Natural Love

Great bursts of chemical oozings

slide through ventricles

and disperse,

unhinge my sternum

and part my lungs

so my heart can push

at the thin skin of my chest.

My cranium becomes elastic, inflates,

its crown swelling - 

a transparent formation of overhead eyestalks -

giving me dizzying heightened sight.

My brain swims in its extra space.

My eyeballs bob back

and bounce off my

frozen-taut tongue.

I hear each deafening slide of cloth,

each rock-grinding foot shuffle

and each cyclonic breath-breeze.

I can hear your hair growing.

I can smell your hair growing.

The veins of my limbs

sprout bristles like crystals,

that sting then leave a numb ache.

Arms weakly waver and sway,

palms glowing warm

emitting waves of wet essence,

while cool fingers wake into

novel functions as antennae,

extending to sense airborne clues,

seeking any molecule of you.

My feet have grown suction cups.

I'm vacuumed to the spot.

It is all so lovely. 

And how I long for more.

           © Laura Seale,  2019

Jellyfish, photo by CarbonNYC
from Wikimedia Commons

The Shape I Have in Mind

Lately my poems 

hide in 

impenetrable 

marble blocks.

I wear out my eyes

and my hands

trying to force

a shape. 

I need a poem made of clay, 

that falls before me in a great lump,

and yields to gentle pressure

into the shape 

I have in mind

without waste

or dust

or blood.

© Laura Seale, 2018

American sculptor Doris Caesar in her studio
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Complementary

For those who stop themselves

I am afraid to share my voice but you love to sing.

From now, when I am beside you,

may your glad singing always override my inhibitions.

May you remember to look at me directly 

and sing loudly with no thought to my shyness.

May your voice, which soothes me in plain speech,

in singing wrap around me and pull out my smile, 

a hum, so maybe someday my song will rush out to meet yours.

You avoid moving to music but I love to dance.

From now, when you are beside me,

may my sway and stomp always override your embarrassment.

May I remember to look at you directly 

and dance freely with no thought to your shyness.

May my feet, which walk comfortably beside yours,

step joyfully around you and pull out your smile, 

a bounce, so maybe someday your dance will rush out to meet mine.

© Laura Seale, 2017

Couple dancing, Peru
Library of Congress
from Wikimedia Commons

I Indulge My Imagination

I found a smooth river stone that fits my hand

when I grasp it that right way, 

with the flattened end toward my little finger. 

It’s easy to imagine it’s been handled by people before, 

who may have made use of it for years,

smashing nuts or grinding seeds

or simply noticing how soothingly it fits in the palm

when held just so 

before chucking it back into the river.

© Laura Seale, 2017

Probable rubbing stone
by Adam Daubney, via the UK's Portable Antiquities Scheme
from Wikimedia Commons

As Water We Have Options

These stagnations that come from low water -

where once was excess, remnants lie in stillness, 

shrinking, draining, breeding stink and mischief.

Don't live there.

Live, when you can, in the ripple that holds its place

Even as the river flows fast through.

Live in the fluid rise that's elevated

By the complementary forces of

Forward motion and

Surface tension.

Stationary, stable, yet rolling and always new,

Sometimes so full it has to sing,

Sometimes so full it's bursting 

to let go its toehold and join the formless flow

on down the river.

© Laura Seale, 2017

Rippling Water
by Siru7887
from Wikimedia Commons

Wonder Unimpeded

No remnants of boundaries

in the laboring hours.

In a fluid garment of

sweat and blood,

I am life-force unimpeded. 

Quietly I flow and churn,

an equinox of consciousness.  

My mind retreats inward;

a muscular twist

wrings it out again.

Withdrawing, emerging.

Adrift, anchored.  

Dark, light,

Change unimpeded,

Until the wringing grip holds fast,

and I am captive in the stark light,

and there is no shadow for relief,

and I regain my senses

and see my nakedness,

and agony crashes in,

and I despair,

but feel my hand being guided

into the blood, 

into the pain, 

to touch the 

downy head

of my son,

and discover

for the first time

wonder unimpeded. 

© Laura Seale, 2016

Photo by Evan-Amos
from Wikimedia Commons

Cecropia

First she fanned her wings slowly,

a Tai Chi of self-assessment - 

having never flown before,

she meditatively observed 

her own wingspan and range of motion, 

cycled her energy away from her juicy core 

into the papery extremities of flight. 

Next she shivered -

small quick movements, but smooth,

like purring, idling, 

an all over warm-up and 

checking of instruments

before take off.

A few coordinated 

full-power flaps of wings -

her grand, decorated wings - 

and her feet let go, and

she rose into the green canopy.

Now I sit in an armchair to read.

My arms are vibrating with restlessness.

© Laura Seale, 2016

Cecropia moth
Photo by Linda Tanner
Gap Mills, WV
from Wikimedia Commons

The Fraudlings

Today I am feuding with the Fraudlings: Tiny rowdy beings that, whenever I feel bold, snarl at me "Who do you think you're fooling?"

They get loud when I start getting industrious, autonomous, visionary, sure-spoken. They call out names like "faker," "poser-girl," "dull, broken, unworthy hoaxster."  I hear them all around: from bookshelves and dusty corners, kitchen cupboards and along the garden path. I work tight and breathless to block out their heckling, but they are always waiting for me to let go. They can wear me down until I relent and escape.

They stay so pleasantly quiet when I sit passively, watching and mindless. Those are fitting activities for me, they think. They celebrate when my brain is idling and my body is still. They get high on the guilt-fumes that rise from the wasting of life.

They used to live in my cerebral cortex, right in there. They had a trailer park set up, had it easy for years. They could watch my sparkly intentions flash round my synapses like lightning bugs on a summer night and they'd bat the spark right out of them without even setting down their beers. On occasion, a big idea would flush and surprise them - threaten to poop on their party- but those vicious little rednecks could always shoot it down before it got much air.

I finally sniffed them out and started poking at their encampment, prodding into their little trailers and squinting to read their tiny tattoos and saying, "I don't think y'all belong in here anymore. I want to use this patch for something else... Something newer, or older, I haven't decided yet.  Definitely something fresher."

The Fraudlings did their normal demotivational hollering. I stared them down, and started plotting against them.

I pestered them with new rules. I posted signs that I knocked into the gray matter with my fist:

"intoxicants and firearms prohibited"

"quiet hours strictly enforced"

"no dumping"

"no haters"

I noticed how much easier it was to sink something in there than in the packed clay of my garden. The place is fertile ground, litter-strewn and unplanted ever since the Fraudlings squatted there.

Then I interrogated them:

"How did you get in here?"

"Why are you so loud?"

"Why are you so down on me?"

I never got a straight answer...

The scrutiny was too intense for them, though. They packed up, marched down my ear canals, spitting, moaning and threatening as they left, then out and bouncing off my shoulders in all directions. The weedy bastards seemed smaller on the outside. I got to work, cleaned up the mess they'd left.

They are still living in my house and occasionally climb in my pockets. They leap from me like fleas that whisper and sneer from other people's shoulders. They cling there and say "one slip and she'll see who you really are," or "you'll never be as free and together as this guy." This used to make me cower, but I'm getting better at ignoring them.

Days like today, when I am searching for an outlet for my voice, they have a sporting holiday - they hurl grappling hooks at my ears and try to swing in as they yodel "Who, You?" I foil their invasions, shake them off, one day at a time.

As long as I fight, I have space to cultivate my will, to plant seeds of intentions, to stake up my seedlings so they can take off, gain their own energy and make a tall stand of my work so full that the fresh hushing of wind in the branches will diffuse the sharp edges of distant war-cries, making them directionless and dull, as they should be.

© Laura Seale, 2015

Dr. Squintum's Exaltation or the Reformation, 1763
from Wikimedia Commons

Night-Walking (We Must Step Out the Door)

I have to walk alone tonight.

I have parked my car safely, legally,

and now, with fear as my escort,

I lean my soft body towards a far friendly door, 

not knowing what I’ll meet along the way.

I sense toothy wolves in the dark patches,

then try to shake away the feeling, 

though I know the wolves are real.

We have all encountered them.

I have been cornered by a few.

Though my past wolves were

never creeping out on warm nights,

their images come easily in the dark, 

and their teeth were sharp.

I pace pavement past private lots

and empty spots saved for souls with 

true bodily restrictions

even heavier than my fears. 

I have no such external restraints, 

instead am shackled from inside

by fears that lock me in, make me depend,

fears that stop my blood from running.

Where are safe paths for scared women? 

Where are the harbors that close

wild breathless gaps between carriage and hearth? 

We are afraid to walk out, some of us, 

who know that Red Riding Hood was ravished in the woods, 

then ravaged by the wolf with the big smile.

I wish for freedom. 

I wish for fiery bands of angels

to hover over me when I step out…

spirits of all Red Riding Hoods and grandmothers. 

I wish for a bright cloud of ghosts

of women who were shaken,

women who were taken.

a multitude of women-spirits once shrunken,

now grown vast and white-hot and loud like banshees, 

screaming earth-rot and vengeance onto men with trespassing

 thoughts, 

so that not one crooked impulse could cross the mind of a man

without humbling his blood in the terror of mortal 

insignificance.

Then we would be even, women and men. 

Sometimes I can feel the tower of guardians over me, 

pulling me past my fears, 

ferrying me through shadows, 

lighting my way from above, from behind, 

from time past, from inside.

But where are my bold angels on this dark night?

Why, when I need their voices, are they still silent?

Why, when I need light, do they hide their fire?

Where are safe paths for scared women? 

Where are safe paths for Sacred Woman?

To walk her healing through the world, 

She must first step out the door.

© Laura Seale, 2015

Little Red Riding Hood by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1911
from Wikimedia Commons

Dream of the Seed-Bird

In my dream our young bodies prowled a warm night, 

a garden-park, vacant besides us.

As we ranged, breathing mist,

we saw a free parakeet with flowing ribbons clipped in his crown feathers. Bright comet descending, he stopped by the fountain, admired his new colors in reflection. 

I crept close. He was slow to react, so I caught him.

I removed his crippling decorations, then saw that his wing feathers were delicate sprays of millet, shedding seeds onto my palm. Surprise loosened my grip, and he flew.

I have failed as his righteous savior. He is too fragile, too delicious to live; he'll be giddily stripped at dawn by a dozen seed-crushing beaks. But that is Nature's way, and I am its student, so I must follow to see.  

We slunk after, feeling our midnight way across well-kept lawns by instinct and by science - 

we are hunters and scholars. Soon we saw him land on a roadside sign; he was not alone. 

Two more parakeets, a budgie, and a red Amazon parrot perched together, greeted and groomed, with beaks and claws gently setting each others' plumage right, tucking in the seed-bird's millet, so his wings showed just sleek feathers. 

They chattered on. Without translation I understood this convention of uncaged birds, sharing stories, commiserating, celebrating free life. I need not save them; I need not observe their bitter endings. 

So I learned. So we learned.

We turned to each other to celebrate free life. We set each other right with fingers and mouths, landed together for a while, then bounded apart into the dawn. 

   © Laura Seale, 2014

Malabar Parakeet
Photo by Suriyahumars
from Wikimedia Commons

Minesweeping

Picking through now: my

god I was running so fast then, leaving behind time bombs and land mines as I fled

to make sure I would never look back or slow down or god forbid turn around and try to walk sanely again through this madwoman's minefield, now grown over with goldenrod and meadowsweet. 

I ran a slick path toward other choices, to hide in the city, to pretend among fumes and pavements that I was fresh and ready, that there was nothing behind me but the wide ocean... 

That there was no home waiting... 

Within a day I missed soft green under foot and soft eyes of family, so I soon returned to them,

but stayed apart from this field, walked only the perimeter, monitoring, until I trusted my eyes and my footing. 

Picking through now: in my treacherous meadow of old mines,

I am stepping, guessing, testing disturbed spots one by one. 

Slow work, careful work, through thick sedge that shadows and tangles my feet, that hides the triggers and trip lines. 

I am fearless, though, and slow.

As I find each snare I choose my fate, knowing that blowing everything open is the only way to be whole. 

© Laura Seale, 2014

Click link below to watch brief video of land mine explosion:

Claymore anti-personnel land mine

Land mine from World War II
from Wikimedia Commons

Song of the Wood Thrush, Call of the Raven

Which music sits better with me today? 

Which surrender is safer,

one that pulls my heart to the treetops

or one that sinks me down and rolls me? 

Which part of me needs to be moved today?

What's still and waits to be shaken?

Which pain am I denying

if grittiness rubs me only raw,

or softness numbs me or stings like a lie?

Which magic serves me fairly now: the golden touch? The golem's Shem?

Red fairy shoes to dance me blind, red poppies to send me dreaming? 

Music holds the alchemy and the hoodoo,

and I whirl between them, feeding 

on sounds as on honey and locusts. 

Being the smooth fluid river.

Being the flood, risen and raging. 

Being the gravelly riverbed, grinding myself back to earth. 

All this to balance tame and wild. 

All this to find my body again.

All this to remember to lose my mind. 

© Laura Seale, 2014

Folk dancers in Budapest
Photo by Wilfredor, from Wikimedia Commons

A Hand to Hold

A nurse named Jeffrey who smelled of cigarettes, the one who wrapped his arms around me and tucked my face into his stubbly neck as the spike of lidocaine entered my spine, the one who peered nervously into my eyes after the shot of ephedrine jerked me back to consciousness, the one who moved in and out of view as doctors barked and rushed, as I felt the jumbling and tugging of my organs and saw my blood-washed baby girl rising out of me, spinning out and shivering...

That nurse Jeffrey winked at me as I emerged from drug-induced amnesia squeezing his hand. He said, "Everything goes better if you have a hand to hold, right?" Then all the doctors lost their straight faces, laugh lines appeared above their masks, and the room got warmer at my expense. I'll never know just what I did, but now I consciously ask for a hand and I have never been denied. 

© Laura Seale, 2013

Hold My Hand
Photo by Elizabeth Ann Colette
from Wikimedia Commons

Is This Your Baby?

Brake lights on the red sports car flash on, off, on. 

It creeps slow enough to see, 

steers around, then is away.

Two small brown dogs 

are dancing on the blacktop.

A baby stands watching,

barefoot, by himself, and beaming at his friends.  Then he wobbles forward on unsteady legs. 

Without a thought, the stranger child is in my arms.

Furious and wild, I climb to the nearest house and find a man in the yard with his son. 

Is this your baby?

Eyes roll. Never seen it before. Probably belongs to them up the road. They're no good. 

I refuse to walk the gravel road, and instead struggle up through fields of tall summer grass that slices my legs and trips my feet, and gives me time to feel.  He's in just a diaper and a short stained t-shirt. I feel his frightened limbs cling, his round belly, his quick young heart. He rests his furrowed brow on my shoulder and whimpers "Ma."

I try to breathe calm into him. We'll find her. Don't worry. 

Far up the hill I can see the little house with the back door slid open. 

© Laura Seale, 2013

Woman Carrying a Baby
1804 print from Wikimedia Commons 

Deprivation Game

Each year I play at deprivation as harvest season passes, and light retreats southward, and pliable life turns brittle and spare. 

I play to remember the ancestors' work when our world was young and their year was old,

to feel their hunger as they waited, shivering, to feast on the hope of the sun's return. 

I play to remember my grandparents' work: they were young and had no choices...

To remember the way that my life worked when I was young and had no choice...

I play to feel the symbolic lack, because it feels symbolically fair.  I crave a deep chilling emptiness, to learn what that vacuum pulls out of me.

I bathe with the ends of soap and dry myself with threadbare towels.

I wear socks with holes and tatter-edged clothes, stained with work and living. 

I stop buying food, make meals of the last dry beans and shriveled potatoes

just to feel the relief of dwindling choices.

I make simple dances in the thin light, 

my makeshift means as my grateful meditation...

Until a day the light grows fuller.

All can go young!

Fix quickly what needs fixing;

Replace, restock, renew.  

A miracle fabricated from waiting to feast.  

A hope for me, a hope for the world. 

© Laura Seale, 2013

Harvested potato field
Photo by Evelyn Simak from Wikimedia Commons

A House Retires

A house is melting into its leisure.

The green tin roof bends itself into fanciful angles,

achieving arches and curves

with corners dripping

like cool summer pleasure

laid thoughtlessly in the sun. 

Creeping plants previously prohibited 

rise slowly through the shrubbery,

slide up the siding

to find windows waiting open and smiling. 

So the vines pour themselves in, filling the rooms with a leafy slosh. 

And the ceiling beams are dizzy to touch green life again.

The walls welcome

the brush of tendrils,

the pressure of clinging roots,

the ticklish cracking of the rigid plane they have courteously held 

since they were put just so.

Now their orderly particles shake loose,

dusting plaster like sugar

for beetles and flies 

who will join the celebration 

or trip away, sparkling in the breeze on their way to some new ground. 

At last

wooden posts succumb. 

They soften their knees and shoulders to test relief,

then let their work go,

curving into smiles of anticipation as the floor below them also relaxes,

and all the edified parts sink closer,

dip their toes into the cool earth cellar,

waiting for the plunge.

© Laura Seale, 2012

Abandoned House; photo by Daniel Leininger
from Wikimedia Commons