Roses

This one rose,
dressed in a pink so pale it verges on gray, juts out
at an alarming angle from the vase
on my dining room table.
The remaining flowers stand proudly,
blooming their hues and fragrances
like women outside of a nightclub,
shifting their feet and laughing
moved towards the thumping, smoky recesses
by the momentum of their hope.
I tug the odd-angled one out, slowly,
careful not to budge the arrangement.
I see that its stem has been bent in two places.
Two dark elbows through which
water cannot travel.
I twist at the fibrous stalk,
no longer a conduit,
at one of the broken places. As I do,
two sets of leaves fall to the table, starved.
I am ministering to the life that remains.
Into a small glass jar filled with water
I put this rose,
with its three remaining inches of stem.
Where is the place in my house
that can host this delicate refugee?
I think of the way
my mother does this,
places flowers in small jars on the kitchen windowsill.
Somewhere in this forgettable sequence of events
I realize, in my body, the gravity of what it is to love.
To love
is to agree to tend,
to seek to restore,
to invite what is finished
into its rightful ending.
To love is to become a sentinel,
a quiet, awake guard
at the beloved’s heart-gate.
When it comes time to enter,
when the beloved lifts the veil
and permits passage,
the witness herself
must enter as an offering.
She must act
as dry wood acts upon meeting flame.
Grateful for the chance
to be consumed
and then to rise as glowing sparks against the vast sky
and finally to disappear.

let's never go this long again

Really, I don't know how the time slipped away!

Actually, yes I do.

"Tell us your top five highlights from the past, oh, four weeks or so," you say? Why, certainly! (Very kind of you to add, "because we know you don't have time to give a full report before your salsa dancing DATE tonight!" You are so considerate, dear reader.)

(1) I fully rocked the project I've been working on for the past year and a half -- more accurately, it fully rocked me. More details? See here.

(2) Rosh Hashanah dawn ceremony on top of a hill in Petroglyph National Monument outside of Albuquerque. Prayer in community on the land! I love it.

(3) I officiated my dear friend and colleague's wedding in Albuquerque; it was a blend of Buddhist, Hindu, and Apache prayers, and the bride and groom held candles to illuminate their faces in the late dusk. Part of their ceremony was sending the rings around to have them be "warmed" by each guest, so now their rings contain the blessings of everyone in their community. Beautiful!

(4) The absolute attention-getting hijinks of reiki; reiki basically tap danced for me in a top hat like that alien in Spaceballs. No less than FOUR significant events having to do with reiki took place in the course of about four days. Okay, universe! I get it. Heat. In the hands. Use it. Yes.

(5) At the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, the largest hot air balloon event in the world, watching the 6:30 a.m. dawn patrol -- in advance of the 700-balloon mass ascension that took place once the sun was fully out, twelve hot air balloons lifted off in the still-dark early morning, and once up, worked their engines so that the fire that's used to keep the hot air hot, lit up the inside of the balloon. Twelve twinkling balloons in the dark sky? A grand display of what humans can do when we're focused on making beauty and peace? Yeah, I was crying.