in ceremony

When the guitar penetrated the dark

the girl next to me began to weep.

I wanted to crawl across the earth floor,

take her to my heart,

coax her back against the clay wall

until she felt the mountain

beating beneath us,

but I was too afraid of my own shame

to touch hers. I knew she needed to cry

without comfort,

until there were no tears left for herself.

Then she could walk out in the morning

to see the hummingbird

                                      drop from the sun

on invisible sound

seed syllables

whirling down the mountain

to gild the open flowers with stardust.

the flowers are open

the flowers are open

the flowers are open

The Dream of the volcano is to release the rainbow in the dark cloud

I knew it was long past time to wake up.

The birds were just barely singing. I’d missed

the daily aria, the uprise of song

from the heart of the dark mountain.

How do birds know when the sun will rise

in the mountain’s shadow? The sun reaches the sea

hours after it rises, pouring downslope to the sea

like lava daring late sleepers to wake up

and walk on it. Be the bird rising

before the sun, the one who hasn’t missed

her chance to join the song

offered back to the heart of the mountain.

What holds us to earth lives beneath the mountain.

I want to remember that song,

not to know my life by what I’ve missed.

I will do what it takes to wake up.

Walk over coals to the sea,

offer my blistered feet to the rising.

Rivers will be my guide in the rising.

They will lead me to the mountain,

and even if I die before I wake up,

I will be remembered by the sea

because I followed what my heart missed

to the source of the song.

And my blood sang, and the song

carried all the memories of the sea

back into the heart of the mountain,

deep enough to anchor our rising.

Offshore, the bell-buoy tolls, wake up.

You have been missed

by the dreaming volcano, and the mist

dispersing the rainbow, rising—

sunlight broken by the sea,

released in song

that stokes the fire in the mountain—

It is time, wake up.

We know the sea by how it falls and rises.

What we miss keeps us from hearing the mountain.

Remember the song—the colors are fading. Wake up.

Revelation of the Seven Blues

This must begin with the sound of water heard

underwater, with a man and woman

bathed in smoke from a low fire

he lit to keep bugs from her bare legs

stretched long on the ground.

This must begin after she has offered herself for hours

to the broken light that shatters into seven shades of blue

cradled between a goddess’s stripped white hipbones.

At the edge, ringed by mangroves,

where two young vultures rise from their nest

without flapping their wings

and home in relentless circles

to the hum of spilled blood,

he will float in her arms and grief will burst him open

like rain flooding a ghost river of boulders

worn down by time that can’t be measured.

He will remember his childhood.

And then he will hear the tribe of women inside her

whose tongues have been cut from their mouths,

and hold his wrist to hers

until they are one pulse,

naming each shade of blue

as the rising sun rolls over the water

and the vultures bow

to the clean bones

before drifting into the clouds.

Then,

they will have reached the body’s

furthest edge, a blue watermark

rising under the skin bearing all they have lost

to the river’s source.

Then, when they stand in the still mirror

on the spinning Earth,

surrounded by fish that flash

and go out like stars,

they will hear the sun hiss

in surrender to the water

and blood will turn again

toward the heart.

Poem to my lost ancestors

Without faith, I came again to the forest,

laid my hollow bones down in ferns.

The light, looking up, was tender as a wound.

I wasn’t ready to look at them,

my hollow bones laid down in ferns.

The marrow, a missing song my ancestors lost.

I wasn’t ready to look at them—

who had they killed that I should live?

The marrow, a missing song my ancestors lost

long before I was born.

Who had they killed that I should live?

Why should I feel guilty?

Long before I was born

the future was corrupted by fear and loss.

Why should I feel guilty,

as if I deserve

a future corrupted by fear and loss?

I could continue to live

as if I don’t deserve

the light streaming down like an un-dammed river.

I could continue to live

for all that was lost—

the light streaming down like an un-dammed river

in the ravaged forests.

For all that was lost,

so much more forgotten

in the ravaged forests.

How to speak with trees and water—

so much more forgotten.

A human is here to make beauty with words,

how to speak with trees and water

in the language light taught us.

A human is here to make beauty with words.

Without faith I came again to the forest.

In the language light taught us I found it,

looking up, tender as a wound.

breathing again after a long time underwater

Reaching my hands into the late afternoon light

glowing on the river's final curve, I didn't believe

I was beautiful,

                         like the valley's wild horses

hiding in high ferns I parted with my hands like

lace curtains, air

closing behind me without a ripple.

I came to a clearing.    Light streamed down.

From the far side a mare rose from crushed ferns.

She watched me with the liquid eyes of one

who can see in the dark without stumbling.

I wanted to come closer, but her foal,

still in its slick caul, stood on shaky legs,

fell back onto ferns slippery with birth blood.

For a few moments I forgot I was a human

who could kill what I loved.

At dusk I bathed at the river's edge

where the horses came out of the ironwoods

to face the river's mouth. Sharks waited there

for pig carcasses to wash down,

jaws hacked out by hunters to mount.

People disappeared all the time in that valley.

I was just a girl at the edge of a clearing.

I don't need to tell the story of how I was

broken anymore.

                               Now I can speak

of how a wild horse watched me from the ironwoods

and of how warm the river was when I knelt

to lift late afternoon light out of the water.

                                            How I

poured it over my head. How it flowed

down my hair and shoulders, gilding my skin,

                             returned to river unbroken.n the second part. At 56, I am now in the third phase, where, acding to my design, it’s my time to