I hear sweet echoes

the unformed words of children

floating in the clouds

I taste mushrooms in my dreams sometimes. Almost sweet, almost nutty, they taste like a thick slab of moss heated up and sucked dry. Eating a mushroom is like eating a piece of the forest. If I wasn’t scared of being poisoned I’d like to taste all the wild kinds of mushrooms there are – those lemon-colored ones wearing white lacy veils; the Black Helveticas that look like deer turds; the magical mushies that cluster together in fairy rings; the flat-topped shrooms that look like Swedish pancakes waiting for jam; the brown ones with red slimy tongues erupting from their bellies — I could go on but I won’t. I guess you can tell that I admire the infinite variety and endless creativity of mushrooms. I want to write like a mushroom, bringing color and life out from the dense, dark undergrowth covering the grave.

for five billion years

the earth’s been remodeling

and it's not done yet

Here’s a writing exercise that calls for deep honesty and lots of guts. Write about your fears – those real, down dark fears that you don’t like to admit to yourself. What are you really afraid of?  Connecting with your fears is a great way to access your authentic self, to give voice to the real you who lives at the bottom of who you are. The last time I did this exercise this is what I wrote:

 I want to write about being afraid of death and sickness and incapacity. I want to write how I never want to be helped to the bathroom by my children and how I don’t want to see pity in their smiles as I stumble for a word. I want to write how scared I am of having to give up driving and how I don’t want to be an old lady confessing all the trivialities of my life to a doctor who only pretends to care. I want to write about fearing that everyone will eventually forget me and no one will feel the warmth of my smile and won’t miss it either. I want to write about how much I’d like to see 2025 but I’m so afraid I won’t. I want to write about the fears so that afterwards they will be drained dry of their power and lie, inert and ineffectual, like dryer lint caught in a lint trap, no more scary than that.

While you are dead, you will miss tending your garden; the dew on the early morning spider webs strung between the rosebushes, the dark smell of earth in your nose, the rough feel of dirt between your fingers, and even the ache in your knees. You will miss the little breezes freshening across your damp forehead, the pull against your hands of the weeds clinging to life, and the dog turds decorating your uncut lawn. While you are dead you will miss them, but all things come around again, perhaps even you.

damp green shoots dry out
you thought you had forever
too bad, but you don't

I touch the smooth paper of the notebook, all blank and waiting for my words. There is nothing else that feels like paper on the fingertips, so smooth and fast, a racetrack for my pen. I touch the pen, gripping it between my finger and thumb and I feel its hard barrel unyielding, reliably delivering up my words. I touch the floor with my bare feet, oh how I hate to wear shoes, because then my feet touch scratchy wool or claustrophobic nylon or sweaty leather. I prefer to be able to wiggle my toes on the ground and feel my toes spread apart from each other, each one sending its little pad of smooth cool glassy tile up to the receptors in my brain. My whole body is one big toucher, if I try I can feel the separate red hairs of my sweater against my arms and the elastic tightness of my bra straps and the soft folds of my pants waving around my legs. I am alive and I am here because I can feel.

I don't know how to dance a measured dance, meeting the beat of tradition's music, and swinging to meet a partner's arms. I don't know the feel of his arm around my waist guiding me in the steps of the time-honored past. I don't know the sweet peace of families sewn into my dress or braided in my hair.

I don't know who my blood is. I don't know what my race is; my skin seems covered still by the soft cheesy membrane I was born with, moldy and crumbly like mealy little warts. Even my time seems distant, as if I am living behind smoked glass.

since the earth must die
our words and deeds to space dust
why write poetry?