Wendy's Muse

Photo albums

2012-01-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

Last summer while visiting my parents, my mom and I discussed the future. She would like to give up the 3 bedroom house and move to a small apartment, especially since my father is unable to help any longer with upkeep. “I never realized all the things he took care of,” she told me “until I had to do it all myself.” Inspired by this thought, she pulled out a box of things I had sent her over the years. “Take whatever you want,” she said. Thinking it might be one less thing for her to deal with, I sorted out the copies of literary journals, the unpublished manuscripts, and the photos of me, my kids and my life, leaving a photo of me with my dad in case she might like to have it later.

But bringing them home gave me pause. Recently I bought a big plastic container for the photo albums I had lovingly schlepped from Santa Fe to Minnesota. I have albums with glossy black’n’whites from my childhood including the shots of my cat and her kittens, many of which are just blobs of fur, my amateur poses of my younger sister and brother, 3 x 3 colors from my first marriage where I took a lot of shots of the cat, sundrenched photos of me when I was in Israel and priceless shots of my children (we have lost many along the way, hitch-hiking from Mexico to Israel. Don’t ask, it’s a long story), then albums stuffed with photos of my adventures with Michael: Desert arroyos and sacred sites around New Mexico, hot spring retreat in Colorado, dinner out of town in shady garden cafes. The casita we rented in Mexico and the tequila factory. The girls in their Guelaguetza costumes, the churches with their Saturday lines of couples and their families waiting to be married. In Italy, cafes in Rome after the museum tour, the gathering at the beach house with elderly neighbors, and the canal in Venice. Dinner parties celebrating birthdays, holidays or just getting together with friends and family in an assortment of locations. And after Michael’s death, the photos of Alejandro became an obsession. He was so handsome that I couldn’t get enough, hoping to save him for the future I knew we could not hold onto.

The lovely photos of me dressed up for performances with my women’s poetry group Word Dancers. The trip to New York where I posed in front of the Bowery Poetry Cub in my calf-length velvet trench coat and pink beret. The CD release party and my costume changes and the crowd. My Mexican outfits with their aprons and plastic carrying bags to perform in Día de los Muertos and Jugar con fuego.

From time to time, I wander down memory lane, to remember, to honor and celebrate where I have come from and the richness that has been my life. The blessing party when the condo was turned over to me for a while. The children I was nanny to and the ones in my pre-school class. The trip to San Francisco.

And then of course, the hundreds of photos of the first grandsons, taken by proud parents.

But I think of my mom’s decision to clear out the old stuff that she will not look at again. She knows exactly what she wants to keep, and it isn’t much. Who is left to enjoy her memories with her but me on my annual visit? And I think of my huge box of photo albums. They mean so much to me, they have captured a lifetime of love and sorrow, of adventures and quests. But who will want them when I am gone? Who else will even look at them with me? Alejandro used to, he was insatiably curious, it was way to pass the time. Occasionally someone visits me from the past and I will take them out. But for many of those photos, there is no one to know who the people in them are or what they mean to me. I once thought my grandchildren might want them. But now I know better. The boys might ask a question or two. But the curiosity to inquire after obscure moments in my past…the pain of Michaels’ depression, the shattering of throwing my sons’ ashes, the crazy feeling of swaying with Alejandro on a swinging bridge during a thunderstorm, these things they don’t want to know. Scanning them all onto the computer is not an option, by the way. I still need to hold them in my hands and the computer screen just isn’t the same. Although that is where the most recent ones are. I stopped taking photos when the digital cameras became popular. I lost the thrill or perhaps I don’t care to keep collecting memories. I know I will not be able to bear throwing them away. So what will I do, when the time comes to downsize my life so that it will fit the time I have left?

After the Memorial

2012-01-20T10:29:00.000-08:00

Today I awoke to snow gently falling. After a dry brown winter and a freezing day of below zero temps yesterday, it is a relief to see snow. I sit with hot coffee in hand and think of yesterday’s memorial for Joan Calof. Despite the weather, the synagogue was packed. Joan was a dynamic, vibrant, active woman who passed away three days after her 84th birthday. She had been a social worker. After she retired, she became a performance artist, singing, dancing and telling stories on stages wherever she would find them, from cabarets to nightclubs in exotic locals.

We met at a workshop soon after I moved to the Twin Cities and Joan introduced me to the Twin Cities Women Writers & Poets. Other opportunities branched out from the women in this group and from Joan, the nudge to check out Patrick’s Cabaret. We read together for my book launch of transparencies of light at True Colors bookstore this last spring and her story about the women’s Turkish bath complimented the poems I had chosen about the Middle East. Her poems making fun of aging never ceased to delight me. She made me laugh even after I had heard them many times over. It was Joan’s dynamic, sparkling personality that infused her poems and made them come alive. Lately I have had an inspiration of bringing fast poetry into local businesses, a quick poem and get-away, and I think Joan would approve.

At her memorial, her books, The Lyrical Curmudgeon and Tales of a Well Seasoned Traveler, were given away. For some reason, this struck me. I felt its poignancy: the blessing of her books, labors of love, a message sent to us, remaining for us to hold her close. As I read her poems, I hear her voice and see her small compact body moving and dancing. Like me, she had hopes of selling them at her performances. I thought about the box of my books in my basement. If something happened to me, they would also be given away, a wonderful tribute to my creative force, a way to remember me when I am gone. But that of course is not what I want.

It is difficult to walk that spiritual path between letting go and letting God and wishing with all of my heart for the golden ring of acknowledgment, success, and adding to my income so that I can continue on my journey of creative inspiration. It is hard to admit that at times I just want to be as famous as Billy Collins or Sharon Olds, or OMG, Lawrence Ferlingetti, whom I heard read in a small venue years ago. I want to be noticed and loved for my work and I also want the communication that happens between the poet and her audience, her readers, her fans. As a woman who has been silenced for years, I yearn to have my voice—MY voice—heard.

The silencing came from years of communal living and being told that my opinions didn’t matter and it was vain to think they might, followed by living with a man who was bi-polar and incessantly analyzed his traumatizing past, his turbulent present, and his frightening future. I fell in love with him because we could talk about anything but as his illness progressed, the dialogue became a monologue. He told me that he didn’t want a conversation, he just wanted me to listen. He woke me up at dawn to report every thought he had had for hours before I got out of bed to make us coffee, make his breakfast and head off to work. His death was a relief from the grueling care taking and a deep sorrow of knowing that no, love cannot cure everything. Only those who wish to heal can be healed.

Is it gluttony to now want more? I have performed poetry 13 – 20 times a year in various locations such as cafes, bookstores, galleries, schools, churches, cultural centers, cabarets, and even once in a parking lot, from here to Mexico, from NYC to Berkeley. I have collaborated on poetry events with other local poets and musicians, I have created bilingual events. Forty people at Tribes Café with Word Dancers and a standing ovation, thirty people at the gallery in Puerto Vallarta for my Día de los Muertos performance, 200 in the audience at Patrick’s. I have achieved my dream of bringing poetry to unique venues, to present poetry to people who don’t think they like poetry, to be accessible. I have heard people in the audience weep, hold their breath, laugh and sigh, holding me in their attention as I shared my journey through words.

And yet—the desire to leave a lasting legacy is on my mind as I ride the bus home from Joan’s memorial. Joan is remembered for her chutzpah, her kindness, her ability to draw people out and connect them with each other. There is a resonance between our souls; we are soul mates. Joan always told me she admired my transparency on stage. Joan, you see, made up characters to inhabit but I embody my own experience, my emotions, my confusion and grief and joy and passion. I create an intimacy with my audience that brings us heart to heart, if you are willing to go on the journey with me. The reason I prefer intimate circles to the bright lights of a stage.

Joan, if you are smiling down from Heaven, what do you see?

Three Kings Day: Epiphany

2012-01-06T10:23:00.000-08:00

Today is Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, Three King’s Day, a day to celebrate the arrival of the gifts brought to the child Jesus by the Wise Men. It is a day to contemplate the gifts and the wisdom of the past year and a day to imagine what transformations might happen over the next year.

I once was in a church in Mexico when the Wise Men rode in on their donkeys. It was spectacle dressed in humility. The donkeys’ hooves resounding over the church floor, the reverent and excited congregation, the flash of the wise men’s garments created from sequins and paint rather than real gold thread and fine fabrics. Here is what I read in the internet: Mexico, as it inherited its culture from Spain, quickly adopted January 6 as Three Kings Day and since then every child waits for the arrival of the three travelers. The tradition has its rules: the children should write a letter with their requests (they are not going to continue delivering incense and myrrh) and specify the good work they have done throughout the year along with the problems they are going to correct in the coming year. The letter will be tied to a balloon with string and will be allowed to fly, or they will burn the letter (because the king can also read smoke; they are very wise!) or simply put the letter inside a shoe that should be placed at the base of the nativity, or now also the Christmas tree.

Reminds me a little of the burning bowl ceremony at Unity Christ Church on New Year’s Eve.

The good work I have done includes providing child care for my grandsons, which has extended to a boy born in September. I once said I would never live in a place that was so damn cold and now it is going on 7 years. First I came because I could not return to my old life, neither the one left behind in Santa Fe with bankruptcy, loss of the condo which has been my home for 10 years and where I lived with my true love and partner for 8 of those years, and the feeling that I was stuck. Between what was familiar and taking a risk, between friends and encountering the wider world. Nor could I return to Mexico where instead of honoring my own creativity, I was supporting my new husband’s pursuit of his business, one that I thought would belong to us both until he made it clear that I was working for him. The opportunity to spend time with my grandsons was too precious to give up. Along the way I learned which bus shelters are heated, attended numerous wonderful poetry events and got to know talented poets and writers, received healing, love and wisdom from Unity, and found a great doctor to do my hip replacement.

There is nothing to compare to your 6 year old grandson on the phone asking if you will come to his school to help make a gingerbread house. Or to hear him say while pasting the gumdrops onto the icing, “Why are we wasting all this candy?”

This past year I performed poetry at least 14 times, not including in private parties, and conducted writing workshops, at La Conexion de las Americas, All About the Journey, Unity Christ Church, The Aliveness Project and at Face to Face High School. I witnessed people’s pain and sorrow, struggles and passions, the urge to put it to paper and to share it, the power of telling one’s story with authenticity. I finally understood exactly what it is that I do: self-reflective writing that is intimate and honest as a way to access the inner healer in an environment that is safe. Because this is where my own writing takes shape: in the willingness to share my story, the griefs and passions, dreams and reality-check, the guilt and the gratitude, the disappointments and the satisfactions. I have lived my dream this past year: launching my second book of poetry, creation of a broadside, and writing alongside of others who may or may not be writers but who want to express themselves through words. The success I feel is not calculated by numbers or sales figures (I still have boxes of books) but by reaching one of my cherished goals: to bring poetry to those who do not yet know they love poetry, to make poetry accessible through presenting my own work theatrically and through sharing other poems in the writing workshops form poets who reflect back to us our turmoil and our ecstasy.

Could I have done all this remaining in Santa Fe or Puerto Vallarta? Remaining in my state of despair and longing? I had to be somewhere with a fresh start, where I knew only a few old friends who provided encouragement and places to live and rides home and uplifting me out of blue moods with laughter and meals shared and glasses of wine poured and who listened to my questions and kvetching without complaint. I had to be somewhere else. The land of 10000 Lakes, cold and frigid, the big city traffic and noise, the cost of living and the availability of culture, turned out to be where I could unfurl my wings after all.

Jan 9, 2012: Wendy Brown-Báez presents "Yours Truly" at the Lowertown Reading Jam

2012-01-04T07:04:00.000-08:00

Jan 9, 2012: Wendy Brown-Báez presents "Yours Truly" at the Lowertown Reading Jam

Dia de los Muertos

2011-10-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

Dia de los Muertos

Death is sitting on my left shoulder, insisting
I remember, Death tapping
whispering, Don’t you dare forget, girl.

I took your son, your friend, your husband,
the first boy who ever kissed you
and if you don’t watch out

I’ll get everyone you want to love.
I’m not talking about old age.

Here I am with Death dancing
with my head on his shoulder.
He collects my tears in the bowl of

his collarbone.
I long to be comforted, am squeezed
between his ribs trying to find

a heartbeat. In the silence I whisper No
because the embrace is all too clear,
he wants to claim something that isn’t

mine to give. When I walked
among the graves in Oaxaca
death felt like warm yellow candlelight

spilling across the scars carved into the
ground, the young and the old cast in
their perpetual costumes, the young

dressed in excitement, masks, pulling
at my coat to beg for a treat, the old
huddled together for companionship

as they kept vigil, as they murmured
their memories into the smoke of copal.
At the entrance to el campo santo

we bought hand-made clay coffee mugs
painted with all the colors of Mexico
fragile as the mist among the broken corn

stalks, bright as a Mariachi tune
played at a wedding.
Death is tapping on my forehead

his insistent subtle chatter,
What if? What if?
I hold out my arms as if I could

make a bargain but it’s a lie.
I would gladly pay the debt if it meant
we would finally love

without fear. Do I dare to take
another knowing Death is jealous
of anyone I ever hold close?

Death, I am asking for a divorce.
I’m not talking about rest in peace.

Creating an altar

2011-10-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

To begin your altar, meditate for a moment on your loved one's personality and the dreams you once shared.

Remember this is a time when the veil between world grows thin and a message may be left from the other side. Begin with a tablecloth. Collect photos and candles. Think of symbols, the twenty-five candles for the years of his life, the expresso cup for the drink he enjoyed every morning, candy for her sweet tooth. Add Angels and flowers. Make it bold and bright. In Mexico, people decorate with sugar skulls, pan de muertos, and miniature skeletons. They add the departed soul's favorite food and drink or cigarettes or cervezas, or perhaps fruits and dulces. They believe the Dead return and if they eat and drink and are satisfied, will not stick around to haunt the family. A path is created from torn petals of cempusichil, the large golden marigolds, to the altar or an entrance created of sugar cane. Invite your loved ones to come and keep you company while you sit quiety, keeping vigil. Remember the good times, the love that floated your heart to the sky, the stars that encircled your head. Tell stories, tell jokes, have a beer or a glass of wine, or at least hot chocolate. Listen.

To Tell the Truth

2011-07-25T06:34:00.000-07:00

You may think that your questions reveal something about yourself and so you hold back. Instead of asking, you are mute. You are afraid to make a fool of yourself or to reveal your patterns of differences. That perhaps it isn't the place where you belong after all. The impulse is to rebel, to be the devil's advocate, to be in disagreement with the voices of pat knowing, to tip the boat and soak everyone with a wake up splash. That was your adolescent past and time to let it go. But maybe the truth is, you don't agree. Your heart thudding in your chest knows the way to truth may be crooked and filled with the rocks of remorse, pebbles of desire, the winding stream of expectation and disappointments. There is always balance between the human point of view and the spiritual and after all, you are not a monk. The short cut seems cut off and how can you consider the years of spiritual discipline anything but the work to get here? If you can't say it aloud, here, to whom will you speak? The obvious answer is through the mouth of a character on paper. Not knowing the point of this chattering monkey is your mind. Perhaps it would be better to pretend. Nod. Follow the path of least resistance and least revelation. But then that impulse comes up. Remember how Michael spoke aloud his lack of faith and will to live, how some came up to him afterwards and thanked him for voicing the doubts they were unable to admit. How the medicine woman thanked him for bringing the shadow. "It makes us work harder towards the light," she said. How later she told you that your spirits were going in different directions. The shock and the relief.
All things considered, you take a deep breath. You open your mouth.

Grace

2011-06-01T12:46:00.001-07:00

Grace is a sail on the shimmering lake after a hard winter. Grace is tall yellow tulips. Grace is moving out of the neighborhood before the tornado hit and split the green towering trees. To be at the right place at the right time even if you don’t know it. Grace is the power to stand in my own boots, to own red shoes, to dance while the bones heal, the music in my blood. To change, to move, to do it differently, to claim my own. To share, to do it together. The power of the storm to destroy, the power of the love to rebuild. That we have so much and do not even know it. That we lament what we do not have and even then we have the luxury of lament. The power of words to awaken. Flowers and trees are awakening, the ones not damaged by the storm. So am I. The parts of me not damaged by the storm are awakening and throwing off the comforter of despair and stepping into sandals. Thirsty for sun, awakening to the sense of how much I hold back, how powerful I could be if I allowed myself to accept my gift of rising. I awaken with the sun at 5 am and think I don’t have to get up yet with gratitude. Fall back into dreams or just listen to the silence. Now if only I could silence the chatter in my head, the monkey mind, the back talk. The silence in old adobe home is thick and dense. The silence of a forest is filled with movements of life, bird songs and insects rustling, squirrels and chipmunks and rabbits scampering, leaves blown by a breeze. The healing balm of both kinds of silence. It always amazes me when my entire congregation goes into mediation. A room full of people sitting together in silence. It is powerful, a form of benediction, Grace incarnate. As we open ourselves to receive the Presence of the Divine, the holy silence at the heart of creation.

Building a Bridge with Words

2011-03-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

Building a Bridge with Words

Celebrating the Publication of transparencies of light

2011-01-21T08:42:00.000-08:00

transparencies of light by Wendy Brown-Bàez transparencies of light articulates a woman’s point of view: from the pueblo or the big city, in troubled places or in quiet solitude, she speaks up with passion and courage. transparencies embraces the terrors and joys of ordinary life and the challenge to live in dignity despite extraordinary circumstances. These women are survivors. From the birth of their children to the birth of themselves, they remove the veils of invisibility to voice their stories and to reveal their destinies.

"I want to be / the one to find the message” Wendy Brown-Báez writes, and in transparencies of light she unfolds a quilt of messages from a host of voices, voices of women imploring or demanding, sorrowing or rejoicing. What impresses me most about this work is its sincerity—its conviction that poetry can reach beyond and broaden our lives, can be made of “rose petals or ash” and yet break stone. --Lightsey Darst, author of Find the Girl

Wendy Brown-Báez is a writer, teacher, performance poet and installation artist. In 2009, Brown-Báez’s full length collection of poems Ceremonies of the Spirit debuted when she featured at the Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago. Her prose and poetry have appeared in dozens of literary magazines. In 2008 and 2009 she received McKnight grants to teach writing workshops for at risk youth which developed into an art installation In the Shelter of Words. To find out more: http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/

Year End Review

2010-12-12T08:37:00.001-08:00

The window for advance sales for transparencies of light is closing today. However, that doesn't mean you still can't order a copy; only that it doesn't count towards my print run. For those of you who have ordered it, bless you for supporting my endeavers to be a voice for women who are silenced by their cultures, their families or their own inhibitions.
http://www.finishinglinepress.com/ under new releases

Now with the intensive promoting behind me, I am preparing for spring readings.

Check my website. Each reading will feature different poets reading with me or musicians or dancers. This is still in process and not finalized. If you would like me to join your book club or writer's group to share my poems, my writing discipline and practice, my experience with publication and marketing, please contact me for setting something up after March 1st.
Of course, I am still reading selections from Ceremonies of the Spirit as well. What a joy that book has been for me!!!

I am also available for blog touring...if you have a blog and set up a date for me to be interviewed or post and be available for comments from your guests, that can also be arranged.

In the meanwhile, we are headed towards the cold, dark part of the year. Here in Minnesota we got over a foot of snow. The streets are silent and the only people who are out have to be. It is quiet in my home. I have lit a candle for La Virgin de Guadalupe, as it is Her Day, in honor of the Feminine Divine. I have been catching up with my blogs and my emails and next, maybe I will be couragous enough to tackle that box of notebooks full of scribbles from various writing sessions: the Mid-town Writers Group, the class at Face to Face, the women's retreats. And get back to scanning my memoirs, written on a word processor. (It seemed like the latest at the time, who knew that in a few years, those disks would be useless?) With the gift of a laptop from my good friend Chicago poet Ned Haggard, life is much easier and will be during recuperation from hip replacement this January.

I want to reflect back over my year, what I have accomplished and what has sustained me and urged me on. All writers know there are rejections and I am persistently rejected by some of my favorite publishers and literary journals, still I get off my knees, dust myself off, find another avenue. I want to acknowledge two amazing community efforts that did accept my work: Poets for Living Waters at http://www.poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/ and Saint Paul Almanac. Also Mississippi Crow, edited by my good friend Nadia Giordana who never stops coming up with new ways to promote not only her own work but others, especially women. Her blogtalkradio interview with me can be heard on my website: http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/ on the interviews page.
And Finishing Line Press accepted my manuscript for transparencies, for a spring birth.

I didn't do as many performances this year but Heal the Earth was my way of honoring and celebrating with a deep sense of gratitude our Mother Earth. It was amazing to work with 12 other women to make these events happen, to feel the energy shift as we created sacred space and shared our passion for the natural world.

The readings with Saint Paul Almanac were fun, I got to meet other writers and poets whom I had heard of and had never met. Especially Julia Klatt Singer, whom I knew from http://www.northography.com/. I have always admired her poetry and she will be part of my book launch in March, along with Joan Calof, story teller extraordinaire.

My biggest accomplishment was installing In the Shelter of Words, a multi-media art installation created by at risk youth from a writing workshop I taught. It showcased a CD of their words and was installed at Altered Esthetics Gallery, as part of Night On the Street and at Mid-town Global Market. Passers-by could catch a glimpse of what it means to be a teen who may not have a home, may be parenting and going to school, may be struggling to overcome choices made in the past. The sukkah is now in my garage, and someday it will be brought to another community venue with more poems added.

For the first time I read a poem while Sarah Arneson did an interpretive, intuitive dance. That was amazing, to see my words come to life and I want to do more.

This year has also had its troubles: my sister passed away form pancreatic cancer, my friend Wayne Crawford was also diagnosed with it, and the first anniversary of my husband Alejandro's death reminded me of how much I miss his vitality and being with him in Mexico. But I did take a Spanish class with the intention of interweaving more Spanish into my poems and gave a presentation at The Works: a Writer's Salon on Versos de Calaveras.

The poetry salon at All About the Journey http://www.allowharmony.com/ was a great opportunity to speak with writers and share my insights. Guess what I told them? Discipline! If you want to break out from writing to publishing, you have to be disciplined about submitting, editing, being critiqued, and blogging or keeping up your social networks. We are all in this together, my friends! Writing is a way to connect, to build bridges between us, to create understanding and awareness where there was once judgement or distance. We all have a story---but the stories are sort of the same story--overcoming adversity, appreciating how precious beauty is, wanting love and validation, wanting to give of ourselves deeply and with honor, peace and justice, truth and magic.
Don't you?

The year 2011 is approaching fast and I want to fling confetti this new year's eve. I have lived through my own story of deaths and loss and rejections and yes, self-doubt. But I am here, and I have a story to tell. Listen.

How to get your copy of transparencies of light

2010-10-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

transparencies of light is now available on the website of Finishing Line Press, a small prestigious publisher of chapbooks. Advances sales until Dec; publication date Feb 4th. Order today and you will recieve your copy in time

for Women's History Month!

transparencies of light articulates a woman’s point of view: whether virgin, mother or grandmother, single or in love, hooker or Goth rocker, dancer or dreamer, friends or sisters, from the pueblo or the big city, in troubled places or in quiet solitude, she speaks up with passion and courage. transparencies embraces the terrors and joys of ordinary life and the challenge to live in dignity despite extraordinary circumstances. These women are survivors. From the birth of their children to the birth of themselves, they remove the veils of invisibility to voice their stories and to reveal their destinies.

transparencies of light draws out the universally, transcendently human in the particular (the mother who startles the doctor with the strength of her grip as she demands the birth of her child; the woman whose tears seal the prayer at the Western Wall; the shattered souvenir happening upon the frightened yet determined Israeli soldiers). They reveal the face of the Spiritual in the world as a daily reality. transparencies show us that G-d is neither abandoned nor abandoning but a part of our daily breath --Ned Haggard, author of Weave of the Sea

"I want to be / the one to find the message” Wendy Brown-Báez writes, and in transparencies of light she unfolds a quilt of messages from a host of voices, voices of women imploring or demanding, sorrowing or rejoicing. What impresses me most about this work is its sincerity—its conviction that poetry can reach beyond and broaden our lives, can be made of “rose petals or ash” and yet break stone. --Lightsey Darst, author of Find the Girl

paper $12 plus $1 shipping per copy
order online at Finishing Line Press

the direct link is
http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm

or mail check or MO to
Finishing Line Press
Post Office Box 1626
Georgetown, KY 40324
Advance sales will determine print run
and it will be published Feb 4th
in time for March: Women's History Month

I prefer you order directly from Finishing Line Press. But of course, if you want it personalized with my signature, send me the check or MO for $12 plus $2 shipping and I will order it!

contact me at poetaluna (at) yahoo.com

Facebook | Would you like to host a poetry salon?

2010-10-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

Facebook Would you like to host a poetry salon?

Life is too short

2010-09-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

Life is too short for advertisements.
Get back to the story. Will she find the person
who dropped the message? Will she keep her job?
Is the man in the mirror her true love? And which road will she take—
the one through narrow streets of the village leading her to a surprise
or the wide and fast highway?

Life is too short for long phone calls with someone
whose purpose is to hear himself talk. Commune
over a leisurely lunch or linger over dessert.
Life is too short to rush through meals, too short
to depend on wheels, too short not to take the meandering
path through woods, stroll along the beach,
pause and feel the wind in your hair.

Life is too short for memories. Write them down, pass
them around, repeat the details of an evening’s festivities
with laughter. Life is too short for tears. Soak hankies to
throw into the washer, bend over a flower and add to the music of
a river. Fill up a chalice on the altar. Sprinkle them over the cuts
and burns as needed. Give them away.

Heal the Earth: a celebration with poetry and music

2010-08-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

Heal the Earth
a celebration in poetry, music and dance

of our connection with Mother Earth
with musical interludes by Eunice Collette,
a blessing by healing facilitators

Chrisma McIntyre and Kristin Burich,
and poets Wendy Brown-Baez, Nancy E. Cox,

Didi Koka, Nicole Lynskey, Margareth Miller,

LouAnn Shepard Muhm, and Zilla Way
featuring original artwork by Laurie Langer

and a dance by Amy Sabrina

Saturday Oct 9 @ 3:00 pm
St Paul Central Library
90 West 4th at St. Paul, MN 55005

A Plea

2010-06-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

Today I am thinking about the violence in my neighborhood. I am remembering the young 17 year old girl who was shot coming out of a party one block away. After she died, during the prayer walk, her sisters begged that the violence stop, that there be no retaliation. I am thinking about the recent question asked on my list serve of women poets about myths where a woman attacks another woman. I am thinking about the article that I read in the City Pages about the girl gangs: the Ladiis and the Baddest. I am thinking about the dog my room-mate just got for protection because one of our neighbors had his home broken into in the daytime, while he was at home. And I am thinking about the dreams I once had as a young woman of Peace and Love, to unite us all in brotherhood, recognition that we all share the planet.

Feminism? It has not filtered down to my neighborhood. Poetry? The kids walk along the street repeating rap and hiphop lyrics to themselves, ready to burst into cussing and screaming at the least provocation.

But I can’t sit still and watch the chaos around me without doing something. So I go down to my local library and volunteer to teach a writing workshop. I call my workshops Writing Circles for Healing: words to light the way because it is something I know. I have experienced the violence of losing my partner and my son to suicide and the shock, despair, anger and guilt this has put me through was assuaged by prayerful patience, by the love and support of friends, by dark hours of shaking a fist at God, by putting myself into challenging situations where I didn’t speak the language and knew almost no one, by loving and surrendering my expectation, and by writing down my words: poems, stories, memoir, essays, and then acting them out and sharing them. And by holding the space for others to be vulnerable and to dip into the deep well of their pain, their memories, their losses and their passions.

So. I have to be trained as a volunteer, I have to go through an orientation, we have to see who will come and sign up for creative writing. But I will be there. Ready for whomever shows up. Ready to walk through my neighborhood with a notebook in my bag and a smile. Maybe, just maybe, the light will shine and get us through these times to something that resembles my first dream of peace and love. Maybe I can convince the girls to be powerful with hope and openness and courage to speak their truth as much as with fists and weapons. Maybe we can start a revolution to take back our homes and to feel part of the neighborhood instead feeling that we are at war.

Flowers in the Wind, Chapter One: The Beginning

2010-05-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

All names have been changed.........

“The answers are blowing in the wind,” Dylan sang. The wind that blew through the 60's into the 70’s blew me out of my life as a middle class white Pennsylvanian girl into New Mexico.

Santa Fe was an impulse, a need to be independent and to explore. When my boyfriend informed me that he was leaving to go to St. John’s College, I demanded that he take me along. After two months of traveling, our relationship soured. He stayed with me until I found a place to rent, then retreated to his dorm room in the hills. Soon I heard he was seeing someone else.

I felt abandoned and alone. But Santa Fe wove her magic around me, her gorgeous sunsets that flashed and shimmered across a vast cobalt blue sky, her easy ambiance of coffeehouses and spicy Mexican food, the soft glow of adobe houses squatting in the earth from which their bricks were made. Most available jobs were in the service industry, hotels and restaurants, but with short shifts and cheap rent, it was a poet’s paradise. There was a mixture of drifters, artists, spiritual seekers, Native Americans, pure-bred Spanish, Mexicans, and Chicanos. I never noticed the tension between the groups. I was breathing in the awesome beauty of mountains and desert. The mountains drew my gaze upward, blues and greens that melded into the reddish purpling sunsets that gave the Sangre de Cristo mountains their name. I loved the brilliance of the sky that was cloudless for days on end, then suddenly thunder storms would roll across the mountains, turning them into shades of grey. I tossed anchorless on waves of disappointment and frustration but then I would be up-lifted by the heart-beat of nature. By an encounter with someone also seeking. By the freedom I felt walking through a silent snow-drift at three in the morning. By tracing patterns from firelight on an adobe wall while drinking tea.

Rather than answers, the wind only blew questions. Without roots, goals, or direction, I soon lost my way. I forgot the lessons learned in the tempest classroom of the 60’s—taking care of each other and living simply close to the earth. Somewhere along the way, after the Zazen and seaweed soup and Yogi tea and Sufi dancing and Tarot readings and I Ching throwing and Indian print skirt, I lost the essential knowledge of myself as a seeker. My own loneliness waylaid me. I sought escape through the oldest trick in the book: drinking myself into oblivion. My confusion brought about a life-threatening situation. I survived one long night with a gun at my head and a mad-man who demanded that I pretend the way he was raping me gave me pleasure. But after my body recuperated from delayed shock, I needed a life-preserver for my own sanity. I cast out on the turbulent waters of decision to find the most irrevocable one I could find: a child. The knowledge that I was pregnant was a gift, centering me back into my body that I had felt compelled to flee.

But now I was more alone than ever before. My belly beginning its energetic swell under my tight, short Levi skirt separated me from my friends. Filled with the promise of one to love, I dreamily danced through my days at a pace of our own making: walking...resting...dancing...resting/eating/swimming...looking at baby clothes/eating/resting. A natural rhythm woven by our blood, our heart beats tapping a rhyme of physical fulfillment.

Despite my best friend Caren, I was more and more alone. My pregnancy proclaimed to my friends that I had embarked on the uncharted waters of commitment. I failed to appreciate how Caren put up with an endless self-involvement with my belly, with my expected one. Having a baby was a substitute for a mature relationship wtih someone my own age, and she knew it.

Caren and I had met almost as soon as I arrived in Santa Fe. We watched each other go through hurtful relationships, periods of intense loneliness, periods of creative questioning. Although our temperaments were opposite, we found a mutual and complimentary understanding. I took her enthusiasm for my new status as "mother" for granted. I accepted her protective mothering of me as normal.

I was introduced to The Brotherhood through a mutual friend of ours, Crystal. I didn’t think of them as a “group” at the time. Everyone stood out to me as individuals. We loved Crystal for her generous, good-natured compassion and her infectious sense of humor. We met others of the group on a one-to-one basis in her company. Each dressed in 501 shrink-to-fit jeans, flannel shirts, practical shoes, long hair, the guys with beards. Each person was striking, gentle, well-spoken, and warm-hearted. The kind of people you liked to invite to your house, drinking tea and reading poetry around the table. Or who were fun to take along to a movie, innocent and filled with wide-eyed wonder. Flower children. Old friends at first glance. And most important to me, encouraging about the “miracle” of children. Being little more than children themselves. Ourselves.

In looking back, it seems as though we discovered the secret of youth. Not tied down to the daily grind, traveling on faith and a thumb, periodically scolded or rewarded, embraced or punished by our father-figure, we kept a youthfulness way beyond any of our peers.

The news that the father of my child had been mugged made me reach out to him past the boundaries of our anger and hurt. He was angry about my decision to allow the pregnancy. I was angry and hurt that he had rejected me. The thought of his pain made me reach out with forgiveness and new-found courage. Life is precious, my being proclaimed with every step, every breath, every sea-sick motion through the familiar streets of my life. My old life shed like an outworn skin so naturally, I wasn't really noticing. The process would take years to unfold. I was being born.

Having the responsibility of a baby did not alleviate the questions still peculating in my mind about my desire and dream of being involved with people, involved in healing in some way. The movement of the 60's had come to naught, with no shattering change enabling people to respond to each other with lovingkindness. But I found a small enclave of people who did and who invited Caren and I to participate as closely as we felt comfortable.

One day during a reading from their Bible in the small room where they gathered every morning, I had a revelation that these people were truly thinking about God all the time. The words being spoken, the pictures on the walls, the kind of music they played, the deeds of Good Samaritanism toward the community, the way their time was spent, all focused on that primary relationship. I was worried about paying the rent. I was worried about gettting the laundry done. I was worried about every frown and cry of my new-born. And I was entangled in a web of lies about myself and the need for love--deep human flesh-and-blood love--in my life. One day I asked, "What would it take to join?"

I really had no idea what I was getting into, and if I had, would have backed out real fast. Total self-sacrifice--total devotion--was not this the road to redemption I had long been seeking? But I had no idea what these words actually meant.

Flowers in the Wind prologue

2010-05-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

The summer of 1967, “summer of love”, was a time of fascination with youth and youthful energy, the burst of baby-boomers onto the pages of history. Smashing away at society’s traditions and customs, young people questioned the politics, the religion, and the militaristic intervention of a nation mourning innocence lost. Our idols had fallen and our young men were dying in a war that was not legally declared. As the old ways were torn apart and burned, like the American flags worn on patched jean bottoms or torched in public demonstrations, the exuberance of my peers seemed unquenchable. We cast off all fetters of tradition, nationalism, and racism as we began creative experiments in alternative styles of living. Crash pads to communes, open-ended relationships instead of marriage, our generation sought freedom in every form. Our music blared a primitive echo of the heart-beat while we danced in ecstatic bliss, often induced by drugs, but also induced by faith in ourselves, faith in the natural world, and faith in the changes we felt coming on the wind.

Our generation was the first to be raised in the luxuries of a middle-class lifestyle, the first to have the luxury of launching out on a spiritual quest without sacrificing our safety net. We had the luxury to denounce the materialism provided by our parents so that we were free to study, read and think, discuss and travel, rather than add our hands to the labor at home. Dependent on the economic safe-guard of our parents to bail us out whenever our experiments failed, we took leaps that would enchant the world with our youthful enthusiasm and courage. The economy sustained us in cheap shared apartments as we moved from job to job, saving enough for the next adventure, able to easily afford extensive record collections, music equipment, or tickets to concerts, and just as able to afford a trip to Mexico or a refurbished school bus to go across country. Gas was cheap and there was always food stamps if you got stuck.

The summer of ‘67 was the summer I was transformed from a girl to a woman, to taste the first throes of falling in love. I spent two weeks at church camp. In the evening we would sit cross-legged on wooden floors, sun and wind burnt, exhausted from games, swimming, and discussions, and listen to the camp’s folk singers. By the time of our next-to-last-night traditional bonfire, we were singing along. The camp counselor whose fingers were strumming those sweet chords that reached into my heart had dark wavy hair and blue eyes. Forty years later I can still picture him, intelligent, funny, handsome; all the girls had crushes on him. I didn’t have a crush, only admiration for his talent. I was enthralled by the words he sang, the way that his folk music gave me truths to mull over, feelings that transcended my school-girl perceptions of life, the ideals of justice, peace, and freedom.

“Where have all the flowers gone?” he sang and I remembered the miles of small crosses in Arlington Cemetery, crosses that wordlessly convinced me to become a pacifist. “Blowin’ in the Wind” seemed to reach deep into my soul as I pondered injustice, remembering the shocking image of dilapidated shacks where black people lounged on the sagging porches on my first car trip through the South. “If I Had a Hammer” was a call to action. I felt myself being called, a finely-tuned conscience, separated suddenly from my peers who giggled and worried over zits and hairstyles, had dreams no wilder than a nice house and family. My dreams began to take the shape of the dilemmas of mankind, society’s need to change in order to embrace our common humanity, my need to be in the vanguard of that change. I knew that I belonged to a select group, those who wrote and sang and listened and believed in those songs.

On the last night, we had a dance. My joy. My shyness dissolved as I thumped and spun in bliss to “Ina-gada-de-vida”, oblivious to everything but the pulse of my flying. Then the music slowed. I retreated outside to cool down. Clark, our camp troubadour, came looking for me, to invite me to dance the last dance with him. With my head on his warm shoulder, our arms tightly wound around each other, breathing in his clean masculine scent, as we danced in slow motion, I fell in love.

The next day I departed with tears and the sweet burning of his kiss on my cheek. That week-end was my fourteenth birthday. My request: a guitar. So I could sing those songs that had stirred my heart and awakened my awareness.

I bought my first full length albums: Peter, Paul and Mary and Simon and Garfunkle.
Later, I was entranced by the lyrical poetry and soft sensuousness of Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Donovan. Folk music not only contained a message but I could sing along, could learn the simple chords and play the songs on my guitar. The words warned me that material wealth wouldn’t cure loneliness and affirmed my growing awareness that things were not as I had been taught to believe. John Kennedy was dead, murdered, and so were Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Kids I grew up with were asked to sacrifice themselves in a war that seemed pointless and was illegal. Schools didn’t educate us to think or to question, only to be good consumers. Churches lacked Christian charity and ignored the poverty around them while worshipping in their elaborate buildings.

I couldn’t just tie back my hair in pink barrettes and get by on my smile. I wanted to embrace life in its purest, its deepest, its most transcendent. I ached to sing, to dance, to celebrate our common need for peace and friendship.

1967. Summer of Love. A scorching wind blew out of Jerusalem, heavy with the scent of blood and victory, fragrant with the scent of sacrifice and dignity. After two thousand years, the Holy City was united under the leadership of the Jews. Israelis took to the streets in non-stop joyous celebrations that gathered into a wind, the searing wind of change.

It spread to Europe and young people threw off the yoke of following in daddy’s footsteps, the burden of civilizations’ history. The Beatles grew their hair long and sat at the feet of their guru. Their love songs grew into quests. Twiggy batted her eyelashes and knees and shoulders became unfettered, pants grew into bells to ring in a new age. The Beats, burned out in their smoky dungeons of post-traumatic Hiroshima, gave way to color, brightness, animation, and loud rock’n’roll.

The winds blew cross the Atlantic. The young people felt it blow their minds, blow away middle class apathy, middle class isolationism, suburban ennui. The words of the songs meant something. Oppression, racism, war were from the patriarchal pioneer mentality: it exists only for me to take it, use it, deplete it, enslave it, ravish it, control it.

We were pioneers in living the ideals of human potential for good, to save the planet and ourselves from what felt like impending doom. Millions of young people felt the breath of freedom not only for themselves but for each other. Slowly it began. An awakening, a glimpse of something else, another way to love, a way to live together. Another way to look—natural. Let it grow. Long hair, long sideburns, beards. Someone stopped shaving her legs. Someone took off her bra. Let it be. Borrowing from the Native Americans who lived close to the earth. Skins, beads, feathers, headbands, face paint. Someone began to live in a tipi. Someone put on a backpack and headed to the wilderness. Let it flow—from the East, incense, ankle bracelets, Nehru collars, thin silver rings on every finger. Let it flash—lace and long dresses, satin patches on denim, florescent colors. And skin, beautiful skin, God-given and simple. Why be ashamed? Adam’s first shame in the Garden was his nakedness. We wanted back in the garden. Strip off the shame, be naked. Let it be unencumbered, let freedom sing. Jeans, made for squatting by fires, chasing Frisbees, lying on the grass at concerts, hitch-hiking.

In 1968, there were three million people on the road. Seeking, communing, dancing, playing music, fucking, blooming. The pill had been invented. Young women didn’t have to choose between daring and denying. Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm gave away free meals in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Crash pads began to stabilize into communes. Some had ideals—organic farming, political causes, and spiritual fulfillment. Some were open to anyone who stopped by, anyone who would pull carrots, cook tofu meals, play music. Mostly all had some kind of charismatic leader. The Love Family in Seattle. Stephen Gaskin’s farm in Tennessee. The Brotherhood of the Spirit in Massachusetts. Wheeler Ranch, the Rainbow Farm on the West Coast. To name a few.

The peace pipe was passed. In an altered state of consciousness, all formulas, all categories, all conformities had to go. The unity of all was a vibrant drumbeat echoing the music we listened to. The Jefferson Airplane. The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix. Are you experienced? Some people freaked out, some ended up insane or dead. Girls got pregnant, had abortions, had traumas, were ruined. People began to wonder where it would go, where are we going? The free-for-all left chaos and a mess in its wake. The celebration was empty if not founded on a basic truth of life—the brotherhood of all mankind. Each according to his talent. How to live it? What to do to truly make a difference, not just party away our youth?

Earth. That was the name of our underground coffeehouse where no money was exchanged. Under the draft resistance offices, we made communal meals, watched psychedelic light shows, listened to music, read poetry, smoked cigarettes and pot, hung out, talked and talked and talked. But without focus, no one in charge, it folded.

The draft was like a punch in the stomach, a chill in the dead of night. Seeing the bodies burning on the nightly news, the soldiers coming back in pieces, sent chills down our spines. It might be someone you knew, it was someone you knew—your brother, your boyfriend, your neighbor. The Moratorium was a torch to keep the flame of peace burning. We marched, sang, held candlelight vigils, prayed, knocked on doors, went to Washington. Like the Democratic convention, we were greeted with tear gas and clubs. The intensity of amping up the protests. The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. Louder, harder music. Preparing for confrontations at the marches. The radical political parties starting to use their own violence. Infiltration by the FBI. Fighting power by fighting. Kent State and the shocking reality of sanctioned violence against the innocent.

The commercialization began. What we had done by dropping out was imitated by the popular culture. Exploitation by the media, advertisers, and selling out was followed by heavy drug dealers

By 1972, I watched my friends space out on drugs, accomplishing nothing but heart-aches. The gossiping, the back-biting, the failure to love each other and to be peaceful on a daily basis left me saddened and disillusioned. My friends began to go to college or to get married and settled down. The war began to wind down. The winds of change became a breeze as people went to live in the country, began to sell their crafts, became involved in spiritual disciplines, joined a commune, became rich playing rock’n’roll, begat children and began to think about the future. The world had not changed, at least not very much. But deep within the wind still blew and sighed, making me restless, restless, restless for a way back to the Garden. We had tried to force our way, like crashing the gates at Woodstock. Now we would have to abide by the long painful way of process, knowledge, and inner growth. The flower children would have to let their blooms wilt and fall, so that the fruit would grow and ripen.

writing in a group

2010-05-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

A few week-ends ago I led a writing workshop as part of Celebrate Yourself week-end women's retreat. The Saturday workshop was a writing circle for healing and Sunday's I call Spiritual Tune Up. The process of writing circles is simple: we read a poem, write spontaneously, then read what we have written without critiquing. All comments must consist of positive feed-back. The purpose of this is to quiet the left brain critic who tells us we can't write or that we're not good enough or what will the others think? The Judge, the Critic, or the child who was criticized for her creativity, this part of ourselves that watches us without tolerance or amusement at our efforts, not to mention never praises us for taking a risk, is calmed. Reading what we have written aloud is a risk; we feel vulnerable and sensitive and courageous. I acknowledge that.

Sunday's workshop starts with a meditation and uses poems with a spiritual slant to inspire us.

I have learned through the years of leading workshops to trust the process. Natalie Goldberg says go for what is rich with emotion, go for what you feel reluctant to say, go for the material that is hardest to write. Sometimes what we begin with: an image, a memory, a feeling, is not at all where we end up.

This week-end, someone thoughtfully brought along a box of kleenex, because as we opened our hearts, we needed it. There were losses and griefs that were heart-wrenching, there were stories of self-denial and fears of not being enough, not being held as precious and beloved. And as well, as I used prompts that focused on our blessings and our passions, there was laughter and remembrance of our innate worthiness. We honored our wholeness within our pain and brokenness.

Remembering is important for me, too. One line came into my head as I wrote: What would it be like to look up to myself?

I know the stories we are compelled to share are sometimes the ones we don't feel safe enough to share. How many of us have taken a writing workshop only to feel ripped to shreds by a critique that ignores the hard work we did to capture our deepest longings, our deepest despair, our deepest truth, the rent in the fabric of our daily lives that can lead to transformation and transcendence if we follow the frayed thread and not give up too soon?

It was a blessing for me to be in the circle, a circle that becomes sacred time and space as we articulate in our fumbling words, in our genius words, who we are and what has happened to us. The shortest bridge between two people is a story and I listen to yours and hold it close to me.

Venus in pink

2010-05-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

…………skies, flutter of
a silk dress on the line, the last
drops pooling on the tile for a second
before disappearing, scorched.

You wonder how it can be so hot
this early, the washing hung before the sun
can bleach it. Later, you watch the girls
on the beach saunter by

(That’s a bikini? you think, trying
not be envious of their smooth
curves, the strut, the tan
that you once upon a time

never needed. You were blond, unplucked,
a ripening strawberry hidden among the
green, a rose blooming on the stem.
The bold canter of your heart, wild dances in

moonlight.) Today, in silence, hands raw from
wringing, you follow the flight of the heron
sailing up the river at sunrise. You still
wear pink, but silk and with a slip.

My Green Card Marriage: Intro

2010-02-22T06:22:00.000-08:00

When I first met Alejandro Báez, I was grieving for the man who had been the love of my life. I was still in an altered state of living between worlds, where the veil is thin and memory is keen. My emotions were careening between relief and sorrow, reconnection to myself and feeling torn into pieces. One minute, swept away by relief, because Michael had been threatening suicide for years and now that he had followed through, I had no fear left, no anxiety every time the phone rang, no trepidation whenever I opened the door to a silent apartment. The next minute, the anguish of missing him, of feeling abandoned and alone would storm over my heart, leaving me dazed and exhausted. One minute I might dance with the joyful knowing of my own vibrancy, grateful for those who were close to me, and the next, I would feel battered by anger because of my participation in the abuses I endured from an emotionally unstable, unpredictable, brutally untactful man.

The love of my life, diagnosed bi-polar, spoke of his desire to exit daily, freely, willingly with anyone he knew or even with brief acquaintances. And I had insisted, insisted, that his life force was too strong for him to actually mean what he said. Michael’s death released me and then burdened me, released me from both our past and our future so that I had to create my own, alone again after the years of companionship, after hope of continuity, of finding refuge that had become another emotional roller coaster after all, burdened me with the telling of our story because silence was too painful and what he had sentenced me to in the last year of our life together.

At the moment when Roger introduced me to Alejandro, the desert skies were hot and the aspen trees on the mountains golden. I arrived to Roger’s booth at the Espanola art festival with two friends, and I was shaking with nervous anticipation because, although we had met recently, I wanted Roger to be my safety net, my place of sanity and affirmation. Roger was an artist, so I believed he understood me. He was also following his vision of creativity and community activism that I could only dream about.

Alejandro was wearing sunglasses and Roger asked him to take them off so I could see how beautiful his eyes were. He whipped off the sunglasses and I reached up a hand to caress his cheek. This gesture was unlike me, completely out of character. My response to pain was to withdraw and to not allow anyone to touch me. Even to shake hands with a stranger was difficult. With Roger I felt safe, safe enough to cry on his shoulder. I let him hold my hand while I choked out my confusion and tormenting memories. Although many of Michael’s friends and my own friends had hugged me during the memorial services, they were known, and comforting. To reach out to stroke a stranger’s cheek was an instinctual reaction that only later I would understand as a form of recognition. “Oh, so you have come back to me,” was the meaning of that gesture. And yet, blinded by grief, I did not yet know that coming back to each other would be a pattern of our relationship, as if we were dancing. He would gather me close, then spin me away, gather me close, then spin me away.

Union

2010-02-11T10:49:00.000-08:00

Union brings us home
to the one we have loved
in the reverence of our heart

Union is where love looks
through the reflection in my eyes
to see the within
as crystalline purity
and absolute wonder

Oh my brother my lover my friend
your love awakens my angelhood
is it God I am seeing
or God’s vision of me I am becoming?

(hush, He is so close now
as near as my heartbeat
pressed against yours)

Union give us the possibility
of eternity
all in an instant
the yearning depends
the searching is completed
the fulfillment finds meaning
and the Book of Life falls open
to the page which we have written.

Lovers

2010-02-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

I want to touch you like tender rain
I want to run my fingers through your hair
like a breeze, like a whisper
and melt you with heated kisses
I want to pick the cherries from your boughs
and lay them in my fine woven basket
I want to bury myself in your golden nectar
the way bees enter flowers, come out sticky and drunk with pollen
I want to entwine around you like a morning glory
brilliantly awake to the world
I want to dance together as butterflies do
intricately measuring the air
I want to be covered by you the way
dandelions take over the lawn

Out of Sync

2010-02-04T15:33:00.001-08:00

The first time I held you, midnight delivery
from a stranger’s arms, a nurse’s frown
of order and rules because I dared to
fuss, to complain, to moan
that you had been taken away too soon

because I wanted that infant, pulled from
my womb under the desecration
of little white pills. We were out of sync,
that weeping spill down my legs but my body
calm and quiet, container and contained, and you saying let’s go.

No natural birth this time, no sucking infant
with the gaze of love, no instant fierce desire
to protect. We were out of sync but you slept
and I cried to hold you, you woke up
every time I laid down to blessed sleep.

You were my evening child with a smile to
split the dark, my boy with a golden heart. The years
roll by and still I have no answers. You were taken
away too soon, I never danced at your wedding. You alit
for heaven’s gate and I lay down, unholy wait.

Moontime

2010-02-03T16:23:00.000-08:00

The moon sang to her bones
and she rose up, beating the dance into the lush
grass, arms held out as in embrace,
in prayer.

Her body undulated like a river and she entered the
pulse of her own rhythm. She was meant to
dance wildly in solitude while others
shielded their hearts from her
blaze.

The woman would shed her skin the way she
shed her blood, whisper words of comfort
to those left behind.

Asks for no surety, makes no bonds,
marks the day with praise, fondles the red circle
around her waist. The woman dances

skin to skin with the moon, with the dirt
under her feet, with the song that breathes
up from her gladness.

Dancing One More Time

2010-02-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

You are not good for me
and yet I yearn for you.
How dare you walk away,
what right do you have to pocket my love
like a penny begged on a corner
without a backward glance?

What right do you have
to dance with strangers
while I await you like a school girl
drunk on a holiday
afraid she is about to lose her virtue
afraid the chance might pass her by?

What right do you have to be cold
and cruel?
The dance steps we perfected
of coming together and breaking away
have torn up the dance floor
so that I stumble,
my feet aching in
broken shoes.

Geyser

2010-02-01T08:43:00.001-08:00

There is no delight
without love
There is no love
without tears
But I am a well
a fountain
a geyser
rushing up from an overflowing heart:
hot and steamy
but jettisoning
to no one
into empty space
where the audience applauds
when I am on time.

Duet

2010-01-29T18:52:00.000-08:00

You were my warrior and I your lonely wife
at the window. You were my farmer and I
the basket, the crushed grapes, the ripe fermentation.

You were my tailor and I the seam, you my
cobbler and I the sole, you were my waiter
and I the lady at table, lean and flushed

with the touch of the sun, desiring cool
drinks or ices to quench my thirst. You were
the engineer and I the gleaming parts, the roar

of the engine, the twist and fit of the cogs.
You were the angel and I the prayer, you
were the jester and I the riddle and song.

Falling in love

2010-01-27T15:18:00.001-08:00

I dropped my coins in the wishing well
and dusted my pillow with charms and roses
and still, it is a surprise, a wave of giddy
nerves, trembling knees, that urges me to dance.
Blood rises in the circuitous cells
that comprise my bones, my muscles, my will.
It flings me up and up,
a giant wave cresting to reach the moon.
It is like tearing open a package dressed in brown paper
to a gold bracelet shimmering with jewels, the
one I had admired in the jeweler’s window
the one I thought I could not afford.

Mi Sol

2010-01-25T09:39:00.001-08:00

Today I am pondering the intricacies of desire
how I wanted you to look at me, the gaze
between us as warm as floating in a Mediterranean sea

You were the sun beating down on my shore
and I the moon, vigilantly shining through the dark,
a path to the sea, a motion of nearing

that guided us to the horizon. But then came
sunset, a door closing, our final kisses
as blank as whitewashed walls
as tender as rain

beyond words

2010-01-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

Beyond Words

She wanted nothing he could not bring
by coming alone. Alone. She was.
Finally. The dishes put away in their
stacked piles. The soft air of the humming
fan. And within, the
sky that rippled out when
she touched her heart
and remembered.

The ghost breathed a coolness into the
green of her desire. But still.
She was. A greed for caresses
while her eyes took him to island places.
Oasis. Fresh rose water poured over the
palms. Disguised as a virgin. The
fig of the mouth.

Only knowing in the final moment
of unveiling she would rise
under the challenge of his hands.
Finally. He brought her refuge and his
cloak of secrets when he came to
her alone.

All my life I have loved more than one thing

2010-01-23T07:18:00.001-08:00

“All my life I have loved more than one thing……”
Mary Oliver

I have loved the quiet breath of anticipation
just before the sunrise tips the horizon in gold
and I have loved the tapestry of brilliant
colors enfolding day into night

and I have loved the silence of a forest path
with its gossamer of web and wing
and boisterous laughter
around a dinner table

I have loved the holy shine on a new-born’s
face when he comes to light
and the tender curls on the back of a neck
of a stranger seated in front of me

I have loved loud rock’n’roll and the brash throb
of its heart-beat urging me to dance
and the soft melodies of Andrea Bocelli
singing in a language I can not translate

I love a friend’s listening ear without
offering me judgment or advice
and I love the harsh voice of truth
telling me I need to think again

and I love stories and the feel of a book
in my hands and I love casting
twigs into the fire, empty and serene,
while the stars mark the miles to eternity

I have loved the fragrance of gardenias
and the sound of waves hitting the beach
and the taste of crusty bread dipped into
freshly pressed olive oil and salt

I have loved the touch of a masseuse’s
wisdom and the crushing weight of a love
I yearn for even though I know
it will break my heart

I have loved places where I laid down
into deep sleep, beaches or meadows,
and I have loved being awakened from
a dream by the sound of my own name

Alive, I tell you

2010-01-22T09:05:00.000-08:00

and in the dream
surely as close as my breath
as close as my own shade

spread around us upon the cobbles.
It was not passion
and yet there were kisses

and joy, there was the time after margaritas
we staggered across the swaying
planked bridge, holding onto

each other as if that would prevent us
from falling. Those magical
nights of having you all to myself.

I accepted the gloom and the
moods and the way frustration
flared up like a firecracker

gone off at the wrong party
for the sake of the music,
your voice in sync with some

sappy love song, the way it made
my heart quiver and shake, the way it
made my world spin into orbit

around your invincible sun.

Blazing through night

2010-01-21T12:17:00.001-08:00

You are my fiesta, my fireworks against the
pitch black, my bone rattling boom, my
roar of the crowd, my glittering
cannon flyer, my sequined stunt man

You are my foot stomping, hand clapping
flamenco dance, my tango, my pasa doble
with a heart clutching spin, my waltz until we
fall down, wings burst into star dust and blood

You are my long drink of water
in a desert of games, those odd ones of
false appearances and deceit, snark
whistles and snake tongues

You are my hallowed ground, my shivering
awe that traces along my spine, my communion
from a well of sweet gospel, blind
transformation, awakened zeal

You are my fire keeper, my hearth, my flame,
my driftwood of sculptured loss, my turnstile of
fate, you are the face in my
tortilla, the honey on my papaya

You are the pebbles cast in moonlight,
the backward look, the courage, the sacrifice
You are the rules that broke every one
until we were no longer sorry,
until we were found

Aftermath

2010-01-18T07:48:00.000-08:00

This is a piece of my heart left over
after the harvest, after the fire, after the feast.
This is the muscle that stretches its arms,
this is the ache that learned how to sing.

This is where I will hold you close,
soothing song of sympathy, drum roll
of hope, tune of gratitude,
and willingness to give everything
you could ask for, if only you would.

This I will feed you, milk and honey,
berries and cream and those warm figs
that fell off the tree, crusty
bread, olives and cheese,
these I will set on our table of
communion, a gaze between us
of forest, of gardens, of fields.

This I will hold, this I will release,
gladness that arched between us
like sun come back from the storm, like
the way the first man greeted his
flesh-formed maiden, like the world
had been created just for we two.

Michael's gift: today's poem

2010-01-17T15:36:00.000-08:00

You are my hearth
my soul-keeper
my flame
I was born to be ignited by you
I plunge sprouting wings
fanned into fire
by the breath of your love

You are my slow river
my ark
traveling through dark liquid night
silently
downward I sail
past star-glistened rocks
drenched in salt spray
and then opening
to the luminescent
shattered
moon trail of the sea
gently rocking
gently rocking

You light me within
and I am the lantern
the lighthouse’s cherished beam

Kissing you
I dream of sunrise
surprising my sleep-frosted eyes
like a squeeze of tropical fruit
across a blue tablecloth
quenching my heat-blistered tongue
and filling my parched throat
with sweet wildness

Love

2010-01-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

I am still waiting for a sign,
a shiver across my shoulders, a word
written in snow by sparrow feet

hoping by that simple gesture
that means so much, the fertile
dark will be sundered.

Our longing we never shared,
too risky the journey,
the plow finding stones

and the heart crying foul once again.
But still I would hear it now
that you have reached light,

those flames burnt across my soul,
the grace of knowing we were once
twined, even if only in froth and sand.

Embers

2009-12-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

If he asks you how to blow the ember
back into flame, whisper: here, and
here. If he points to a broken heart,
breathe these words: this is the way,
only this.

If he dances on your rooftop and
cups his hands to hold the moon,
sing. Sing and pluck the fine
silvered strings of his pleasure.

If he asks you if you dare, become
bold as amber honey, widen your hips,
hand to him the key. Do not
hesitate and do not
look back.

If he asks you if you love,
look deeply into his eyes. Light the
flame with your breath, let your lips
seal the promise, let him find
your secret rose. Open.

Give wine. Give fragrance. Give dew, and
then let the sea come in its force. Let the tide
overtake you, let the moon rock you,
let your seashell hearts
fill with joy.

The Many Voices of St Paul poetry jam

2009-11-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

Black Dog Cafe
308 Prince Street in Saint Paul.
Monday Dec 7 at 7pm

Curated by Richard Broderick. Readers include Kathryn Kysar; Aleli Balagtas; Rich Broderick; Mike Finley; and Wendy Brown-Baez. Wendy established “In the Shelter of Words”, a powerfully revealing writing project at Face to Face Academy and SafeZone– a resource center for homeless, run-away, and low-income youth in Saint Paul. Also reading will be Marie Weber, a recent graduate of Face to Face Academy whose work is included on a CD produced by “In the Shelter of Words.” Music by Nathan Hanson, saxophonist from The Fantastic Merlins, and Toni Adedeji, lead singer of Wednesday's Bliss.

to read about In the Shelter of Words:
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2009/09/24/shelter-words

p prompt

2009-11-19T11:10:00.000-08:00

privacy

this is secret, whisper, shadow
this is pure, untainted by human need
the all too human desire to touch and own,
this is protection when all the world has torn

you through with its jagged teeth of greed
this is solitude when prophecy is strong
when prediction means watch, wait, enfold

when promise creeps in closer to the soul
when the purpose of vows are to forgive
what cannot be undone

the way of the hermit, the steps of the
pilgrim, the muse of the sage
gone to bone, perfumed by the light
from the last eternal star

worn for the duration
pressed into memory
owned by no one
devoured with grace

Death brings a gift

2009-11-15T11:15:00.000-08:00

Death always brings a gift. You knew that, didn’t you? Sometimes it brings a burst of life, appreciation, connection to people from the past, reconciliation. At least a taste so sweet and so bitter of how precious life is, how vulnerable we are, how human. The gift of someone’s memory engraved on a moment of time, a life brought into focus, savored, passed around, a photograph that says so much and so little, the enigma of a human soul no longer available to give explanation. The gifts that come with grief, despair, and unutterable pain are beyond words. The gift of a deep natural silence while we sit in a circle of honoring and releasing. To know that we are breathing, that we hear a bird sing, the sound of a green apple thunking to the ground, the bell or screen door as Fred goes in and out, in and out. To feel the ice cold salt rimming a margarita on my lips, the slide of liquid down my dusty throat. A moment before we are chattering, our hair streaming behind us in the wind from the truck window, the sun hot on my thighs, my silver bracelets glinting. A moment later I feel your arms strongly around me as we both sob. You didn’t even know him, you didn’t know until two days ago what had happened to me, and yet, your heart has swing wide open to take my pain in—a pain you can only try to imagine and can not begin to heal. This is today’s small gift I unwrap to add to the small basket like a pile of shells swept up on the damp sparkling shore of the black cold unfathomable and invincible sea.

My authentic Voice

2009-11-11T14:02:00.000-08:00

When I speak from my authentic voice, I never know

exactly what I am going to say or how I will say it or where it will lead me. It is a magic carpet ride, it is a hero's journey to the center, it is an adventure on the yellow

brick road. Sometimes my authentic voice is strong and speaks the harsh truth and sometimes it is filled with tender compassion. My authentic voice is clearest when I walk the tightrope between worlds, between worlds of light and dark, confusion and purpose, wanting and awareness that all is fine. To dance between the living and the dead, this side of the border where I understand the language and that side where language is foreign, and gestures, smiles, tears, and laughter weave us together, between grief and joy, between this life and the one I am creating.

Dia de los Muertos: La Llorona

2009-11-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

Who am I?
I am La Llorona, weeping for my children.
They say I drowned my children.
I say not.
They say I will snatch yours.
I say it is a tale to keep your children home.
I am the wind whistling through your fear.
Think carefully.
Do you want to lose your children?
I once was beautiful.
Think carefully.

Impersonating La Llorona at the Dead Poet's Halloween party sponsored by The Loft
Oct 31, 2009

Our Green Card Anniversary: to find the book

2009-10-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

Our Green Card Anniversary

You come home dressed in black.
I can’t decide between silk or
velvet. I remember I wore a lace
blouse. It was a warm October day.
In the photographs I am standing
in shadow, you in the light.

You ask, “Where do you want to go?”
I don’t have any appetite, only a desire
to wear stockings and heels and
retrieve the gaze, the way you looked
at me the first time.

I remember how I clutched the flowers,
couldn’t call it a bouquet without wanting
to toss it away. In my room there
are tulips and a note. “I want to make
up,” you write. The storm was still

ringing in my ears. I remember how we
laughed trying on Halloween costumes
at the party store. One costume was
husband, another wife. I ended up wearing
strands of red coral and a gold

mask. It was our first public
appearance as a married couple.
I hadn’t changed my name yet.
The tulips are blooded and I don’t know
if I want to rebel or give in because now

I see though your subterfuge. You stood in
the light where the love reflected
off your face for all the memories
to come. I stood in shadow
promising that the tears I accumulate

would belong to us both. We took it on
despite the clock of abandonment
ticking its warning note.
“I want to make up,” you wrote.

“The way I love you is beyond words,”
I write back. At the table you open the card
and I can’t read the expression on your face.

For Dia de los Muertos your ancestors danced
on the altar with mine. Does that make us family?
Your mother’s spirit came by and blessed me in the
shadowy aftermath of the party when we
drank too much tequila. She said you would

never let me go. You hold on by offering
tulips, dinner out, the red wine I like best.
You never said you believed the
vows we took. You took my tears
and braided them into the rug at the entrance

of our home, where I live with
your name that is now mine and my
disappointments. Dia de los Muertos is
coming and I am afraid the grief will sweep me
away. Once again you

reach out to catch me. I remember
we drank champagne and I went home alone
and happy. Tonight we drink champagne
and you take me into your life
as neatly as folding shut an envelope.

When I told you I need you, you
did not try to negate me. I said
I think it is natural. You said, “Are you
ready for tiramisu?”

from Ceremonies of the Spirit
(c) Wendy Brown-Baez
2009

waiting after midnight

2009-10-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

Waiting After Midnight

I wanted white roses. I wanted rain to
come in the window. The sky was gray
and the moon had disappeared,
the cherries were sweet and chilled.

The roses wept, the rain dripped
down the pane and the
phone never rang,
the bowl filled with cherry pits

and my fingers were crimson.
The moon blew away the clouds
and silvered my solitude,

my pearly body opaque and bold.
I remember the tears
you spilled into the cup of my breasts
to drink when I am thirsty,

the scent of damp earth,
the way the white curtains
rose and fell.

(c) Wendy Brown-Baez Ceremonies of the Spirit

In praise of beauty

2009-10-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

In praise of beauty

The beauty of tears.
The beauty of a broken heart because I loved fiercely and didn’t want to let go.

In praise of letting go because life is a river and we the fallen leaf swirling to the ocean. Because life is an open sea and when our life raft capsizes, we float until a dolphin rescues us, until we accept salt water as our fate, until we are scorched by sun and condensed to bone, food for fish.

In praise of the life behind me, the trail of farewells that became the time of welcome. In praise of learning that farewell means til we meet again. That life is full of second chances, no true ending to the story because each ending is only a threshold, another point of view, another miracle.

In praise of miracles and the energy to move on.

In praise of rivers and oceans. The tide in my blood. The fog. The darkness, the rain. In praise of the small candle I hold in my hand. The box of matches given to me the day I was born.

In praise of cycles and spirals and gifts and the moment of truth and the moment of surrender.

In the Shelter of Words: read more by clicking on this link

2009-09-28T15:33:00.001-07:00

photo courtsey of Dan Marshall

Jerusalem from Ceremonies of the Spirit

2009-08-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

She is the place of all my dreams
why can I not be there?
I entered her in sackcloth and ashes,
I departed in mourning,
weeping, kissing, taking with me
the heart of one of her true sons.
Good enough for him, why can’t I
be good enough for her?
Is my heart too pure for her blood-stained streets
or too fragile for the blood lust that she evokes?
Devoted to her vision,
I was humiliated, threatened and scorned
and yet no one succeeded in hurting me.
I laughed with joy
at the miracle of her very being,
her revenge on her destroyers,
from ashes she arose a celestial carrousel
now poems, now daggers,
now screams, now prayers.
I dream of her but she denies me.
I reach out for her
but she turns me away.
In the thin light of morning
I beseech her name and her pity.
When will I sit beside her moon-washed gates
and be enchanted by her midnight splendor?
When will I be able to touch her heart
and be touched by the secret
she guards so severely?
Must I wait until she is worthy
of a man of peace,
must I wait until I until I am
strong enough to stand against her,
to become equal to her danger
and demand that she be holy?

(c) Ceremonies of the Spirit 2009

A Writer's Life

2009-08-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

The world, at least our world, seems to be breaking up into small colonies of the saved, as if we were entering a new Dark Age. If so, then perhaps the most important task we can set ourselves from here on out is to sustain, articulate, and preserve through literature the essential human values that early in the evolutionary history of our species distinguished us from our higher primate cousins—loving kindness, protection of the young, the weak, and the elderly, and consciousness of mortality.

Russell Banks;
from Burn This Book

Dancing with Destiny

2009-07-27T07:54:00.001-07:00

Please note that time is 7:00 pm

Eulogy to Mi Sol

2009-06-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

I was Alejandro’s Luna and he was mi Sol.

When we created the gallery, the original banner read:
Sol y Luna: arte sin fronteras: contemporary art ----- poetry & writing workshops

I first became friends with Alejandro when I invited him by email to be part of a bilingual poetry event. To this day, I don’t know why he agreed, but it obviously was destiny. Later he confessed that when I emailed him, he couldn’t remember exactly who I was but once we reconnected in person, it felt like as though we had known each other forever. We had so much fun kidding around during rehearsals, I wondered how the show would turn out, but it was wonderful. That night was Alejandro’s birthday and what a gift he was to me! He created an altar with Mexican textiles and a large Guadelupe painting. After each poem was read, we lit velas and dedicated the altar to Las Desaparacidas, the missing women from Juarez.

I had never imagined trying to start up a business. Alejandro was a visionary. The first gallery was a tattoo parlor, dirty, smelly and dark. We tore out the walls, replaced the white tiled floors with saltillo tiles, and the front gate by shining glass. It was beautiful and I was proud to represent Sol y Luna to the public of Puerto Vallarta. It breaks my heart that we will enjoy his legacy that he left behind without his dynamic, captivating presence.

Alejandro was the light in my darkness after my son died. In 2006, when I arrived in Puerto Vallarta, I was still devastated by the cruelty of my son's unexpected and tragic death. Alejandro took me by the hand and led me out of the shadows. We held hands as we climbed the mountain of dreams and we held hands when we leaped off the cliff, learning faith in ourselves. He chose art and I chose poetry. We laughed with delight as our wings unfurled and we watched each other soar.

Alejandro taught me to make every moment count, whether it was a meal or an art deal, a lazy day on the beach or a trip to meet an artist. I do know that after every ending, another door opens. I want you to listen carefully. Alejandro is saying thank you for all the love and the good times you shared. He was a blessing in my life and I bless him as he soars onward to the stars.

for more stories on Sol y Luna: http://www.solylunapv.blogspot.com/

You know this

2009-06-21T20:28:00.000-07:00

The bus jerks across every pothole. Next to you sits
a young mother, acrylic nails
tipped in daisies and golden café
eyes. Her baby jostles on her lap
while she scolds into the cell phone:
“No, I didn’t…
You got no business…
It none of your business….”

and across the aisle, down the length of the bus,
ears are glued to a whispering beat,
enclosed in iPod rhythm, children with
hands over their eyes thinking they are
invisible.

You know your heart is breaking
crack by crack along the fault line,
aching fiery explosion beneath the surface,
the delicate film you wrapped it in to keep
away the fingers of
the dirty wicked world
melting

and you wouldn’t be on the bus,
eyes glazed with grief, shawled with
a darkness beneath which you are calm and adrift,
not yet bailing out the bottom of the boat,
not yet realizing the damn thing is sinking,
all caulking and plugging
useless

except that you don’t drive and there are appointments
and promises. They don’t stop, not for heartbreak,
not even for wanting that shawl over
your head like a tallit, private
and sacred and a declaration of faith,
but all day, all night in your room you are
going crazy with a restless ticking of the
hours

dead yet? still breathing? still the
virus climbing the veins, still the lungs in their
labor, their instinct without hope or purpose,
the body shrinking to bone, the muscle
slack and drooled, the lips chapped and sore?
mi amor? the name you never called
him

the way he held back and you walked away,
the last time you cradled him and he cried,
the kiss good-bye that made you weep
all the way to the airport.
You know this—like one could prevent it,
like there is still a way for a safe arrival
home

Give yourself the gift of this jewel of Rumi

2009-04-20T10:43:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QYDrd1a0M0

“Think of something you said. Now think of what you wish you had said.”

2009-04-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

I wish I had said no. I wish I hadn’t answered the email. I wish I had said I’m too busy, too stupid, too illiterate, I have no language, I have no thoughts, I am empty headed.

I wish I had said yes. I wish I had taken her home and given her hot chicken soup made by my own hands. I wish I had insisted. I wish I had told her not to leave. Give me a chance, I could have cried.

Why is it so hard to see the future, the damage that is to come? Why is it so hard to see the solution is to give more, not back away? How many times have I let others make mistakes before I realize I could save a lot of heart-aches? Most of all, my own.

poppies in Israel

2009-04-12T12:56:00.001-07:00

In Response to the Flood in Northern Minnesota

2009-04-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

I am blest to step under a shower, the gush of hot water / to have indoor plumping / sleep in a warm bed. I am blest to be able to buy groceries / buy even flowers / buy even candles / paper towels / to have light / a tv / to play DVDs / have a pile of books teetering on the edge of a table.

I am blest to have a pc / a politically correct bus ride / green energy and brown skin and my hood I wasn’t born in and can leave anytime. I am blest to be handed a transfer I didn’t pay for / given an apology / a smile / a seat / to be asked if I am coming over soon / to be wanted / to be called.

I am blest hundreds of times a day when my mind clicks on and hundreds of times when my body stands up and when it walks and does those exercises to get back in shape and the green growing in the yard and a view out the window and suddenly a robin.

I am blest to be home alone and blest to be in a crowd of children and blest to be watching the world walking by with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine in my hand and a slice of pizza or a salad with cranberries and walnuts and fresh baked bread.

I am blest to be doing the dance of peace and hey baby it’s me in the mirror liking the silver that frames my face and never mind the winter of my discontent or the summer of my first heart-break. I do not have water gushing over my floors and mass destruction and housedamaged. I already declared bankruptcy and walked the sliver of despair, I already fell in the desert of defeat and arose with my mouth full of dust.

I spread the ashes of my lover and thought of how two can make a soul or break a promise and I tasted the ashes when my husband confided his HIV status was acute again and I sank up to my neck in ash when I watched my son’s mortal remains swirl away in the river. So blest blest blest am I to work in silence and not go screaming through the streets and what I can do to light a match to the small lantern one more time and what can I do but follow its luminescence that leads me on?

Join us for an evening of extraordinary performance art!

2009-03-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

An evening of multi-cultural, dynamic, cutting edge performaces

by 6 talented women:

Dance and story-telling Xpression-Inspiration by Maia Maiden

Performance poet Wendy Brown-Baez in La Noche del Amor

Dance Textured memories by Renee Copeland

Spoken Word by Deja Stowers in Black Girl, one world

Stand up comic Farheen Hakeem

Dance by Aneka Mcmullen

Patrick's Cabaret

3010 Minnehaha Ave S Mpls

Friday April 3, Saturday April 4

http://www.patrickscabaret.org/

New Mexico poetry reading

2009-03-11T09:35:00.001-07:00

with Nadia Giordana, editor of Mississippi Review,

which has one of my poems in issue 8 at my publication party

publication performance party

2009-02-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

Ceremonies of the Spirit
love poems sensual and celestial
from Plain View Press

Publication Performance Party
Friday February 27th at 7:00

followed by wine reception & book signing
at Homewood Studios

2400 Plymouth Ave, Minneapolis, 55411

http://www.homewoodstudios.com/galleries.html

to order signed copies http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/
to order by credit card: Plain View Press
sbpvp@sbcglobal.net

$15 plus $3 S&H

"… That’s what Wendy does, she connects us with words and wraps us in the safety of a shawl so we can fall in love with poetry once again."
- Gary Glazner, Founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project

HOT OFF THE PRESS!

2008-11-17T15:50:00.001-08:00

Ceremonies of the Spirit,

love poems sensual and celestial,

available from http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/

Hi from Altered Estherics

2008-10-02T16:22:00.001-07:00

Join us for Edgy, experimental, improvisational, culturally expansive, socially relevant, politically charged, entertaining, provocative chutzpah

2008-09-24T08:16:00.000-07:00

Patrick's Cabaret
3010 Minnehaha Ave Minneapolis
03 & 04 October 2008
8:00 PM
http://www.patrickscabaret.org/

Featuring an Eclectic evening of:
Laura Littleford: an excerpt of "Romeo and Juliet in Winnipeg"
"Night Visions" by John Gustav-Wrathall
Wendy Brown-Baez: "Hitch-hiking the Cosmos"
Joan Calof reading and/or singing poems from her chapbook, The Lyrical Curmudgeon. There will be a sing-along.
and Music by the Witherspoon TrioMore
Wendy Brown-Baez takes you into her vibrant, colorful world with sensual imagery, elegant rhythms and poignant stories. Traveling from Mexico to the Middle East, from homelessness to hope, from infatuation to grief, she voices the relentless pursuit of the human spirit for connection and joy.

"… That’s what Wendy does, she connects us with words and wraps us in the safety of a shawl so we can fall in love with poetry once again."- Gary Glazner, Founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project

"An iconoclast by nature, Wendy Brown(-Baez) defies classification. But she has been called a performance poet, which is an apt description....Mark States of Poetry Express says people adored her the last time she performed at Priya, convincing him to feature her again....She works the room with maximum theatrically, drawing those who are transfixed on the drama before them into her vivid, vibrant world." ----Natasha Nargis, East Bay Express

Poetry as a Spiritual Practice

2008-09-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

Poetry as a Spiritual Practice: An Interview with Wendy Brown-Báez
by Gaia Richards
excerpt from the September 2008 issue Edge Life Magazine
Wendy, you are a Bardic poet who portrays her craft as a spiritual practice. Will you elaborate?
Wendy Brown-Báez: I am a storyteller from the Bardic tradition and I'm offering my stories so that you can see that you have a story to tell, also, within you. A Bard was a person that went from village to village and told poems as a way of passing along information, news and gossip. A Bard preserved the legends and myths, as well. I want to bring poetry to people who are not experienced in listening to poetry and so, it should be easy to understand. Some of the poems that I do are not about me. They are about other people who may not have a voice or they are about my witnessing of situations that are difficult.

Such as?
WBB: For examples, I have a poem about a suicide bomber, about a pregnant woman in Baghdad, about a beggar woman in Mexico:
"The old woman paused in front of us / hardly more than a corpse / fingers of bone cupped open / the palm a bowl of destitution"

God does work through people.... One of the things I find appealing about you is, well, your affect, the way you dress, your style.
WBB: I was part of a workshop called "Earthwalks for Health" and we would spend weekends with the indigenous people of New Mexico, learning their spiritual traditions. One time we were taught about how to listen to the river speak to us. After Sam died, I went to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert for Thanksgiving. I walked to the Chama River where I'd throw his ashes to see if the river would speak to me.

The River said, "Take the pieces of your life and put them together." It was the first intimation I had that there is some meaning to all that had happened to me, the commune, Michael's death (my partner), Sam's death (my son), and my desire to help others.

Poetry, my poems, are my own unique expression and I use my body, not just my voice. I embody the poems. When I start to rehearse a poem, I ask, "How does this poem want to be presented?" I let the poem tell me how to dress, how to move and use certain gestures and intonations. For example, in Beggar Woman, I wear a typical Oaxacan apron and rebozo. By contrast, I dance a little when I recite "We came to listen to miramba music..."

I set up an altar and light candles after each poem and dedicate them to individuals, other poets, or peoples who are living through intense situations, such as the children of Afghanistan. This way, I create a beautiful and meaningful stage setting and it is a kind of prayer. After my last performance at Banfill-Locke, the audience came up to the altar to see the photos and to continue a dialogue with me and it was very moving to me, very special.

The last thing I want to say is that I believe anyone can write and share their story and that stories connect us to each other. My slogan is "You don't have to be a writer, just a willingness to find your own words." For me, writing is one of the ways I stay connected to the Divine, listening to the still voice within, and performing is letting that Voice speak out loud so I can be connected to others.

For more information on Wendy Brown-Báez, please visit http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/
Gaia Richards is a freelance writer, resident yogi at the Midtown Global Market and astrologer. Her website is http://www.satnamcity.com/

This is not a poem

2008-08-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the world is achingly beautiful.

We are crammed in the bus, just crammed, and the night air is sulky and sweet, summer winding its way around our throats, a silken caress to soften our scowls.

While waiting at the bus stop, I notice the neighbor sitting in his lawn chair drinking a beer and listening to music and you can just feel his happiness radiating out to the street, kicked back on a Friday evening.

The Latina girls giggle on the bus in their tank tops, red and orange and green, and the black girls get on with their bangley earrings and gold sandals, while the bus lurches through the dusk falling on us like a tide of good wishes.

People on the bus are glued to their cell phones. Like the people who talk to themselves in Central Park in New York City, sitting on the benches with nowhere to go, unable to imagine getting out of the city or away from the voices in their heads. We all have voices in our heads these days.

And a man wearing a grey jacket with thinning hair gets on the bus, trailing a scent of cigarette smoke and bitterness. At first I am not listening but then I can’t help it, his voice is low but intrusive. He is saying, Where is God in all this mess? There is no God, look at the way he lets us suffer. If I met God, I would spit on him, I been suffering for 30 years, can’t eat what I want, go where I want. I have no life, just pain, man. What more can God do to me, huh? Only thing else he can do is kill me, and I wish he would and just get it over with, man. And I can’t tell if he is talking to the man slouched in his seat across the aisle or just into the air of the bus. The dark-skinned man in his dirty t-shirt and broken sneakers whose bowed back told his tale of woe, says, Where the love, man? Can’t you give us some love? and reaches out a hand to shake his.

The blonde couple across from me with the chubby, bouncy baby ring the bell. It’s my stop, too, and we get up to get off. I almost turn to the man and say, Look, God came to see you today. Look at that man shaking your hand and that baby giving her smiles away for nothing. That’s God, man. Wake up. But I don’t.

I climb down the steps of the bus and think about how God once deserted me and how it almost killed me. But didn’t. And I walk away to a party where I know no one but will have a swell time anyway, just happy those days are over. And I think, I sure hope that man finds out someday that he was wrong.

2008-05-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

Ashes in the Rio Chama

“I close my eyes, and think of water.” –James Wright

I close my eyes and think of
water. Water flowing crystal
clean, the brook, the forest
gilded in daybreak, serene

Water from an icy spring high in
the Spanish mountains, the road
as heated as a griddle
as we wound our way down

to supper and a bottle of wine. Water
carried away my son, or what was
left of his mortal remains, my hand,
my hindsight too blackened

to know what I was doing in this
humble ritual. The river is flowing,
I sang into the immaculate silence of our
mourning circle. Kaddish suddenly

understood, the need to weave praise or leave
the earth to its wretched toil. I was thirsty
for a sprinkle of water on my brow
from the holy font scummed with marbled

green by the church door. I think of water,
flowering in womb-warmth to be re-
born, the salty return
to innocence if I could but believe

Jugar con fuego, bilingual poetry event

2008-04-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

Jugar con fuego:
a celebration of Spanish Poetry
Jugar con fuego,
una celebración de la poesía española

The students of El Colegio Charter School and poet Wendy Brown-Baez invite you to Jugar con fuego, a bilingual poetry performance, featuring their original poems as well as works by famous poets. We welcome you to celebrate the rich heritage of Spanish poetry as we play with words and build bridges between the past and the future. We will interweave Spanish and English translations as we present poems in a vivid dramatic way.

Los estudiantes de El Colegio Charter School and poet Wendy Brown-Baez les invitan por Jugar con fuego, un espectaculo de poesia bilingüe donde presentarán sus propios poemas originales, así como la poesía de las poetas famosos. Les damos una bienvenida para celebrar la herencia rica de poesía española mientra jugamos con las palabras y construimos los puentes entre el pasado y el futuro. Entretejeremos traducciones españolas e inglesas mientra presentamos poemas de una manera viva y dramatica.

Thursday May 29th at 7:00 PM
at El Colegio’s Theater
4137 Center for Independent Artists
Bloomington Ave S, Minneapolis
free, gratis

Funds for this activity are provided by the COMPAS Community Action Program through a grant from the McKnight Foundation .

2008-03-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

I had the great fortune to perform poetry in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

this January as part of La Noche Verde slide show presentation

for the opening of new paintings by Lena Bartula

at Isla Cuale Cultural Center, hosted by Sol y Luna Galleries.

To be informed about the foremost contemporary Mexican, North and South American painters, sculptors, and photographers, represented by Alejandro Baez at Galeria Sol y Luna
in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico :
check out this blog: http://www.solylunapv.blogspot.com/

The dogs laughed.

2008-01-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

The dogs laughed. The moon danced. The garden wound around her lovely neck singing of summer roses and river water. She wanted to hold this one moment forever. She wanted to be a child again for one more day, time stretching away, infinite and full of promise. She wanted to pretend her life had not yet happened. The roses were yellow with pink tips and pink with golden tips, but in the moonlight they shimmered like glistening silver bells. They had names but she didn’t know what they were. Their fragrance was sweeter when she rubbed the petals on her face. The dogs had found a place to rest on her feet. She reached down to scratch their silky ears, protected, regal. The moon found blue silk stockings to wear. The garden was drenched in dew and moonlight. She wanted the stars to sparkle on her fingers. She wanted the river to whisper secrets. The dogs settled their heads on their paws, listening, obedient to her command. She felt the garden embrace her as though she were a sculpture made of marble, a stone goddess in a temple, unmoving, silent. The moon disappeared. The night gave itself to the dawn, a cup of liquid gold spilling across the sky. She still had made no decision. She breathed in roses and the dogs stood up and stretched and yawned. She was no longer alone. The gardener came down the path, whistling. “Buenas dias, Señora,” he tipped his hat. Her dress was damp with dew. She wiped the sudden tears with the edge of her shawl and whistled to the dogs to follow her home.

Writing Circles for Healing

2007-12-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

Writing Circles for Healing:

words to light our way

Writing Circles for Healing is a writing support group to help heal loss, grief, illness, and life-altering transitions. Writing in a safe, supportive environment allows us to express our deepest feelings. By sharing our stories and listening to each other with empathetic, focused attention, we validate our experiences. Using simple writing techniques, we access our inner healer as we gain fresh perspectives on our lives and find courage and hope.

to find out more: http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/:

prompt from Mid-town Writer's group: maybe there really are only 5 important calls in anyone's life

2007-10-01T11:46:00.001-07:00

Marcia was doing laps in the indoor pool after our afternoon writing group. Word Dancers had started to meet at the condo because it was more convenient for me, the one person who didn’t drive, and because we could sit outside in the shaded garden by the pool. Secluded and quiet, it was peaceful to sit there, drinking the iced tea I brought from the house. I don’t remember any arguments amongst us then. We were planning our first poetry reading and we were inspired. For once the five of us were focused on cooperation and accomplishing the task at hand rather than our personal and interpersonal dramas.

My partner was sinking into another fall of depression and I craved sunlight and company as much as I craved silence and solitude. He had worn me out. Behind my back, my friends were praying for the relationship to end. I wasn’t ready to let him go even though he begged me to give him permission. I didn’t believe that we have the right to take our own life at that time. But little did I know how bad it could get.

Marcia was in her 60’s, petite and lithe, with a halo of frizzy gray hair. She was a medical astrologer honoring her creative side. Before we left the sun-dappled tranquility of the garden, I had said to her, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t leave him. I’m waiting for a sign.” Then I gave her the key to the spa and walked slowly down the sidewalk that connected the buildings, dreading the return to the musty smoky apartment where Michael might still be in bed, driven by the chemicals in his brain that controlled his moods.

There was a message on the machine that my piece about the women’s moon lodge had been accepted by Goddessing. I stood there by the phone listening to the message in stunned surprise. I had submitted that piece so long ago, I had forgotten about it. Then the adrenaline kicked in. To get something published and not just in a neighborhood desk-top newsletter! This was big news. I ran back to the pool to tell Marcia.

“Well, there’s your sign,” she said, doing the crawl stroke across the vivid blue surface of the pool.

Yes, but what did it mean? It didn’t tell me whether or nor to leave Michael. It didn’t even tell me that my intuition that he was getting worse instead of better was right. Simply that I had something to say and it was time to say it.

lead: It was icy sitting on the steps

2007-09-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

An icy wind blew as they struggled out of the warmth of the café into the warren of streets that meandered through the Arabic section of Jerusalem. She looked over at her traveling companions and realized that Sarai was shivering inside her short jean jacket. “We have to buy her a scarf,” she mumbled to Caren, her own mouth tucked inside the brilliantly striped Mexican rebozo wound around her neck. Caren nodded and they huddled closer together to retain the warmth, Sarai in-between them like a protected nestling. Because she was a teen-ager, she normally would resent the inhibiting closeness but with this biting cold, did not protest.

Fortunately it was one of the days that the shops were open. The intifada had succeeded in shutting the city down for three days, thank goodness, before the cold hit. They had spent the time sight-seeing as pilgrims, taking in the garden tomb, the Church of the Sepulcher, the pools of Bethsaida, and Solomon’s stables. They only had a little money to duck into the warmth of a café for scalding hot, sweetened mint tea. It felt like pure luxury.

When they found a vendor who sold scarves, they let Sarai choose, carefully pooling their shekels from their pockets. They were left with twenty argarot and one shekel, about sixty cents USD. But it was worth it to see the look of gratitude on her face, chapped pink by the cold. Just as they exited the shop, drifts of snowflakes started to fall. Snow in Jerusalem! Unusual although not unheard of. Where would they spend the night? She hadn’t told Caren that when she had gotten up to use the restroom, a man had approached their table and offered to buy her for an afternoon. Or was it Sarai he wanted? This chubby, shy, tag-a-long was terrified of this strange adventure and fortunately she hadn’t been paying attention to the strange man’s broken English or hand gestures.

Although her feet were numb and her hands shoved deep into jean pockets were icy, she was thrilled to be in the holy city of Jerusalem. She remembered that on their way into the city, a man they met on the bus had given her his card. A Christian Arab, Ali repeatedly invited them to stop at his home and meet his family. Impressed that they traveled in the name of Jesus, penniless, adhering to the original Gospel lifestyle, he was respectful. He shook their hands warmly when they parted at the central bus station.

“Let’s call Ali,” she said to Caren, their eyes meeting over the top of Sarai’s blond curls. They had to have a warm place to sleep out of the cold.

“Tomorrow I think we should go north, to the Galilee,“ Caren suggested. “We’re not dressed for this weather.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She was disappointed to be leaving Jerusalem after waiting years to be here. But she would come back. She knew it. To add her prayer to the Wall. To wander the streets in a mystical trance. To find her lost soul crying out for a way to find home.

from "To Catch a Dream"

2007-09-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

(I arrived in Jerusalem in Jan 1988, a month after the first intidada has started)

My first taste of Jerusalem is the bitter taste of death. The taste of rusting hulks of armored vehicles along the road winding up into the mountain, testimony to the victory of ’48. The taste of blood spilled along the hillsides, until the strong sunlight glancing off the hewn stones blinds your eyes and all that is left are the cries of the wounded and dying. The taste of Jerusalem is the taste of Romans impaling hundreds and hundreds on long wooden spikes lining the roadway for miles with their groans and tears. The taste of the Crusaders thrusting a lance into a robed, brown body, which writhes and screams. The taste of Arabic vengeance confronting Jewish determination. How I weep for you, Jerusalem! Chosen for the sacrifice and election of Isaac, symbol of the end of all human sacrifice, demanding blood again and again from conqueror and victim.

There is a Midrash about the choosing of Jerusalem. There were two brothers, one with a large family and one solitary. They both gathered a great wheat harvest. One thought to himself: I have a large family and many blessings, children to take care of me in my old age. My brother has no one except me. I will give him some of my wheat. The other thought: I have only myself to feed but my brother has a large family to take care of. I will give my brother some wheat. In the night, they crept into each other’s barns to deliver the wheat. In the morning, they were surprised to find as much wheat as before. And so, the rabbis say, God saw this, the great devotion of the two brothers…and He chose this spot as the place for His Holy City, a place where brothers honored each other.

But I say it is the clarity of the air that reveals the souls of men to their Maker, the sun that washes the stones in subtle shades of gold so you feel the presence of celestial beings, the undulating hills that surround a natural fortress whose duty is to protect and comfort. It is a searing clarity reflected in the eyes of her people, brown, blue, or green, a fantastic people from all over the world, browned, pale, with crosses, magen davids, crescents, chains, prayers, sighs, screams, whispers, prayers. She is a mystery, she is clarifying bold, she wipes your weary brow with a kiss, she throws you to the ground with a knife at your throat.

Our driver speaks not a word of English but unerringly escorts us straight to the Kotel, known as the Wailing Wall and now called the Western Wall. My heart is wrenched by the sight of a string of jeeps, bus-loads of soldiers, the air thick with tension, the wariness on the faces of the guards as they inspect our bags before we may cross the large square in front of the wall.

Wailing Wall. Symbol of Israel’s love for the glory of her past. The temple once stood here, where God hovered close to man, where the sweet smell of incense and burnt flesh mingled with the ointments of a million men and women who came thrice yearly to celebrate the festivals dictated by the Torah given to Moses. The niches and cracks in her stony façade fill with miniscule scraps of paper, folded and refolded so they can be inserted into the narrow slits between the stones, prayers said to reach the ears of the Almighty more quickly.

Things I didn't know I love

2007-08-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Things I didn’t know I love--- prompt for Midtown Writer's group July 7th, 2007

I didn’t know I love air conditioning until I started having hot flashes. I love cool breezes in the middle of the night instead of huddling under a pile of blankets. My room in the basement is my cave of dreams. I incubate secrets into poems and my thrashing about with God becomes a prayer. It is cool and dark—all that I never wanted when I was light and bright and always chilled to the bone every winter.

Or is it the testosterone they say I gain by losing estrogen?

I didn’t know I love to be alone after a lifetime of collecting groups together—and this is not to say I don’t love company. I didn’t know the clarion call of my own soul and my own thoughts would be able to keep me entertained sufficiently to last through the coming sunset years. I always leaped up to make a phone call in the middle of my reveries. I still yearn for the most intimate of human connections—but I also cherish each moment of deepening silence when I let myself go there. Through flood watch and hurricane, through death and the crematorium’s smoky plumes, through celebration of a published poem, a sold painting, a child’s first step, an exchange of vows in an afternoon dappled lawn, yes, I need you there, my family, my tribe, my audience, my beloved, wearing the face of the Divine for me. But then what delight to let you go away so I can have me all to myself.

For this reason, I had to leave every place I fell in love with. For this reason I don’t know where I will end up being able to stay.

MoonSense by Wendy L. Brown

2007-08-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

My novel MoonSense is forthcoming form Creatrix Books in spring 2008. Here is a little preview:

MoonSense

Once a long time ago in the Time of the Moon Priestess, a girl child was born and was named Havida. Three dark spiral curls were plastered on her head when she slithered out and the handprint of the Goddess. I know this because I was there: I caught her in my arms and gently laid her on her mother’s breast. Her mother Armonis took her tenderly into the shelter of her warmth and after blessing her silently with the Mother’s Blessing, offered her a breast. The girl baby sucked eagerly and the line of pain across Armonis’ forehead transformed itself into jubilation.

When I saw the sign of the Goddess I immediately sent my hand—maiden Ashirah to bring the flask of Sacred Oil from my medicine pouch. It is customary to anoint a girl child on the eighth day when the Heavenly Beings who attend the birth recede back into the Sky Realm and we prepare the child to enter the First Naming Ceremony and grounding into human life, a great ceremony that all the tribe would attend. And it would be so. But I opened the flask impatiently almost as if in a dream, almost as if impelled. When the fragrance of the sweetened oil was unstoppered, Armonis looked up questioningly from her contemplation of her baby’s features. Although Armonis has the Tongue That Speaks Not, not by choice but by an accident of birth, I could see in her eyes that her Special Eye was opened. She, too, saw the signs: the dark spirals, the Handprint, and the iridescent radiance that surrounded the child.

For those of us who can see with our Special Eye, we see this radiance and its dazzling array of colors around each person. And it was not unusual for a woman to have her Special Eye opened after childbirth. But this light not only was beautiful, it emanated a serenity I have experienced solely in our elders, have only experienced myself recently long after my Second Naming when I became a woman. I was approaching my Third Naming, when I become a crone. For an infant immediately after the birthing to be so serene meant that the child was truly gifted.

As I knelt by Armonis’ side, the three women who had been in attendance on Armonis also knelt in reverence. Mikihah still had tears of joy in her eyes as she stroked Armonis’ dark damp hair back from her forehead and cooed delightedly at the baby. The other friend Rahal, swept away the bloodied sheets that were under Armonis and replaced them with fresh ones, just as she had replaced the other soiled ones through—out the night. Hanoch, her mother, brought Armonis clear cool water and fruit cut into small pieces to quench her mouth. They knelt as soon as they saw me falling to my knees, and breathed quietly in enraptured silence while I poured three small drops of the sweet thick oil on the baby’s wet head, still smeared with the fluids of the birth. I intoned solemnly the words of the ancient Blessing:
Daughter of the Goddess Brought to life out of Light Brought to light out of Life You are our sister
our daughter our mother
Oh, cherished One May you fulfill your Holy Destiny
and may we protect and honor your Divinity.

The women sang the Ahmen with me. Armonis repeated the words silently and we were enfolded in a great sense of peace, as though the Goddess had thrown her arms around us and enfolded us to her.

Then I arose and gathered my warm woolen cloak about me while the women chattered and made the mother and child comfortable. Mikihah and Rahal, breast sisters to Armonis, knew her well since childhood. They would take excellent care of her and I could now announce the arrival of the newest member of our tribe.

As I swung open the heavy doors of the Birthing Temple, the cool freshness of the night wafted through, and refreshed my body and spirit. Stars blazed in the night sky as I pulled the purple banner up the pole. Purple is the color for a girl, as all daughters are spiritually able to become a priestess. Despite the night’s passage toward dawn, people waited about for news. When I took the purple banner up, they cheered and laughed and cups of wine on a golden tray appeared, delivered by hand—maidens of the High Priestess.

Two men stepped forward simultaneously, Armonis’ lovers. One held dried figs, grapes and pears in a basket woven from dough, and a small flask of oil. The other held two golden bracelets, one for a woman and one for a child. He carried a small loaf of bread and flask of oil. I looked at each man and thought how wise Armonis was in her choice of lovers. One could sustain her physically if the need ever came to be, the other could sustain her spirit with poetry and youthful passion. Both of them were beautiful to look upon, burnished dark by the sun with long dark curls, though the second had silver streaks through his. Their dark eyes stared at me, somber with question, yet understanding they could not address me first. I accepted their gifts and bowed, and the solemnity became wide white smiles as they understood that Armonis lived as well as the child.

I went back into the Birthing Temple, closing the door on the sounds of singing beginning to arise through the cool night air, musing to myself if Armonis preferred one of them to the other. The young one certainly smoked with intensity, like a blazing fire. But the other, secure in his position in our tribe because his mother was a deeply respected elder, had an air of intelligence, charm, and grace. Each sat at her table as often as the other, and each spent as much time in her bed, as far as I could tell. I sighed and shook my head as I presented her with the gifts. Lucky woman!

Without signal words used, Armonis knew from the vibration in each gift who was the giver. “How exquisite!” Mikihah exclaimed, as I fastened the bracelet on Armonis’ wrist. The small one I added to the flat basket which would hold more presents from the tribe at the Naming Ceremony. Armonis turned her wrist this way and that to admire the workings on the flat delicate bracelet, then opened her mouth so her mother could pop in a grape.

I could see the jubilation had quickly become exhaustion. The birth had been a long one. I took the sleeping infant, wrapped her in a cotton blanket and handed her to Mikihah. Hanoch asked Armonis in signal language if she needed anything, was comfortable, then kissed her on her forehead and her eyelids, and went to lie down on the smaller bed in the corner of the room. Rahal banked the fire, then came to my side and together we closed the veils around the now drowsing mother. The veils between This World and The Other World also closed, silently, secretly. New life had been born. The Not Yet Born and the Dead went back to their places.