Butterfly
The belly crawl urges you forward,
from the potential of what was cold and dead.
Up,
toward a new layer of atmosphere.
Up,
toward a new sense of purpose.
Let yourself dangle from what you know,
into what you don't know.
Let yourself go inside your own skin,
to find the new colors,
that haven't been seen or named
and the wings,
that will set you free,
into an endless horizon,
of new challenges.

Tourscher Homestead I
The dread of that road,
and even the one before that,
and even,
the one before that,
was felt as something that I couldn't quite swallow,
as I sat in the back of a blue wagon.

The crowd of those cars,
gathered and impossibly parked;
indicators of the chaos in the house,
that was too warm and too small,
so that nothing was contained.
It all spilled out,
like the blood of a deer,
hanging from the oldest tree.

The cousins spilled out too;
running into the corn,
into the heavy shade of the trees.
And then running back in,
weaving through each aunt and uncle,
overstimulated strangers,
looming and grabbing.

Clusters of us,
blocking the stairs,
slowing my escape into back rooms,
back rooms that slept three sisters to a bed,
and also,
where the guns were kept.
(Which one killed my cousin?)

What choice do I have now,
but to root through my father's memories,
and his ancient toys,
cupboarded up,
and kept underfoot of a grandma,
who was more coarse than kind,
from a lifetime of caretaking,
for all but herself.
Her roughness scraped me once.

My amygdala misinterpreted it all.
My fear was born from a misbelief,
It was born on the kitchen table.
It was born in the barn.
It was the start of many tales I would tell myself,
that dipped and turned like all those dreaded roads.
I've since healed from the impact,
of poorly executed,
good intentions.

Tourscher Homestead II
There are layers here,
that you can't see.
They are buried here,
with some water,
that won't ever touch my tongue.
Much like the language,
that was spoken in rooms,
that I was too afraid to enter.

I was a small, scared child,
who was never taught,
how not to be scared.
I would watch the well,
that was just out the window,
and wish for it to be magic.

I am grown now
so I can distinguish the layers;
because they rose up within me too.
The love that flows,
from a honeyed heart.
The anger that bursts from me,
as though it were laughter.
Even the fear,
that I have long since,
learned to ride the wave of,
was a layer too;
it was the first one.

I can now hold,
what was built and is building still,
quickly, in the synaptic cleft,
slowly, over the births and the deaths.
The layers are in me and I am also one layer.
But mine has some magic,
that I got from that well.

Tourscher Homestead III
The desire for my own patch of sky,
was implanted in me early on,
by intermittent, fear soaked visits,
to the land of my father.

The sky there,
a cerulean dome,
was stitched to the edges of tree studded hills.
At night it was the darkest dark,
I'd ever seen,
if not for the illumination,
of streaks of milk
and limitless stars.

I would look to the limitlessness of the sky,
from the porch,
from the cornfield,
from the driveway,
where I kicked the up the gravel,
and coated myself with dust.
It held the space I sought.
Cool, clean space,
from all the bodies of related strangers;
cool, clean space,
from my thoughts that like strangers,
were hot and hovering.

I can merge with everything
but when I merge with the sky,
I am the most free.
I can forget,
about the land that it is stitched to.
I can forget,
about the me that it is stitched to.
There is a momentary cure,
I can borrow from the sky,
by expanding my breath,
to match the expanse of the sky.

The short years have past
and my father's bones are long buried.
The visits to the land of this teaching
are less frequent now,
and soaked with sentiment,
instead of fear.

Tourscher Homestead IV
I look out on the land,
but this time through my daughter's eyes.
Her fears have always been expressed
and then explained.
She can breathe in all of the beauty,
and the possibility,
because she isn't holding her breath.
She has been held more than me,
because she was never afraid,
to ask to be held.
She is familiar with containment.
She is solid within herself.
She will step out onto each stone,
towards who she is,
and towards what she wants.

Garden's Pain
Behind the garden,
she trudges through beauty.
A flood of bitter petals,
creates the song of summer's wind.
She inhales, deeply,
the juice of a delicate rose.
Pain diffuses into her:
from all of the stretching and reaching;
from all of the opening and allowing;
from all of the feeling and crying.
She exhales, entirely,
as she wafts away,
through the delphinium.
She shakes the blood,
raw and red,
from the white
of her finger.

Juliette
Juliette is beautiful.
But, she is no flower in a field,
because she will not yield.
She is instead,
tall and strong, like a young oak,
learning how to bend in the wind;
learning how to self sustain,
on the driest of days.
She is also a bird,
flying all about in constant song.
She is also the very sky;
possessing all colors,
and open and ready,
for every possibility.

Shenandoah II
Launch me, launch me far;
further than I've ever been.
Show me the meaning,
of eternal spaces.
I will ride this out.
I do not know where I need to go.
I only know that I am going.

Piece of Peace
There is a piece of peace
and it is in your eye/I
It is the place where your vision lands.
It is the space,
that the light of your consciousness illuminates.
You are blind to what you are blind to.
You cannot know what you do not know.
So you need to look as deeply as you can,
so as to untangle you ganglions
and follow them back to the beginning,
to see how the stones of you are stacked.

But the eye/I needs a mirror to see itself
We are all reflect back to the eyes of the other,
the eyes of the other.
Like an infinity of mirrors,
light is bouncing everywhere.
Let it guide your way.
I will be by your side.

Sometimes
Sometimes,
I forget that I'm alive.
My eyes simply stop looking out.
I sink back,
downer and deeper,
into something else.
An else in which I do not sense,
and I do not perceive,
and there are no questions.
When I come back,
what is real
seems much less real.
I can see each beam and column and slab,
piled carefully and carelessly,
co-constructed unconsciously,
by all of us.
I can discern the roots of it all,
reaching out,
without need but with only curiosity,
from the other state.
The roots reach out through me,
filtered and translated by my
spirals and my solidity.
This is the most alive,
that I have ever been.

Sweet Potato Sunset

Disillusion Haiku
Sometimes what you see,
well, it isn't always there,
you can trick yourself.

Automaticity
The automaticity,
of doing things,
over
and over
and over
until it's all over.
Is this something,
that will build me?
Or is this something,
that will erode me?
Because,
I feel more like dust,
than a mountain.