What a Mother Does

We all think we are the one, we all seek those who confirm or deny our supposition, what is wrong with us. 

The cave mouth is never not shining in the distance.

Fionnghuala's orchids scaling tendril frames cut from the apple tree.

In the hemlock a male cardinal comes to rest and the old familiar pain deepens but also somehow grows lighter, as if at last I am ready to be grateful for everything, even suffering.

Still missing cigarettes, three and a half decades gone. 

Swallows at dusk, everything briefly held together in their divine lettering of light and dark.

A joke is less about content than timing, which most of us don't know or forget but also, timing is hard.

Going slower under the train tunnel, why.

I sleep on the couch, neck pain spreading again into my lower skull, until at last I sit up, give up, choking on fear and bile. 

This this.

Chrisoula makes a salad, brings it to me in the bedroom where I am writing, sits with me while I eat, in this new crisis falling back on what a mother does.

This odd emphasis on being late, out of time - what and why?

Three things floated away on the Vermont river, and one of them came back to me transformed.

If there are dogs in the bardo, may I never leave the bardo.

She wears the sundress a woman made her decades ago in Vermont, her arms and shoulders deep brown and muscled, the blue cloth sliding easily off when we lean on each other in the old way.

Jeremiah says "remember when Dad used to make us kiss that birch tree in the forest" and everybody laughs, even I laugh, but still. 

Desire is not a crime but it does lack a certain discernment, hence the many warnings.

On the road to Pittsfield a black bear tumbles over the guardrail and lumbers across the road and the whole day is better accordingly, om shanti shanti shanti.

What we call oneness is simply a limit on perception, we are just observers, why is this so hard.

Swimming past where the bottom is reachable, then turning back to the shallows where she waits, full of ideas and understanding, like a teacher, a grandmother, like a witch who has come back from her banishment to forgive us and to teach us how to love.