; my desire is all seasoned with dry grass and empires of clouds. I've buried a little piece of my heart beneath every brave tree and when the wind blows- and the wind often blows- they sing in chorus a lover's laughter, soft and close, from every corner of the sky together. You know I love the desert secrets, the hard ones that stand proud from the swallowing landscape: the bones, the gold, the sudden trees, and you, wild heart, fire song. Come away from your oceans! Their secrets are vast

These brown hills, where the sky is not complicit in our expansion, our sticky-fingered embrace; these near mountains, dry and winking with hermits: they are not family or friends. An ex, maybe, who has moved on to someone better. Even if you made a study of her, a PhD in old love, she would still be dry, still only have eyes for the clouds behind you. These near mountains: just because they are not yours does not mean you can resist them, that you will not go hiking on weekends to pretend she still wants you, or build your house where you can see how the sunset makes her blush and wish you were a sky.

This is stark relief: the crisp mountain shoulders braced against the sky, the jagged edge of pleasure when the pain stops. This is stark relief: a horizon whose trees are tough and wiry supplicants, not molding overlords: a gold and dusty joy. This is stark relief, and I am every bird with her wings unfurled, every spread-eagled cloud. I am breathless, secretly on my knees, whimpering thanks, laughing and weeping in every secret place.

The farmland settles into me each time we drive the long road to things. All my insides are shifting to let the roots weave through. The sky never seemed so close as when the short trees ground themselves in your own fertile belly: cloud friends, you are only a green reach away. I came for the sky, but I'm learning to need the farms, like learning coffee in your milk and sugar. An accident, but the sky is so good that I have to have it all, that I can't resist anything it touches. Joy has her fists in my hair and her breasts against my back, and each time I laugh I fall in love again forever. I meant to root here, to di

If I were writing from the other side, I would say This road was not on my map. No one goes there on purpose. And then tell you how I escaped. I asked for help, for change, and grief was the answer: Grief as old and hollow as snowfall, grief as heavy as snowfall, grief that said, "You, You are the spent ember, You are the last angry voice and when you pass the dark will have been waiting." The grief was right. I burn, I burn cold and heavy, crouching in the ashes of greatness, I burn, and the fuel is low. The dark is waiting. But what angel comes with words of despair? Even Job had no angels to tell him, "Alas."

The winter, the whole winter is sitting on my head, nesting its fingers in the little hairs over my ears. Its friend, the great and unnamed doubt, is leaning against my collarbone in a most familiar fashion, and I fall in and out of balance irregularly irregularly. I have a beauty waiting, warm, willing on speed dial, but the phone-- where did I leave the phone again? Beauty is as elusive as the car keys, which, I swear, were just in that pocket. I had my hand on them. The whole winter keeps coursing its little nails up and down my neck and taking all my breath away. There was a dream I had that I almost remember, almost r

You should start looking for a place we can make our last stand. The dawn is breaking: Every morning, a little less light, and the end is not as close as you think. Love is not enough, and wanting is not enough. The desert is coming. The sea is coming. God forbid they find us holding our thirst in both hands. Instead, instead; No, There is no rescue. You should start looking for a place we can make our last stand. Take my frenzy for resignation, put your boots on. I have a lantern. I have a little knife. We have so much still to survive. Open your hands and let the thirst out. Build. We will stand until t

I think you should know, at least, about the lepers. Only one of them came back. It might be a story about ungratefulness, or miracles or the real meaning of 'whole'— Luke didn't say. I wonder also if my Lord lay awake, nights, wondering if the other nine made it to the priests, and what they said there. I promise: when I get to the other side, I'll send a postcard.

I never got here with my shoes on. I could never find the path: it is marked by bricks a little more slippery, bits of grass without stickers, but down the path, long, long, is a little home. If I say you were under my skin, please, understand, I painted myself like a hallway: doors here, here. I come home when the sun leaves behind silence, and if you come, take off your shoes, I am spread beneath you and I am the doors, all the doors you pass into. Slow on my feet, tender, but I come home in the presence of the Holy-- In the House of the Lord past the dragon, through the middle dreams. Walking softly, letting shadows