8/5/2021

Lilith and Samael stand
back to back, on either side
of the Lion's Gated-glass, looking
out on the destruction;

Towers, crumbling, in All
directions.  "Shit.  It is
getting real out here, 
Lilitu,"  Samael says

with their left palm
pressed into the glass.
Lilith presses back
with her right,

"Did you know, people
really can love you,
for who you are, Sami?
No need, for secrets?

You have to be willing
to love yourself, enough
to live without them; 
to let them see you,

and let them decide 
if they want to keep on 
breathing the Muchness, 
with you."

Samael smiles wide, "How 
is that going, Lilitu?"

"In the beginning, it was painful,
but lately, I've been able
to let people love me.  
And it hurts-so-good to learn

how to do that, as the world 
burns, and tells me 
 of the things I may be, 
for what I will not do.

I am grateful
we made a vacuum, 
where I learned we could 
grow Love in truths."

“Me too, Lilitu.”

Each lets go the glass;
they walk, making two
pathWays, through 
the mood.

…Lilith walks, and remembers last year’s Lion’s Gate, when she left the Garden…

…Poems from Lilith’s Diary…

8/7/2020
Home Walks in Me

My heart weeps as I enter
forests I do not yet know.
The trees are marked with red
and yellow rectangles.  My whole

body releases as it is held by
the soft snickers of cicadas, pittering
through the atmosphere like sand,
sifting through the crowns

of the woody-ones.  I am homesick
for "my" forest; My home-wood,
who's paths are sometimes crossed
by spiderwebs, bigger than my body.

How do I tell you what I know,
about the Earth?  I had the immense
privilege to grow with a solitary 
forest, all my life.  That place is far

from me now, but I am still 
a Rock-Hopper.  My childhood was 
built on the stone walls that run 
through it, like coagulated blood.

You see, the thing is, you can't
unsee your ancestors, once they show
-and those spirits asked me to go, once
I opened up my ears.  I don't know

when they'll call me back.  It hurts
to think about it too long.  These days
I am trying to expand where I am 
capable of feeling that connection 

-knowing it is all the same Earth, 
though the limbs change, and the 
sounds may shift.  And though I walk
away from home, I know that home 

walks in me, all the same.

4/12/20
Rock-Hopper| The Magician

I walk the walls because it is
the nimblest Way through the 
forest, and the best Way to Walk, 
without leaving footprints.

Walking a wall is like hopping
up a river.  There are patterns
to the Way things move, and swirl
around them, and you can see that 

from this height.  Not just 
the grid of round and stacked up 
stones, in all directions-
-but the faerie paths,

the hooved-ones take, between
each section of the template.
The stone walls are highways
where the bobcats prowl and poop,

and the chipmunks nestle in nooks,
and the snakes wait. If you 
really want to walk a wall, you, 
Rock-Hopper, must be

the maintenance man.  You are 
the only one who will need 
a clear and stable path to hop,
so you do not eat shit.

This does not mean you must "fix"
everything.  Remember this is forest
parkour.  Sling-shot 'round that 
branch, so long as you know 

your landing stone be stable.  
If you want to Rock-Hop, you must 
listen to the stones.  Some days, 
you are not as welcome as others.

They slide under your feet.
They're fickle friends.
On these days, step slow,
and lithely clean, and set

sturdy, just the stones you need
A Rock Hopper is not meant
to preserve what Earth decrees
decays, but to shift it slightly

for her use, with consciousness
towards the others;
beasts who liven
ruin-roads.

4/10/20
Walls, these walls,

whether or not blood was shed
on these stone walls, these walls
are made of violence.

These walls are made of
arriving, on sacred soil, far
from your own root vine, and taking

sap, without asking how
these things are done.  Stone
walls are brains of olden

farm-man, left by Weavers,
for gridded cities.  Girls
to work in textile mills; 

Hearts set out, away from
body.  Whether they found
better breathing in either

maze, is hard to know,
not to mention, 
our deforestation led 

to the death of First Growth
Forest.  We called it
"frost-heave", the Way

the Earth began throwing-up
her bones when each death was
so complete, no root-tendon

could hold his stone heart,
at last set out, away
from body.

4/8/20
I was wrong, about the moss;

a mint on Connecticut grays.
It is lime rinds, sprinkled
with vermilion pepper flakes,
on a wet coffee grounds base.

Truly it is the lichen, who taste
minty to the pupils, but
with a dry finish, like chalk,
or too much flour.

The newly budding leaf is minty-
-fresh, not like the hearty moss
that does not season out
in winter, finding Ways.

To power through, it matures
and changes flavors, growing
different highlights as it becomes
sun bleached, saturated, cold, or old.

Moss is technicolor hairstyle
shifting pigment root to tip.
Every stone head bearing
unique expressions of possibility.

I was wrong, about the moss.

3/27/20
Birthday

I wake up before the dawn,
of my 29th return,
to the sound of the frog

song; A hazy herald
to the sticky summer
Sun to come.

I like to hope that
I can hear something 
deeper than my own

pallid illusions
of what it means
to be Sacred.