Hummingbird's Complaint, a reading

In celebration of dear friend and poetic collaborator Tania Pryputniewicz’s new book release November Butterfly, we were reunited this week in Sonoma County where we snuck in a few minutes to record some of our collaborative work at Perhaps, Maybe. Congratulations, Tania!

If you haven’t yet read Tania’s book, available here at Saddle Road Press, or at Amazon, it is an exquisite collection of carefully observed accounts of the everyday that blend and weave with excursions into the lives of iconic female archetypes. In each poem, Tania finds a magical, mystical beauty in the commonplace; gratitude and healing in the sometimes sorrowful upwelling of the mystery we call life. Tania is a writer whose senses, heart, generosity and intellect open in every direction. It is a privilege to know her and to continue to collaborate with her.

Everything As It Was

Perhaps as leaves of cherished memory pass into thin black air never to return to the trees that created them, their faint leavings linger on in bright, abundant fields of spring wildflower and inspire small movements in the hush-hush snowy realms of frozen winter grasses.

Maybe all that has past is not a diminishing road but rather an open ocean, and as our dreams reassemble, blinking like ships lost at sea, they each carry a forgotten treasure from shore to shore, from generation to generation – dear and inescapable, greeting us in the cool breeze of the open window each evening.

Trauma

Perhaps trauma has no discrete edges. It bleeds from wounds and words and across boundaries, flying outward from the center before shattering, vase-like, in an extravagant effort to be seen: a container for wishes we attempt to piece together in the dark before a certain amount is suddenly too much.

Maybe when sadness becomes a seizure, stripped of any protective cloak or force, our hearts demand an experienced escort in response. It is here we keep our vigil, alert for some piece of magic. Catch something far away and draw it close.

The Thin Places

Perhaps between dawn and dusk, matter melds from one form to another. Communication can be very subtle, so be ready to receive whatever comes: differences in skin, muscle, bone, bark, leaves, and wood.

Maybe like a flash of lightning that is a past event before it is even seen, you cannot compare this present experience with a past experience, you can only compare it with a memory of the past, which is part of the present experience. The clockmaker’s influence is everywhere.