Light Upon Light

Perhaps light upon light is more difficult to perceive than light upon darkness. Light upon light contains the soft touch of ‘something else'. And what if this something else could be spun into a fine, indestructible thread, and woven into the most ordinary clothing? Would the trajectory of this new creation be considered perpendicular or parallel?

Maybe it is important to remember that any trail that has long since vanished from air or water still remains visible. With each and every breath we enter the inspiration that binds feathers to the feather-bed, egg whites to the omelet; that infuses a hint of eternity to three coin-sized moths flitting into artificial light, milky-white after months of a dark, melancholic journey - flickering for a moment in the jeweled silky brilliance of their destination's gemstone.

Several Directions

Perhaps every single moment of life stands open in several directions, like the unknown figures we see in dreams. A bird catches my eye, flying low through the air as I hear the woe-is-me call of the mourning dove, the screechy cries of jays and crows hopping on the lawn. Who are you? I ask in my deepest voice, as winged feathery swarms scatter and lift, bright balloons disappearing into the sky. Whose wings will I follow? And why? 

Maybe while the past is lost forever, everything that didn’t happen is doubly lost. Everything that could have been different is the hardest part. No landmark, just the contours of the many missed moments leading me on like a compass point. The tugs on my sleeve, the pleading whispers, the forest more than ever full of voices. I now know the cost of what once seemed effortless, of we who saw each other always for the last time. An absence so large the crows call out its sorrow. I forge on into every dark day searching for you with only a day’s supply of food, a mirror, and a flashlight. 

The Search

Perhaps they were soft, small and made of cloth so they could easily be held in our arms and hugged.  We clutched them in our sleep, played with them on rainy days, carried them to the post office, the preschool, the grocery store and the park. And since it was not unusual during this time for a lion to lie beside a zebra, for a shark to be cuddled, or for a black panther to be kissed and stroked, they came to represent the world as we often wished it were – soft, small, and good.

Maybe as we grew and our childhoods were crammed into small cardboard boxes, we continued, for a time, to demand justice against the sufferings of the world. Yet at some point it was easier to forget, along with everything else we were never very comfortable talking about. Today, although there is very little light left on the road, we turn around in an effort to reunite with what was lost, what was forgotten, what was harmed. There is still time to find it, we believe. It couldn't have gone very far. Neighbors come to help, but immediately become aware that the road is very long. What are you searching for? they ask. Please tell us where you lost it or put us into the path of where you last saw it. Several of them are smoking cigarettes. One of them is looking at his watch.

After the Rain

Perhaps from the trees’ black shadows, small birds burst into color, their bright feathers flaring like the sun itself.  As their warmth drives away the wetness, poppies in bloom cast a tangerine glow over green water. Large bands of clouds dissipate to reveal a blue sky mingled with a magic of tint and pigment, forming an arc of translucent hue - vast, brilliant, evanescent, and fanciful.

Maybe to look at bright green leaves against the black trunk of a wet tree is similar to asking a question. I wonder, how to grieve for the blackened part? Sunshine spreading like a golden fever into my veins moves across my eyes as shadows abandon the objects that once projected them. Yet in my heart I am pinched by something sharp as the dark, as the receding root of winter chills the air around me. I walk out into the morning surrounded by colors so bright and restless I can’t bear to look at them for long.

Someone's Memory

Perhaps I once entered someone’s memory. The place was planted with a forest of large shade trees and loud voices. On one of the trees hung a painting of a cat, a cat sleeping on a fence, a cat who was famous to the birds. The cat woke up to stretch as daylight ended. I called out to the cat, to the trees, to the birds, to the loud voices; I called out to the shadow of the sky’s wide and immense stare, to the empty, black, interstellar nothing, to the dark gleams appearing on the backs of leaves, but not even a breath of wind answered me.

Maybe as the night progressed I called out to the moon who appeared to be so close that it would be possible to travel there to visit her. I called out in a silence only the moon could understand, but the moon was looking elsewhere. My mind moved on to the next memory, a story that formed a treeless forest where all possibility of upward escape was cut off.  I met you there once in this field of wildflowers and running streams, but who is going to tell me how to find my way to you again in this land I am speaking of? Who will dare to plant a single tree in this field where eye and spirit remain divided in layers of stopped voices and inverted shadows?

A More Beautiful Question

Perhaps we should consider what’s worth doing even at the risk of failure. Then quietly ask ourselves, what are the odds that we’re wrong? And wonder, why did we love doing this so much as a child? And how might we better pry off that lid and stir the paint? Better yet, what if we could use one paintbrush to replace another? And being that we all live in the world our questions help create, how do we get more people in the door, and really make the numbers add up?

Maybe, in the face of uncertainty, why not ask, why are we climbing this mountain in the first place? And what are we leaving behind, deep inside and down below? And what if we succeed? Who will miss us? And finally, what if we could ask this question in a way that it has never been asked before?

Your memory (guest post by Tess P)

On November 26, 2017 my dear friend Tess Pfeifer left this world. It is fitting that Teresa and I first met in a writing workshop in Amherst, MA as the precious core of our friendship had, at its heart, both the love of language, and the language of love. Teresa's contributions to family, friends and community left this world a better place. A devoted mother, teacher, librarian, sister, poet, mentor, grandmother, and friend - she is missed by all.

This poem by Teresa was originally posted on 2/12/2017

Perhaps your memory is hazy as sea glass, smooth and etched into softer blues, subtle greens or chalky whites. The clarity of a window you passed long ago has faded. You remember church bells, the smell of basil, the day you found your car had been towed, but then the sun melts into the bay and here you are.

Maybe a bad memory is no memory at all, but a haunting. It could be a story someone told you, a newspaper column about a Japanese woman who died and was eaten by her cats, or the other stories you read for pleasure. Sometimes you wonder what’s behind that door you closed, the place where you came from, and then you're treading dark water. Your bad memory is like a stray dog that wanders off somewhere and once home, you think it may carry a disease or it must have ticks or fleas.

horse-riding librarians

Prickly Purple Beauty

Perhaps the prickly purple beauty of thistle flower tints the summer seaside with lavender crowns. She feels at home here in these gilded hills, sparkling in her element as an amethyst jewel – each showy filigree orb perched on a silvery stem hemmed with the rich, royal green spiked collar of her imperial costume.

Maybe she is a no more than a troublesome weed, you say. With her stubborn, invasive root system and impenetrable armor of sharp thorns she is not easy to remove. Though she may choke your garden, come first and visit her on this secluded seaside trail, and see her as I see her. Greet her with the same sweet morning song of sunshine that opens your own soft violet eyes. Watch how industrious bees and idle butterflies alike are drawn to drink her dew. 

orange of

Perhaps the eerie, glowing orange of today's midday sun summons the midnight panic of hands reaching for family pets, photographs, passwords and passports with only minutes to spare. We have no desire to eat or speak as long as the soot of last night's hungry, weary witching hour infuses this peachy air – an air charged with particles too dangerous to breathe in yet impossible to flee – microscopic motes of heartbreak clinging to our cars, mailboxes, and entering our bloodstreams, scattering like loose petals in a fluttering avalanche of whirl and whim.

Maybe the grey that remains of what is lost kneels before each family. Twists of molten glass, shards of chipped and blackened plates, a child’s toy somehow untouched, a scorched coffee cup. Meanwhile this dusty citrus sheen of sunlight continues to illuminate the black skeletons of trees and florescent orange cones marking evacuated neighborhoods, the pumpkin-orange vests of volunteers combing the debris for human remains, a color so bright no one can bear to look at it for long.

  

The kind of red

Perhaps it is the kind of red that tastes of late-September strawberries ripening under their dark-haired leaves, the sweetness of nature’s last hurrah sugaring the pink edge of my tongue – or the red over-ripe scent of forgotten apples left on the tree too long; a heavy, somber fragrance souring the air that follows my footsteps on this early morning walk.

Or maybe it is the kind of red that belongs to police lights swiveling into the dimly lit kitchens of neighbors coaxing their children to finish their breakfasts and get ready for school. The deafening shriek of sirens that filled my ears the morning you lost your son. I remember tugging at my own son to get dressed, brush his hair, zip his jacket, and put on his shoes as we ventured out into the cold red sunrise that hurt my eyes already red and wet from crying and I kissed him goodbye at the door of his kindergarten classroom.

Landmarks

Perhaps it is a way of being lost without having gone anywhere, like arriving at a cottage where all the year’s flowers bloom at once. The day begins with a long walk over land edged with the vivid blue of sky and white clouds overhead close enough to touch.

Maybe there is not one single open place, no path to walk along.  You attempt to follow the tracks of a rabbit, your feet crushing dandelion stalks sprinkled with dust. Thorns, briars and brambles fill the space of the open dry ground, until all the land looks alike. Up close the wide open vista dissolves into texture, into incoherence. You resolve, try again, and move along in stutters, starts, and stops.

Imperfect

Perhaps a story, like a person, remains imperfect, incomplete, during its entire existence. Each and every masterpiece of digression is a person on the beach tentatively touching his or her toes to the edge of the sprawling sea. It is a Mobius strip in which the first and last lines and all unfinished fragments in between link up to frame a unique, never-ending cycle of creation – a beautiful reminder that new views appear with every footstep and rays of understanding will always illuminate what needs to be seen.

Maybe in the cool spring twilight, water in the stream drips between rocks and I remember when you turned fourteen. We read The Odyssey together, and in the midst of the story's high drama you questioned the preferential intervention of the Gods. At the point when Odysseus’ men grew so full of despair at the hopelessness of their situation that they broke into weeping, I felt a glimmer of clarity. Waiting for the light of the rising moon I stand up and look out past the gathering darkness still waiting for you, you who promised to visit me.

Camelot

Perhaps because I am able to love you today, happiness follows me like a shadow. The saint to be appreciated and the animal to be condemned that have always existed inside of me dissolve into one. I am at ease, like a sky deciding to become one kind of weather. I am a painting of birds, a metaphor for what I might call joy, for what you might call light.

Maybe Camelot, located nowhere in particular, can be found anywhere. Any one brief, shining moment in which we accept whatsoever is the case, without praising it or detecting faults. Next, we pick a language from what we're given as twigs collect by the side of the path and wild flowers space themselves along the meadow. Your arm reaching toward me becomes what I might call a wing - what you might call a knife.

Bells of Dawn

Not the best quality video, but beautiful sound!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxmbMUq9Mbw

Origin of Flux

Perhaps that which has happened can unhappen at any moment. I take a breath in, and I immediately have to throw one out again. The edge of day, which appears fixed in the mosaic of my eye, is even closer than it seems as it pulls away from me into the passing hours, days, months and years of a lifetime.

Maybe as I strive to direct my life according to the possible, memories occur, like rain clouds journeying west to east pressured by wind. These memories are neither small nor large; they are neither here nor elsewhere. They are the depth and echo of a future time; horses elegant and bright. Their galloping doesn’t mean they have come from elsewhere. Here when they are here, here before they were here, here after they were here – they are from no place from which I could ever orient myself.

Law of the Three

Perhaps everything is divided into three. The true, the good, the beautiful.  Existence, consciousness, and bliss. The seer, the seen, and their relationship. And what about the proton, neutron and electron? No one has seen electrons, yet it is mathematically assumed they are there.

Maybe, even about electrons, very little can be said. Physicists claim that now that we have electrons, we have come to the limit of matter because electrons are not visible and have no material property. Yet electrons cannot be called non-matter either, because all matter consists of them. If they are neither matter nor non-matter, what to call them? In the meantime, the hypnotist goes on repeating the phrase there, at the center of that sleep until you fall so easily under her spell – so colorful, so attractive, so magnetizing. You raise your eyebrows and wink, the real world falling through your mind in glittering pieces.

What is Misfortune?

Perhaps misfortune begins with a ringing in the left ear.  It moves on to issue bad weather: storms, extreme cold, thunder and lightning – before widening its scope to make room for an accident requiring surgery, a failed relationship, emergency dental work and a lost wallet. Beware – it will find you more easily if you convince yourself that it’s gone for good.

Maybe while holding your breath, you may get a chance to throw a knife at misfortune’s chest, or kick it square in the jaw, sending it flying backward into a pile of boxes. Either way it is one down, two to go. Yet even as the darkness of all former unfortunate moments crowd together within you, life itself presents you with a most mysterious gift.  The world paints the world with light as snow mounds melt to make way for crocus buds. No applause, no congratulations as heavy sheets of spring rain feel surprisingly warm and refreshing on your arm.  

Like Birds

Perhaps children are like birds. Today see one thing, tomorrow another, yet remember nothing. They clamor for pebbles to build a toppling palace with, for flowers forgotten as soon as they are cut. With the invisible strings of a pretend bow they shoot a make-believe arrow into the open sky. As long as they don’t aim, they’ll never miss the mark. 

Maybe as the child in us departs, a shadow comes over our faces. But is it our fault? How happy we shall be! we proclaim in the pale tones of early morning after revisiting the youthful joy of singing a song out loud. Yet we are troubled to see that the once bright red bricks of the chimney have visibly darkened. A birdfeeder falls in the backyard, cracks and spills its seeds. We leave it on the ground.

The Magician and His Wife

Perhaps the magician and his wife, now retired, live in a small house in the country surrounded by tulips. Each day the magician waters the tulips, and tells his wife about the flowers that have newly appeared. There goes the old man into the garden again, bent with a watering can in his shaking hand. His wife stands at the door and looks at him calmly.

Maybe the magician’s wife has seen this image a thousand times, yet sees it a little less well every time since her eyesight has weakened. She stands at the garden gate and calls out to him but he does not hear her voice. His eyes are grey and old and something in them is strange – one would like to say alive. The magician’s wife follows him and takes his arm. Together they stand at a threshold, yet dare not step over it. Dusk is gathering as they walk back into the house.

Nude in the Bath

Perhaps the woman with the invisible face is a constant source of mystery. Though not at the physical center of the composition, she is the main focus around which the room revolves.

Maybe even as she lies encased in a watery tomb constructed from the gleaming white rim of the tub, there is always a chance the woman will slip out of the picture at the lower edge. Her pink flesh tinged with lilac might for a time escape the flatness of the painting, and emerge from its suffocating color and light into a great wind that will carry her over tall grasses via a scheming, mischievous sky. Sunglasses in hand, the woman will arrive in a cold country in the middle of a heavy snowstorm. To make ends meet she will walk from door to door selling pencils and writing paper until someone invites her in for a cup of coffee. Then as her host proceeds to tell the most appalling tales that include the despicable conduct of the local people, the first step will have been taken. The woman will now be torn between wishful thinking and the idea that some way for her to leave this place will surely be found.