streamsong

When I was a little girl, 

I was entranced by streams.  

Little brooks, running in ditches on roadsides, 

meandering through thickets of woods.

Rainfed, clear.

Lined with pebbles and fallen leaves.

They were enchanted, the homes of fairyfolk, of woodland animals.

The light plays and glints

they gurgle and are silent

sometimes, when you return to a place

they're not there at all

...

Now, I am older, but still enthralled.  

I know of more powerful waters,

those rivers and 

their foaming white horses 

swirling eddies

but is there anything so charming

 so calming

as a little stream? 

love,

a wet-footed wren

The Loneliness of Bones

I've been thinking

about the vulnerable parts of us;

the delicate, the hidden, the hollow.  

about these body clothes we wear

the loneliness of bones, and the marrow.  

And to think, something as precious as this:

a collarbone, a femur,  a vertebra

fragile, tensile

is held in place only 

by the skin of us,

by a blue rivulet 

a system of

confluence and delta

light and lifted

it snakes above a

mangrove of tendons and ligaments

pulsing

And yet-

what is it we hold within?

what lives within this spindly birdcage

and quickens

at the sight

  of the man I love? 

my bones long for his company

the graceful curve of his spine

the delicate hollow of his throat

somehow, together 

we are more

 than bones and blood.  

love,  wren

(who makes you feel like more than bones and blood?) 

Head over heels into the big wide world.

 Hello there.  Would you like to take a walk with me?  

I know a path that leads through the woods; it's not far from here. 

 The fog is hanging low today, and the tops of the trees are skimming the sky. 

I love the autumn. 

 The gentle carpets of leaves, quietly decomposing.  

 Slowly they're humbled into leaf-shaped doilies, nothing left but the sinew,

a lacy reminder of the damp, green unfurling of spring, 

the broad shade and gentle rustlings of summer.

The fruits of the fall have fallen. 

A beautiful bounty, left strewn for the birds.  They too will gather their Thanksgiving feast, 

to be eaten before the sharp chill of winter ushers them south, to seek warmer winds. 

A breeze sets leaves swirling, and small birds abandon their branches. 

Soon I cannot tell leaf from wing- all is browngold and fluttering.  

   In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them.

But some birds don't move at all.  

The Heron stands sentry, knee deep in still waters. 

He will withstand the winter.  

The dove is all the more graceful for her mossy wings.  

She will withstand time.  

We have walked out and now we return, 

following our tracks, 

scanning the path for the curve of our boot-heels.    

We shall not leave anything behind us but the woods. 

love, wren

(where did you wander today?)