Along October’s hot body
In-between breezes
An azure canopy.

Last minute locusts,
A ratchet of rusty clicking.

Black crickets,
In point, counterpoint.

Crossfire of small grasshoppers
Sunmmer’s progeny, here, there, gone.

Sugar maple yellow,
Gourd orange, scarlet ivy.

Ramble, meander, saunter
In this sensual harvest
Entering the cool tunnel change.

Trees are humble.
They do not complain
Nor try to control
Outside forces.

Trees bend, break,
Blossom, leaf and
Fold in naturally,
Cyclically.

Trees live simply.
They drink water,
Take in nutrients from
The earth, the air, the sun.

Trees are not arrogant.
They do not gossip.
They are adorned with
The beauty of esteem.

Rooted, stretching,
Upward, outward,
Trees stand in accord
With themselves and nature.

The road back from a head injury is long, slow, meandering, circuituous, frustrating, deceptive, arduous and necessary. It is a journey to recover words, the building blocks of language, words that have taken root and grown within you. Recuperating means starting over–wherever that is.
After a slip on the ice in 2009 and a visit to the local ER, I was deemed fit. I was not. The first night I listened to classical music to soothe myself. I awoke at 2 a.m., “hearing” music in my sinuses, “seeing” the entire orchestra in motion. I felt terrified. Later, listening to an entire symphony was not possible: as the crescendo built and the musicians played with greater passion, I couldn’t bear it. I had to turn off the radio.
ER instructions to my husband were: to continuously check my pupils; to watch for excessive sleeping; to ask me my name and address; to ask the name of the current president. I joked, trying to laugh off the severity of the injury. I said I was my sister; I gave my childhood address; I chose various presidents. All fiction, to lessen my fear.
My head hurt for ten days. The headache, configured like a football-helmet, crept up the back of my skull to my crown and spilled over my forehead. I gobbled ibuprofen, squinted, and slept, often asking if it was time to go to bed, only half-joking.
I should not have been driving. But, three weeks after the injury, I became a grandmother. Helping my daughter was a priority. I was sure I would be okay.
I began writing haikus. Anything longer was impossible. Seventeen syllables? Manageable. The words were my choice. The image was mine.
In daily life, I developed a process for finding the right word for whatever “thing” I was trying to name. I began with a similar word and inched my way closer to my target. Usually, four or five words moved me from the periphery to the center.
Reading was devastating. What did that word mean? What was this? Reading aloud was slow and tenuous. I, a writer, an encyclopedia reader, a self-professed word-geek, a former professor, a long-ago actor, I was no longer a fast reader or articulate.
For months, my conversations with my husband ended with: “I can’t comprehend what you’re saying” or “I can’t talk anymore.”
What were embarrassing situations became family jokes. There was the time I diapered the baby leaving the old diaper to dangle down her leg inside her onesie. I left a pot cooking on the stove and took a nap. Luckily, by then my daughter, son-in-law, and infant granddaughter were living with us while they looked for a house. The kitchen was saved.
I researched TBI online and found more severe cases than mine, individuals who slogged through a mire deeper and muddier than mine. Some never recovered their pre-injury selves. I was fortunate. My head injury was considered mild to moderate. That was the name for the “thing” I had incurred. The meaning was far more difficult to comprehend. And the recovery, laborious.
Today, almost 3 1/2 years later, my word recall is mostly intact. When I’m tired and can’t find the right word or can’t complete a thought, I let it go. If possible, I nap. I still write haikus, two hundred and forty in that time. I have written longer poems. I have studied and become an active yoga teacher. I am grandmother to an infant grandson who knows nothing of being double-diapered.
I am well.

At a particular point in the continuum, midnight December 31 of every year–the point in the continuum a human construct as well as the hour and the year–signifies the end of the old and the beginning of the new. Without this demarcation we might slog along without celebration, not realizing we have made it through another 12 months. We get up, succeed in some form, in some way, go to to sleep and dream, 365 days and nights in a row. The days and night vary yet they always come, the same way the sun rises and sets and the moon waxes and wanes. Both are miracles, as miraculous as our daily awakenings, our breath, our tears, and our love.
Let this human-construct, this New Year, find you gifted with curiosity and wonder and ever-ready to name the miracle in your life.

I am a poet and a mystic. Maintaining this natural state of mysticism during 2011 has been a challenge. Much of the time grace has paved my way. Sometimes I have white-knuckled it. At other times I wanted to stay in bed (but didn’t). A few migraines beset me.
In January during renovation of our 19th century farmhouse, I (and my husband and dogs) moved into my daughter and son-in-law’s suburban home. We stayed until late July, during which time my daughter grew ever more pregnant. In the fall, a second grandchild, a boy, blessed the family and as I held him for the first time, my heart opened with more grandmother love than I knew I had.  Two weeks later, I presented a weekend women’s retreat, a culmination of 12 months planning and coordination with 2 other women.
The entire year, one weekend a month, Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, I trained as a hatha yoga instructor. I graduated yesterday with over 200 hundred hours of study.
For the first half of 2011, I shuttled to the country, fielding contractor questions, inspecting on-site, deciding, designing, and purchasing. In the suburbs, I awoke to the patter of a 2 year-old, abandoning my usual practice of meditation in favor of (maybe) cobbling some form of formal spiritual enrichment later.
The day after the women’s retreat, I became a post-partum doula for 6 weeks. I assisted my daughter as she recovered from major surgery and cared for my toddler granddaughter as she adjusted to the new baby.
January through December, I studied anatomy, philosophy, and teaching ethics. I practiced yoga asanas, moving into configurations I never knew were possible for my body.
Throughout the year, several friends asked, “How do you do what you do?”
My reply remained the same: “I just do it.”
Although the women’s retreat and the yoga teacher training were planned, the extensive renovation and the new grandchild were surprises.  So many changes left so little time to refocus before the next shift appeared. But I had learned in grad school that I could hit the ground running. As a TA for the English Department, I learned how to teach as I was teaching. Not always comfortably and not always easily. But I did it and I did it well.
Throughout this arduous year, my long-standing practice of looking for the gift in any situation gave me the strength to know that my mysticism was not lost. I didn’t experience as many flashing epiphanies which are really just moments of clarity and understanding. But I knew I wouldn’t lose myself or all I’ve gained spiritually in the last quarter century. It just wouldn’t happen.
Though the extreme challenges of 2011 have passed, the integration continues and will for a long time. I will take my time, having rushed too much in this life. 
And what about my writing you might wonder.
I would say this.  I have continued to journal.  Not every day, or most every day, but I have a sketch of 2011.  The year, despite its tumult, has been rich.  Its richness lies in the gifts of words, words of mood, description, dialogue, subtleties, surprise, and darkness, gifts waiting to be discovered.

Please join me and my fellow poets for a reading at the Dayton Peace Museum, Wednesday Nov. 3 at 7:30 p.m.  This event is one of several to honor and celebrate the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.  More information is available at www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org.

Haibun is a relatively short, prose poem from under 100 words to 200 or 300, ending with a haiku. A longer haibun may have haiku interspersed in the prose.

Late Summer: A Morning Walk
Two butterflies, a yellow and black Tiger Swallowtail, the other, a black edged in blue Black Swallowtail, flutter, hover, then settle on purple thistle. A fuzzy, ghost caterpillar navigates a route. Grasshoppers miscalculate–do they?–landing on my chest in a crossfire. Shiny, brown beetles scuttle across the path. A slow cricket walks toward the grass. Small dark moths, prolific and busy, sip on lavender sage flowers. This population of insects comes with the cooling of summer. A cascade of birdsong spills from trees thick with late-summer leaves splashed with red and yellow. A walnut tree heavy with nuts in green cases, hang, waiting to ripen and drop. A near tree branch supports a hanging nest woven by a hummingbird, home to spring eggs and chicks, now empty. The cooling that comes this time of year subtly subtracts light from each day. Still, the quotidian sun rises, orange and full above the horizon spilling daylight over the land.

Holy beams, a sky-

scape aureole of pastels,

glow with morning light.

For more information on this or other forms of Japanese poems, visit Haiku Society of America at http://www.hsa-haiku.org/.

Cruising the North Pacific, the Gulf of Alaska, and Glacier Bay offers profound poetic visions as my ship plies cold northern waters. Two sea lions loll on a red buoy. An otter sails by on an ice floe. A bald eagle, then another, graces a subdued sky, misted by rain. A distant grizzly bear plods on ground rising higher each year by melting glaciers.
On the flight home, mountain peaks pierce the clouds as my plane soars away from the powerful beauty of Alaska.

The muse is everywhere.  She is active when you’re receptive and when you’re not.  She knits dreams in the dark and co-exists with sun and shadow during the day.  At night when she awakens you from sleep, do you have a pen and paper at the ready?  On a walk when she whispers, is your notepad or cell phone handy to get it down before it’s gone?   In those flashes that come anytime, are you ready to jot the phrase, idea, sentence, concept?  The more you’re ready, the more she feeds you.

As a child, I pored over Webster’s, amazed at what was before me.  One page led to another until I was sated with new words and meanings that expanded my world.  As an adult, I get lost in the OED (the shorter version), my amazement as fresh and as large as decades ago.

One of my college profs described fun words “as a party for your mouth.”  I would add: “a festival for your brain.”  Synapses spark, connect, and create new pathways, energizing gray matter.  Words that jazz your mind are a boon for wordsmiths and everyone who values vocabulary.

Here are ten that engage my senses.  Kerfuffle. Gallimaufrey. Hemidemisemiquaver.  Mellifluous.  Catkin. Balderdash.  Incongruous.  Battalion.  Syzygy.  Anemone. 

What words light up your cranium?