The swallowtail paid a visit this morning, a flutter of striped wings, tipped itself in hello as we sipped coffee and looked up from our morning paper.
We smiled at the swallowtail then each other. You swear it is the transformed caterpillar we rescued from certain death as it hung from the dog’s lip and then tenderly placed in safety on the gourd vine leaves growing by the wood pile.
I do not know. It could very well be. It is beautiful in its flight. Its morning joyful greeting of belonging, of having found its place.
Inside a sarcophagus of stone,
I have dwelled,
a hard place in which to learn to live,
no breath taken, heart stilled,
where all living shrinks down,
behind skin and soul,
to be bound in hieroglyphic wrappings
designed by others.
Onlookers believing
the pretense they wish to see--
as I stopped struggling for air,
a mimic of the beating rhythms of life,
accepting the coldness of the stone.
Any warmth transitory as the sun
in its travels from
season to season
from rise to set,
in these years
I have known only coldness
after any fleeting glimpse of warmth.
Such a bitter coldness--
though none would think
I lived encased within stone,
so life-like my hieroglyphic mask,
a masterful mimic I had become.
Until stone cracked,
by mountain winds and sun,
falling in splintered shards,
crumbling to dust ‘round me.
My tattered, faded wrappings
torn, hanging loosely.
Until a hand, as if in possession
of long forgotten, ancient magic,
should touch long dead embers,
and in touching rekindle flame,
swirling within, spiraling outward
warmth that does not die
upon the withdrawal of touch.
A heat lingering, warming still,
stirs hunger once thought dead to life.
Sweetness pounds a rhythm out—
starting a heart to beat again,
blessed breath returns
to deflated lungs,
the shallow breath, the weak pulse
hold ancient power,
leaving flesh and blood and bone
to move in life again,
a life reclaimed from the stone
of gray filled years.
Cautiously, hesitantly,
I step over the dust of shattered stone,
making my way toward the touch
that carefully, tenderly removed
my tattered hieroglyphic bindings,
allowing me to move freely
within my own skin.
There trembles within,
a longing I never sought to find.
Hope rises and takes Fear
within its embrace,
transforming it to joy,
as I extend my hand
to the warmth of you.
Here, beneath the trees,
we sit in the peace
of a sunlit afternoon.
My words, my pale pathetic words,
fade in the light of you.
As the words
I grasp at as possibilities
to say all I mean
evaporate
from my hands and mind
like the water
in this drying arroyo
shrinks away from its banks
before us,
I am left wordless.
For no words can stand
in the light of you
and the gifts you bring
to places where
I discovered
pieces missing
in light of you.
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 