New Growth

Perhaps while on the outside your daily life appears consistent and secure – a thick, branching angled stem held rigid and upright against the frosty sparkle of a new snow, another life is going on inside you. A longing that shines from the slanting rays of a cold sun invades your tidy routines as desire sprouts up in crevices of memory long since abandoned by your cultivated outlook.

Maybe as each encased, spiraling tuft of what lies dormant is invited to sprout, triggered by an undetectable clock, the twining stems of its foliage gives you a clue; and while cutting back the roots may temporarily weaken the impulse, it may also promote new shoots. 

Compositionally Driven

Perhaps it is because clouds are camels one minute, streaming hair the next, that we gather like sea birds come to rest upon the ocean’s churning waves while making our way to the pebbled shore. Water kept on the move is made to do things; when static is as wasted and provoking as a buried talent.

Maybe this natural flow of creative spontaneity restores buoyancy to our ancient conversation between the sea and the seashore.

Dedicated to the memory of Karl Fisher: Feb. 20, 1960 - Feb. 20, 2013.  

 http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151344754133884.478960.18305738883&type=3

Perhaps, Maybe, Because (with JHG)

Perhaps pheromones are maybes, physical maybes. Perhaps maybe is a language, a requiem for all the dead languages we have spoken, all the blue notes we have ever proposed with no room for because, because because is a dolt with big feet who is not your friend and will only leave you hanging, sticking to what and how and when. But perhaps, maybe now there's your best friend at the open door of language.

And maybe if you were to write a sentence with the word sentence in it not once but twice or even three times, you might shape the items that sentence gathered in with a tender touch, tinker with the fit, tether each green garden, moonlit pool, lemon, lover, and starry night before dissolving them (along with all the radiance of an opal sky) in an unbreakable bond between hand and eye that sets the stage for the actor who becomes her role, as we sometimes say, if for no other reason than to savor the sweet taste of the line.

The Color of Lightning (a collaboration with Tania Pryputniewicz)

Perhaps lightning has a color all its own – like the bright flash at the bottom of a pan that prompts the eager prospector to cry out, “Eureka!” He has captured a bit of lightning, if only a speck, signaling that the rugged morning hike to this secluded spot has really been worth it after all.

And maybe, all the darkening trail home, like Poe and his trick of titling a treatise a prose poem, the prospector dedicates his find to the left, right symmetry of boot fall and fading tines of adrenaline along edges of spine, throat and heart, placing mindless sifting and coincident grace above any rational method of explanation for his luck.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/eureka.html

From a Mage's Staff (guest bloggers Tess P and Tania Pryputniewicz)

Perhaps you were intentional when you dove into the cold blueness of the pool and submerged yourself dolphin-like, staying beneath for a brief eternity, your blood knocking in the private chambers until you rose out of the water primeval; and laid your body upon the sun stricken cement to leave behind a silhouette of water that you might rise from and look back upon, softly chanting -- so that none can hear you: leave it, leave that sliver of being behind you.

 

Maybe that sliver of being with its shadow longing and love rises later towards what it perceives as the distance the body must cross to find home. Fractionally hesitant yet responsive as the were-light from a mage's staff is to the magician's need for light, the body turns back for each silver sliver, soothed like a child by the promise of grasping again the string tied to the balloon rising to the ceiling. Someone taller and kinder inevitably returns to the room.

A Sound So Private (a collaboration with JHG)

Perhaps if you could find a place where satellites and airplanes could never spot you, and where a drop of water fell every few seconds tapping the surface of a pond, it would be quiet enough for you to hear a sound so private from within you emerging in tiny ripples radiating outward toward blue distances of sea and sky and grassy fields of wandering green tendrils grown from a seed so small a single thought contains them all.

Maybe memory is a lap in a rainy pool, a lapse, an orbit of wobbly jewels, et le bon mot, per chance de lysees, peut-etre, may actually be a dance of elegant lawn turkeys, that elusive bird that's a combination of: hey what's it to you, and here, I dare you, strutting along the edge of the open field. The closer you try to get, the further they remove into the thicket, into the bruise of thorn and hairy ruse. In fact they hate to fly at all, flying downward is preferred, but can, when necessary, by a series of hops from limb to limb, get way up high in the trees, where the fox cannot, and to be out on one can bird-word winter, tuck in.

 

Moving Water

Perhaps rain is an artist that transfigures all as it cuts through stone and loosens the fragrance of flowers. Enveloped in a shapeless air with our towns of fixed streets and houses, we wait for this transitory guest to arrive and dissolve whatever is caught, hardened or entangled as it swirls through the shade of our tenements and fills our inner wells with a fresh source of the elemental.

Or maybe rain is the elegant return of memory, the heart of the earth held open to receive the buoyancy of its dream-filled flowing forth; a liquid that does what words would love – seldom pushing or straining while keeping all unlikeliness to itself.

 

Night of the Knight (guest blogger Julian Magdalenski, age 12)

 

 

Perhaps darkness, creeping around the corner, gobbles everything that it sees. It jumps from building to person to person – to anything that it please. Little does life know that it is not spreading but running from the light. The soul of the sky.

 

Maybe the only thing that night wants is not to go into that light so bright, to fight the light and grow in height. Become a knight of the night.

The Performance (guest blogger Tess P)

Perhaps the performance was encouraged by the onlookers as they rose slightly in their chairs and showed their white and tender knuckles as they braced the arms of their theater seats; and the orchestra was drowned out by gasps as the aerialist seemed to be alone up there, without any support, only one of her legs crossing a red band of silk as she spun wildly about us.

Maybe we grew faint and transfixed as the woman dangled her life in front of us as if we were watching a house on fire and wondering if all of the sleepers were found, wondering if all of the closets were opened, if under the beds the floors were scanned by an eye for such detail because our very lives may depend upon it.

A Call for Maybe(s)

In the spirit of collaboration I invite you, readers of my blog, to contribute a maybe to the following post Tenderness Calls. Post it as a comment, or send it directly to my email lizbrennan@yahoo.com.

The more maybes the merrier, I always say. You may also feel inspired to add your own maybe to any previous post. In any case, I'd love to hear from you.

Tenderness Calls

Perhaps anywhere that tenderness gathers itself amidst the cut and thrust of life, held safe for a time within the curving vault and delicate cone of sea shell and bone, it calls us away from regions of life grown strange with despair. What infinitely precious thing do we seek along the shore?
Liz Brennan

Maybe the fog of the blue coast far off in memory is part of longing, and the ear is compelled to seek the sea in an orchestra of its own device within a shell, which keeps time at bay, like a wrinkle in the linen that lets in a liminal impression left by the child just lately having rested his head on a pillow. 
Tess P

Or maybe the blue fog lifting persistently out of the blue tips of the trees on the third set of hills above the ocean's cove cloaks, delights, the woman grown strange with longing--a longing that rakes the length of her body from child's heart to her heels lifting out of footprints already flooding behind her with saltwater and foam to the cadence of hide or reveal, hide or reveal.

Tania Pryputniewicz

Between Earth and Water (with Tess P)

Perhaps the landscape, heavy with yellow pears and wild roses, hangs down into the lake, mirrored in the still water where object and reflection are joined – halves of one real, unreal whole.

Maybe the floating world is on the path of yellow marigolds that lead into the house where the sugar skulls are on the table as sweet reminders of those who have loved you and who you will be when you are undone; and your love will be there on the lake when someone bends toward the water, in the flicker of the candle, among the flowers blown across the earth.

Ley Lines (with Tania P)

Perhaps ley lines, mapped in hindsight, presage the order of prayer, akin to intent prior to action or the path of ions aligning before lightning strikes. Nightly, how far above her dreaming body, after days of hours of calligraphy charting the path of the god of her time, pages of rows and rows of letters, steeped in infinitesimal kinship with each passage, did the abbess drift?

Maybe a thin film of dust has settled on what the abbess has shed and left: ruby earrings, embroidered skirt, a giltwood looking-glass that once held her face. Staring mutinously at the intricate pattern woven into the worn carpet, how often did she silently question her own abilities – a quest that served to flatten her face into a series of dramatic angles; exaggerate her heavy, lidded eyes and long aquiline nose into a seamlessly jagged silhouette that today we enjoy looking at – compelled as we are to reassemble her distant reality out of its shards.

Some Human Actions (with Tania P)

Perhaps some human actions trigger the animal brain, wiring the recipient to view most of a life’s peopled interactions as omens and intimations of potential danger, causing one to sift perpetually threat from love in a prolonged surging towards waking from reptilian slumber.

Maybe as you stand in the gleam of an autumn tree and watch the strangeness of the gentle world gone wrong tightening in prowling circles, a wind so worn from weathering quiets the tension in your limbs, cools the hot, thick flow of trepidation threatening to overcome your peace of mind, takes you by the hand and dries the tears that are the blue paint on the tip of your brush touching the white paper of the day and spreading out into a flower-shaped cloud, soon to rain snowflakes over the earth in a wintery hush.

Happiness (guest bloggers Kalli James and Sabina Fritz, age 12)

Perhaps happiness is a kitten, soft and sweet with big blue eyes, a wet black nose, and when you walk by it attacks your toes.

Maybe happiness is a burning in the dark. It draws us towards it, bright and alive like a friend in the cold, or a cricket chirping in the night. It sounds as through it is calling to the world.

Moon Blessing (guest blogger John O'Donohue)

Perhaps when you meet the one in whom your heart can really be at home, distance does not make you falter. Longing sweeps you upward. Arriving in magic, you are the moth and you are gone.

Maybe a circle of white wind plucks wild hyacinths for your hair, and no one hears you blossoming fresh with love’s scent. Only a young moon flowing like a silver well over sky mountains meets your gaze. 

Oblique Strategies (with Tess P)

Perhaps you shouldn’t be frightened to display a disciplined self-indulgence as you make an old idea valuable by placing it in an exquisite frame. Is it finished? What mistakes did you make last time? You are an engineer of bricks, discarded axioms, simple subtraction, and slow preparation. Breathe more deeply as you carry on.

Or maybe you are hesitant to complete the evidence, admitting that each piece is a rough simulacrum of a music you once heard when the buds of the white birches wore red as if paintbrush tips dipped in a river that bled, held above you in that certainty of blue that recalls the inside of someone's lips close to the gum; if you were to examine the tissue, you might consider unfinished things that require a cupping of one's hand, a modest but slightly lavish signature.

In Childhood (with Tess P)

Perhaps in childhood when nights you waited at the foot of your bed, watching the moths draw their circumference around the streetlight as the stars fell, you listened to the quiet pumping of crickets and cicadas and wondered at the dense darkness of the forest below; and you caught a whiff of disappointment and it came from God; you had thought his great arm had reached across the road that shines like a snake at night, bringing a small offering of light, some jewel from a crown, but when God opened his palm in the solitude of your room, you beheld nothing. It was then that you turned to the wall and out of its paper, the roses, the carriages; the long, billowing skirts like down-turned umbrellas; it was all life that took your breath away, night after night out of paper, and the horses again and again their curved legs and hooves were all pieces of that magnificent moving alphabet.

 

Maybe every childhood is braided with quiescence: moments when a grey-blue haze enfolds the hum of the house, muffles the dog’s bark. Lakes sleep without a ripple. Suddenly a harsh flutter of ragged black wings erupts as an awkward shape emerges from the delicacy of the silent lake. Your question is the gaze you turn toward it. Its answer has no need to push or prove itself.

Transmigration (with Tania P)

Perhaps life passes from one body to another to rise again and look out with refreshed eyes. So pods and fruit appear, only to be plucked by a child’s greedy hunger, or, shaken by a breeze, to reseed the earth for another season – populating farms, towns and cities where words once thrived with meadows of silent grasses and golden poppies.

 Maybe the poppies, so credibly orange and famished red, signal the child, urging her eat the fruit within reach, not necessarily the ripest, signposts of the planet’s collusion to fade memories of stars, wars, lovers and lakes traversed prior to this birth, city, this mother, the slats of past in place, gated, peripherally viewed like the black legs of Thoroughbreds sidling before the bell. 

Atlantis, a reading