yup, it's been a while

I'm sorry. Got immersed in my residency at UCSB, and now getting ready to travel again.

Keeping a sceptical and unconvinced eye on the "power-sharing" agreement in Kenya.

A poem that's humming through me today, from an unpublished manuscript called Blue Watermelon, by Mary Freericks, an amazing poet who came to my workshop in Santa Barbara:

TO HAFEZ

It is hard to start all over. Nothing can moor me now.
The sky is a glass sea I shatter. The turtle is the earth,

not to be endured. I will hold your hand, flowing. Body
to body we are passing through each other.

From its silent tree the nightingale lifts one song.
Ruby throated, the hummingbird has two voices.

Bones weigh me from within, hold down as rocks.
What if I could lift myself, Meykhane waits.

Neutrinos pass through steel, through the center
of the earth to the other side.

Where is the stained glass window opening to your world?
The pigs are shaking their muddy legs.

There will be more blood letting. We will abandon
this dry crust of land, the ship that pilots the Milky Way.

Constellations vibrate, their skirts show the underside
of the creature. A cicada darkens my screen.

Is the strident voice a decoy from a needle bill? I feel
six hundred and fifteen year long wings grow on my back.


Notes

meykhane - Persian. The taverns run by Zoroastrians in Persia / Iran, after the advent of Islam. Considered sacred places that poets frequented.

six hundred and fifteen year long wings - the time span between the poet, Mary Freericks, and Hafez

Contact poet at maryfreericks@yahoo.com