Horses.

My endlessly tinkering and generally mechanically inclined spouse spent the better part of the last 2.5 days with his head under our toyota truck, trying to figure out why it suddenly wouldn't start. He tore a bunch of wiring apart, tested *absolutely* everything with his ohmmeter and ammeter. He thought he had it narrowed down to the alarm system, but he wasn't sure. He cussed and spat and threatened its family and still it would not start.

Finally, about 10:00 last night, he came in where I was packing last night to say "I have given up. I have tried everything, I can't make it start, so we have to take the bus." His 1981 VW bus does. not. go to Burningman. This was serious. "Let me look at it," I asked. "Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes helps."

He begrudgingly led me under the hood and showed me a couple of things and sighed heavily. I grabbed the keys and jumped in the cab to see what the ignition (or lack thereof) sounded like. When I turned the key, I noticed the low, flickering lights and that some things worked while others didn't. This looked like a classic electrical Gremlin that I had met with before. I jumped out and carefully persuaded him to replace the battery, "humor me," even though his gauges said it was perfectly fine.

He doggedly swapped batteries and I jumped back in the cab where *lo and behold* the thing started up instantly. He just stood a moment with his face in his hands.

This moment brought to you by the Rules of the House of God: "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

Choice.

Walk a thin line, a fence between fields?
One gate or the other,
One place or another.
I could stay, you know.
I could give in to that urge to escape
Start over, all new, all in again.
Just let it all go.
Hold me here, hold me down, I keep walking my line,
Gaze fixed firmly on the horizon.

Summer rain.

I laid in bed curled in soft sheets
I threw open the window to let in the storm
I remember falling in love to this very music
The song of rain on the lush maple, the pavement wet from a thousand little licking rivers
I remember lying in another bed years away and thinking I could stay there, by your side for the rest of forever.
Wondering- would we click together, easy as if we'd never been apart?
Could this fire of passion burn bright enough to light the way through the darkest places? Could we lean on eachother, and learn and grow and live together? Would we share the world, or simply this moment?
Oblivious cars pass by on the streets outside, the clouds drum on, and moments have stretched into months and years and I am back in these sheets, in another lifetime, listening to the rain and thinking of you.
Listening to the rain, and still in love with you.

You or I.

I turn a cobbled corner and am surprised to find you here.
Not sure who has been following whom, again
But here you are.
I catch sight or scent of you here or there-
The tail of your scarf,
A whispered promise
A crumpled leaf with your watermark.
I catch up now and then, or you do
We do
And we tango for a moment
Dance a tangled waltz across a square.
I touch you with my fingertips,
Grasping cloth or hair
And find you made of iron smoke,
Magnetic ephemera, if there was ever such a thing.
We whirl in step a moment,
And then you're gone.
I am left standing alone by the river,
Your breath left on my skin.
Will we always meet and part this way?
Will I always be left to wonder when?
Will you ever whisk me away, or I you-
I'm not sure who chooses whom, I or Madness.
I'm only sure you'll always beckon from my own shadow.

Flow.

Mixing signals, cross a great divide
I have a hard time with intrinsic value,
I want to know what it means to me, and I'll warn you
Rules at odds are easy to circumvent.
Absolutes beg exceptions
And I can find a justification in my heart.
Dripping water calms me tonight,
And that feeling, like flying, soaring even
Flow in flight that makes my muscles ache for more
Lift me up, raise it up
This small sacrifice.
A few cells here and there- "does it hurt you?"
Of course it does.
Everything worthwhile has to hurt a little.

Home?

Dusty hills heave weeds onto their humped backs.
Ever digging, digging slowly toward eachother that they might overtake a valley verdant with joy.
Roof rocks roll slowly, molasses churning downhill.
The sky is duller here, the light refracted less, I guess.
Cracking mud and blowing silt whisper their fortunes in my ear.
I'm homesick for anywhere but here.
We'll raise it up, we'll light a fire, til there's nothing left to burn.
We'll call it down, draw you in, show it all to you.
And then sweep it aside, give it back and breathe again.
Then, we'll breathe again.

Recover.

Grasping at straws,
sun-bright through holes in my skin.
Still waking up, waking up, waking up...
I am ready to be done with this,
But it's not quite done with me.
My heart hammers through my ribs,
Frantic, caged fluttering thing
My breast-bird would burst forth if it could.
It rubs it's feathers off and nerves raw jumping and crashing to get out.
My poor heart, strung out, bedraggled.
I'm trying to find a lesson in this
Trying to find the love and lifting height I was sent for.
But the sounds and the furies keep me blind.
Keep me mute.
Keep me captive in my own bones.