MADAME MOON

Painting by S. Auberle



MADAME MOON 

Would we love you as much

if you didn't leave every month?

You're not a fickle lover,

we can count on your return

yet o that loss, that shrinking

of your voluptuous body  

every twenty eight days--

something old and lonely

inside us wonders

will you really return?

Might your mountains

call you one last time? 

to settle down there--

no more Earth voyages?

Who could blame you? 

Sometimes the journey gets long

and settlement in one place

can whisper enticingly, 

yet, looking down each month

you see our little lights below

begging your return, to illuminate 

one more time our lives,

our losses, our loves

one more prayer to be our lamp… 

please, Madame Moon

push back for us again

that long and lonesome night.

 

~  mimi

GIVING THANKS

Photo art by S. Auberle



GIVING THANKS

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another,

we walk here in the light of this unlikely world that isn't ours for long.

                                                                          ~  John Daniel

Friend, the road is the destination…so they say, but my destination this morning is a sunny meadow.  The air is crisp, a bit of frost lingers on leaves beneath my feet and a little north wind teases at me.  Across the field, and into crow-talking woods for a while--I am warmer in here, out of the wind.  The trail winds deeper through tall trees, past old settlers discard heaps.  The crows and I converse for a while, then, wing to wing, they fly off into late autumn blue, and I return to the dry grass meadow and its ancient apple trees.  Here and there hangs a yellow or red globe, a bright spot of color in the dead branches.  Garlands of bittersweet drape their bright orange against a cerulean sky.  Small, abandoned nests dot the trees and a mud-dauber house hangs heavy in a branch, its swirls and patterns  exquisitely fashioned.  At my feet grasses are hollowed out, where deer have bedded down in the night.  A dog barks somewhere, far off.  I am just another child grown old, yet my heart still beats, lungs take in air, legs carry me over the land--what gifts--what blessings!  The fourteenth century mystic, Meister Eckhart, said if the only prayer you said in your whole life was thank you, it would suffice.  And though most days I question whether anyone is listening, today I kneel in cold grass, whispering my two word love poem…over and over and over. 

~  mimi

It goes without saying, of course, that I am immensely grateful for many, many things in my life, most importantly--my tribe of loved ones.  And grateful to be spending this beautiful holiday with some of them, so once again, the road beckons...Happy Thanksgiving to all...

CROW INK

Photo by S. Auberle

CROW INK 

Crows know.

They take their black

raucous selves,

fire up that attitude

and never look back

at their abandoned nest

high in the pines.

 

I wonder sometimes

if our lives

might be no more

than the art of crows

written for awhile

on the sky,

then in an instant

erased by the wind. 

~  mimi

 

the title poem of my book...seems like a good poem for this time of year...

"Crow Ink" published by Little Eagle Press, 2009



NOVEMBER

Photo by S. Auberle
(taken through moving car window)

There is always that last day,

the one you never want to see

and yet, what is lovlier?

This is the day before the day

when November settles in.

This is the day out in the woods

when last silver moths

are winging from moss to leaf,

the day of the last chorus

of swans in the bay.

Today ladybugs are making

their small journeys,

today last leaves are letting go,

tumbling down to the beckoning earth.

This is the amazing day

I watch a proud mink

trotting into the forest,

fur gleaming   dark     wet,

a fish in its mouth

wriggling in the ecstasy

of November's little deaths.

 

~  mimi

 

(first published in Crow Ink, 2009, Little Eagle press)