ADVICE

Painting/collage by S. Auberle

ADVICE

"Every angel is terrifying."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

An angel told me, once,

it's never wrong to add love,

only wrong to take it away...

I didn't see the angel,

I'm not that crazy.

She was only a voice in my head

as I walked the bluff road.

The wind was fierce that day

and I imagine

the angel didn't want

to venture out of my cozy brain,

her wings being fragile and all.

I begged for more advice

but she was quiet then,

sleeping, I guess, until

she roused one more time to say

it will be years, my dear,

before you grow into this poem.

- mimi

UNFOLDING

Photo by S. Auberle

SEVEN ISLANDS IN THE RAIN

After Reuben built this house

on its small, rocky hill,

I imagine he would sit at his table

drinking coffee on mornings like this.

I picture him here, content, as he grew old,

savoring the oak floors, the stone

fireplace--safe shelter

from west winds that could batter

lesser dwellings and he might look out

at the islands, remembering

when he'd sailed among them

and when his coffee was finished,

go out into the soft air

to feed birds, check his apple trees

and admire the hundred tulips

he'd planted by the front door,

their bodies bent low in the rain.

- mimi

COSMIC

Digital collage by S. Auberle

Please don't ask the meaning of this image. I have no idea. It may be a Cosmic Message meant to save the Masses--regarding the universality of joy and sorrow.

Then again, it may be simply what it is--the virtual scribblings of a slightly derangedwriter (I believe that's an oxymoron) who will go to any lengths to avoid tackling a rewrite on which she is stuck.

Poet Billy Collins says poets spend most of their time by a window, productively or not, so I go there--watch a dark object in the orchard which turns out to be a wild turkey. Consider Wild Turkey. Don't. Throw together a pot of posole for dinner. Fill the birdfeeders. Consider raking old grasses and weeds. Don't. Admire stones I found on the beach yesterday. Curse computer for deleting this post before I can save it. Do it over.

Finally, step out into warm April sunshine, enjoy spring. While I can. Before the rains come...

- mimi

PALETTE

Photo by S. Auberle

black and white ducks

courting

in wind-chopped waves

geese out for a stroll

at green

water's edge

cerulean skies

red mittens

April's palette...

- mimi

CLOWN

Osho Zen Tarot Card

CLOWN

I dreamed of you

in billowing

polka-dotted silk.

You honked

your nose at me,

flapped your feet

and declared

I must dance more,

live loud,

never, ever make love

without laughter

and, occasionally,

wear really big shoes.

- mimi

APRIL SNOW

Rowe Sanctuary - 1000 Cranes

APRIL SNOW

Except for tulips

red is not the color of spring.

Not red of cardinal, radiant

against new snow,

not this lean fox

trotting through the storm,

unaware of cold or the fact

that it's the twelfth day of April.

Maybe a poem will come to me

today and I'll paint words on it,

shape the page into a boat

like those old Chinese poets did,

launch it onto a last floe of ice

or fold the poem into a red-crowned crane,

whirl it up into the wind.

- mimi

BLACK

BLACK

You think you know black.

You think you understand black,

that it's merely a color, a mood, a little dress.

You prefer not to think

of it as a hole, the unknowable.

The night you awaken--electricity gone,

black makes itself known.

The window glow that used to be there--gone.

Torrents of rain slice the panes.

No refrigerator sounds, no pump, no furnace.

You didn't know cold had a color.

Howling dervishes newly acquaint you with wind.

Monsters, axe murderers, old demons

you thought were long ago put to rest

crawl from the reptilian corners of your brain.

Daylight is hours away...

How lightly we talk about light!

Write poetry about it, sing to it,

go toward it, they say, when we die.

No exaltation is needed tonight--

flashlight, candle, even a match will do.

You cross yourself, pray, invoke daybreak.

Summon that ancestor who first discovered

the power of only a handful of light...

- mimi

ANGELICA'S EYES

Photo by S. Auberle

ANGELICA'S EYES

She was only a sheep

who had just given birth.

Twin lambs nestled

in the straw beside her.

Outside the shed

snow beat on old wood.

We walked softly,

whispered to her,

but Angelica just stood there,

all the anxieties

of the world in her eyes.

I lost myself in them,

in the plea not to harm these new lives.

Yet nothing reassured her.

Sheep have no defenses,

they are vulnerable prey.

They know this, and do not

carry their burden lightly.

In Angelica's eyes I saw myself,

felt that tense fear

of a sometimes-savage world.

The lambs didn't know yet

how vulnerable they are...

- mimi

ON THE BEACH

Photo by S. Auberle

shattered

ice

like

shards

of

fallen

stars...

- mimi

APRIL

Photo by S. Auberle

Today is Rachmaninoff's birthday and also, as Ma Nature has clearly shown, April Fool's day.

The lion of March has exited with torrential, icy rain and wind, now snow for this first morning of April.

Pinks and yellows, purple, tender greens weave through my mental landscape.

I soften.

Poetry frolics through the new grass of my mind. (April is National Poetry Month.)

I want to visit England--the hillsides of Wordsworth's daffodils, the new lambs gamboling in the fields.

Reality--I walk the icy beaches, fight my way through unyielding, dried grasses taller than me. Step on old fish bones in the shape of butterfly wings. Out onto bay ice, tentatively, where there are patches of muted green and white in the texture and colors of finest marble. Admire the tundra-like landscape, the calligraphy of old weeds curved in frozen snow.

Reality and Dream...always the whispering angels on my shoulders...

- mimi