Prayer to the High Priestess of Pain for Frida Kahlo o, holy mestiza ……………mirror ……………mirage! how many are drawn to the bedded isle to see her lace-lined face? pilgrims’ sighs infuse the house reverence is a honied song around this bright retablo tin hands beckon from the altar once the offering is laid now kneel […]

San Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe The Franciscan priest who baptized Juan Diego could not pronounce his Nahuatl name but the peasant didn’t mind. His wife’s sweet nickname for him evaporated from his heart the day she died and many neighbors had already accepted Spanish names to go with the cupped handful of […]

Mother Teresa of Calcutta You were a mustard seed growing great for continents to rest on your arms. You never abandoned anyone but gathered flocks of outcasts who has less dignity than mud- matted stones or flies on decaying bodies. You awoke the dying to give them the last rites of comfort. A beggar once […]

Small Graces I sit down with my lute of Western Red Cedar and Yew, I mother it gently into my lap, its curved back, like the curve of the earth. My fingers search the courses, fumbling, breaking the melody into fractious shards, the undeniable broken strains of the world’s descant ruptured. Yet dreams of wholeness […]

The Broken Tulip For decades, no one knew what caused the flaring the feathering of tulips, Parrot like, Red on orange Peppermint red on white Black on tangerine — The eruption into flame for broken tulips like Absalom and Mabel What causes tulips to “break”? The mosaic virus carried by aphids infects bulbs and the […]

Late Night Call with God God’s voice echoed through every house I’ve ever lived in and every house I’ve ever lied in whispering I don’t know how you have done it withstanding the waves and the woods the knife and the night the stillness of the void If You don’t know then who does I […]

Wandering in Search of Truth I stand before You, Your word, Your Truth, Your people, as a boy about to become a man, who had stopped being a boy years before. If that sacred space were empty would I even be able to empty myself before You? To stop pretending I am pure, like milk, […]

The Word In this time, when so much has been silenced, I will speak this word. I will make it the heroine of the stories I tell my daughter, so she too can carry it with her. I will weave it into all that I remember and which she has never known: the carefree play […]

When Windows Are Not Windows Everything in my recent life comes down to three windows. I’m looking through one right now, on the opposite wall of the room I rarely leave. Outside are two stout limbs of an old maple, the kind that used to line our street in upstate New York. I rarely leave […]

The Bellows The bellows breath ignites a fire. Flames purge your nostrils, gut, and brain, rouse the serpent from its slumber, coiled up in your sacral cave. Cross-legged, your head bowed to face your heart, breathe in to lift your chest up toward your chin. Exhale, inhale through your nose, pump your gut to blast […]