Step So High

Use your stilts to step so high-
to the moon, to the sky,
and plug your lights
into the moon to shine them bright
anytime of day or night.

Wear your gown, fix your hair
climb something taller than a chair,
capture light from nature's moon
so its not gone quite so soon
and all can use it to swoon or spoon.

Women do this, girls can too.
Maybe, one day, even you.
Set your goals high, lofty as the sky
so if you should fail you'll still fly
to places few will go but you'll know why.


For Claudia at dVerse Poets Pub who had us writing to the artwork of Catrin Welz-Stein. This piece of hers, Where the Starlight Begins, seems the perfect illustration for a children's book which inspired this poem.

We are Pilgrims

We are Pilgrims. We travel
disparate trails, leave
one name behind, take on a new one
for a new epoch,
leave behind what's no longer needed,
make room for something new.
Wisdom is knowing what to leave,
what to take on.
We search a different path
as we re-name ourselves.
What name will I release?

For Victoria at dVerse Poets Pub who asks us to write on a difficult subject using imagery or metaphor. This place of transition and not knowing is what's difficult for me just now. This metaphor was inspired by a talk I heard by David Whyte who says we are more marvelous in our simple wish to find the way than in what way we find. I like that. And it's 55 words for the G-man.
(photo was taken on a hike at Campo Imperatore)

We're Future Sailors

We're future sailors ready for voyage
to future places, for the discovery a sea brings,
for breezes that push us to lost sites,
castaways but with the familiarity of all things

within our DNA to be discovered anew
in this time, our time, present now
even as we shape our future, prepared to sail strange
ships with mates who themselves avow

they're sailors, too. We find each other
seek each other out, drawn to those who search maps,
test winds and speak of adventures that sketch
the outlines of a life, content despite the gaps.

For Izy at Real Toads who has us writing out of standard using a line from an original Boosh song. You have to check this out to understand! And for open link night at dVerse Poets Pub.
Photo taken on the Grand Canal during a recent trip to Venice.

So Much has Changed

The windows are open since the temps are warm this September. I'm sitting looking at the verdant hills surrounding me and taking stock of all the has happened since my last post. I guess I needed a break to digest and integrate it. The biggest change is that my Honey and I put our Italian apartment/ condo on the market after nearly five years living here. We plan to move back to the states once it sells and relocate to Jacksonville, FL. The decision bubbled up after our vacation there in July/ August, being with family and having our grands (now 11 and 7 1/2) on our own for two weeks.

The easy reason to point to is the realization that I'm too far away from those who mean the most to me. Add to that the growing surety that Italians, as much as I have felt welcomed by them, enjoyed them and learned important life lessons from them, are not my tribe. I'm ready to volunteer in something I find meaningful and I'd like to have options that fit my skills, my perspectives, and can be expressed and understood without translation, figuratively and literally speaking. I might be able to shape such an endeavor here but it seems more monumental than I'd like at this time in my life. When I think about where I'd like to grow old and die, I know in my heart of hearts it's not here.

Sinking down a level, I want to be where those around me reflect the diversity in my own family. I want my family to feel at home when they visit, feel met and mirrored, feel comfortable. In my immediate family that means more people of color, bi-racial couples and mixed race kids. In my extended family it means more openly, comfortably gay individuals and couples and more complex families with fostered, adopted, blended and special needs kids. More basically, I'd like to be where my extended family can afford to visit. I cherish the diversity in my own family and I want to have that around me day to day.

There's more, I suspect, in the inner restlessness and eagerness to be living differently, more authentically. I, nonetheless, feel surprised by this change. I was going along feeling happy and delighted and then I wasn't. Makes me sad given how much I've loved living here and the good friends I've made. How does this just change from one day to another?

                                            (photo by Grazian Romanelli of our city and its dragon)