in spring,
the gray light is
webbed and wet.
I walk the tightrope
of my
healerteacherwriter life.

some days,
I coax words into the
whitespace
and listen

some nights,
from the mists,
thirteen wild ones
pour
into the living room
with maenad claws and fearless soft skins
tawny eyes,
no longer
locked up.
they have abandoned
the cage of certainty
to dance with wine

my father tells me that
when he cries for his dead mother
it feels like he is not holding it together.
the wild ones help me
feed tears and breath
to the lonely gap
where she once was.
they don’t mind
if I stay standing,
or fold in,
a crescent moon
on hands and knees

when someone is gone,
my fist clenches and unclenches
inside the absence.
my eyes water the emptiness,
the awkward stretching
towards every death,
pulling them close and releasing them
with my whole life

the wild ones see me
when I have killed something,
messyweeping, stumbling into
the silvery magic arms of nothing I can explain.
they know I have never been a good girl,

they tell me to stop
predicting this or that

wild tumbling moments
are the maenads’ glory.
the timeriver is undamned
inside their tawny flame eyes
and they take me unhurried
to the bonemystery stories
of my growth, injury, rebuilding
carved in skeleton

we have always
built black faery mounds
to mark the passage
between this time and otherworld,
but bone is the only record
of anything
life is made of,
clay, shell, skin
sunshine rainkisses
twining through vines
dying
returning

the deep quiet
in the purple center of midnight
when they enter the living room
on wild hoof,
singing songs I wrote for them long ago
when I was free.
the roar of the timeriver
throbs within my chest
here gone
here gone

they summon me
from my salmon colored sofa
across shining seas
through sand and stone.
you darling fool, they say,
wild is not
irresponsible
wild is not
addicted

wild is
the way that
everything sings to everything
and you keep listening
and you align
your bones
with something bold and infinite.
you are untamed now,
do not remain here
to be eaten alive.