All the Shades of Blue

Honesty. Clearing ground in late fall, stumps jutting up from wind-blown snow just shy of Christmas, and a sense one is neither missing nor not missing a thing. Blue jays in the hemlocks.

Steam rising off coffee, maple trees on the hill blurred by frosty limbs, and a sense that - but wait.

Waiting. 

My son working beside me, quiet because it's morning, and my heart folding and unfolding like a living but mute creature that can only express itself through dance.

I feel a rebirth behind my shoulders, something coming through me now like an avalanche or a jet.

I remember as a child cataloging all the shades of blue and knowing that doing so was the beginning of a mystery that I wouldn't solve until well into my fifties.

I'm exhausted by all the thinking and rethinking, planning and executing, related to sex, as if my attention has been misdirected all these years, gazing at a surface I am meant not to graze but integrate.

The cold makes me gasp, makes my head ache closing and reclosing the back door until it catches. You can hear the horses at a distance, their hooves grinding two-day old snow.

Goddess moves, vixen moves, grandmother moves.

Shifts in perception. Underlying currents. One day you will write "Christ" and it will be the last time ever. Solar-powered Christmas ornaments growing dim as dawn approaches.

Wife moves, lover moves.

My mother's frantic energy as Christmas draws near and she faces a loneliness that resembles in all the way it she makes it resemble death.

Venus on the livid Eastern horizon, a loveliness, a sentence, a brother, my love.

You have to get right with Lucifer, stop killing mice, and tell Shiva there ain't no dance that a dancer like you can't dance.