lost

Where would we be
without awkward silences
that burgeon with vulnerability
over what we cannot quite express
consigned to endlessly roam
a sterile kind of wilderness
with the surety of answers
and every moment fully clothed

Where would we be
without the knowledge
of miles to go before we sleep
and a quantity of innocence
to fuel the escalating image
around the missing puzzle pieces
to revel in open ended completion
and revolve in a certitude of wonder


Lucy Meskill

the outlier...

art is a charmed glass slipper
left on a staircase by a person
in a hurry to escape the revelation
that every artist is an imposter
and a dreamer and a lowly cinder sweep
proof of an under-loved interloper
art is a shoe that fits only one foot
its destiny is paired to only one soul
art is the remnant of a party
to which one was not invited
as they danced the night away
in the arms of a sovereign
far above their station
art is the proof of presence
that does not at midnight
turn to dust, but lingers
fused into clarity on a stairway
to court the lonely princes of perception
and annoy the king and queen of heart and mind
who would have them marry well
art is the thing that because we release it
remains charmed enough to survive our doubt
to become the key to a moment when we were clear enough
to trip the light fantastic and then melt, dreaming, into the night

lucy meskill

illustration: Cinderella by Arthur Rackham

the hourglass...

space is

the final frontier

between 

the atoms 

inside us and

the thoughts 

in our mind 

vast at one end

and vast

at the other

our perception

is the waistline

where everything

feels small

though we routinely 

belt staggering bigness

in dead leather

and so tightening

staunching awareness

of unfathomable extent

to satisfy our zeal

and unmitigated

hunger for absolute

nucleic rule

individuality

is not a prison

but an entirety

of perfection

that revolves

in spite of

our illusions

vastly spacious

devoid of capture

maintaining order

with exactitude

and appropriate

atomic spacing

we are a universe

expanding

orderly and chaotic

crammed into a

suitcase within a 

suitcase hurtling

through darkness

completely 

illuminated

packed with 

precision

and summarily

set spinning

like a bright top 

on a smooth surface

moving randomly

within reason

life is an interval

of such gladness

driven to the brink

of elemental wonder

why not enjoy the ride…

Lucy Meskill

deliverance...

let the rattle of shame
wind down like a cricket
whose season is done

let the sound of it wane
in the thicket of weeds
where it had begun

let the feel of it dull
like the thorn of a rose
beside a rock wall

let us answer no more
to the desperate sound
of its ebbing call

let shame be the wild child
that we let run away
from our hopeful nest

let us labor no more
to secure that sere bird
a snug place to rest...

Lucy Meskill

dependability...

The noise of the world
--the ebb and flow of current events--
tries to wrestle the steering wheel
of our car away from us
and drive it.
It takes concentration
an agile mind
with steady hands
--at two and ten--
to look and listen,
to notice and steer...

Lucy Meskill

posture and eye contact...

A squirrel's teeth
grow on average
about six inches per year.
Squirrels need to gnaw
and process hard things,
with soft things inside them,
every single day.
A diet of only nut meats
offers no bounty
to a mouth full of
dangerously overgrown teeth.
The human brain
thinks around 50,000
thoughts in a day,
the majority of which
are insignificant.
It is important
to try and pierce the shell
of certain observations
with the teeth
of understanding,
and the bright enamel
of critical thought.
Clarity, accuracy,
relevance, consistency,
completeness, fairness,
and logical correctness,
all of which are healthy,
especially when metered
with a propensity for
loving others,
the practice of
smelling flowers,
the desire for
petting animals,
the wonder of
watching insects,
the joy of spotting
teapots in thunderheads,
and the thrill of
contemplating air.

Lucy Meskill

love...

here's how it starts
it starts as a warning
a small light broadcast
by a ship far out at sea

here's how it continues
it continues like salvation
at velocity an action
that sets the spirit free

here's how we endure it
we endure it by surrender
by wading through stagnation
while willing it to be

here's how it saves us
it saves us thru connection
by tethering our cargo
to another's by degree

here's why we do it
we do it as it thrills us
and partners our deficiencies
with strengths we do not see

forged and relinquished
made to last and squandered
a gladdening rejoinder
to a universal plea...

Lucy Meskill

sacrament...

On the evening
that indigo velvet
wed mulberry moire
clouds were born
in the west,
that bottom lit
by receding amber,
broke the heart
of every earthly eye
that had, on that day,
the simple luck
of looking up...

changeling...

Barely,
sometimes
replaced
by barley
in a sentence
hardly ever
takes heed of
the affront.
Of the noun
in its place
scarcely
disapproving
whilst only just
taking notice
the adverb exhibits
such multitudes
of grace...

softening to hardening...

when flowers their bright petals lose

in sadness please do not confuse

dying with ripening to seed

as ovules serve the blossom's need

and we too that now here must age

whilst bypassing sadness and rage

with kernels of wisdom enthrone

the passage of time do condone

and daring to age with aplomb

over hills and valleys we roam

'tis loving that helps life to last

as future we pluck from the past...

ant overview....

When you are as small as me,
the sky is where you find it,
and large things present little danger
such as the feet of people who,
walking without looking,
tromp, cannot touch me.
I am that little
indeed diminutive enough
to thrill to persevere
in tiny heady pockets
of inevitably redemptive air.
Those shallow, heavenly
vaulted voids etched
haphazardly by wear,
that pockmarking the soles
of the shoes of the large
and oh so consequential,
offer the subtlest kind of
salvation, that of being
simply overlooked...

Lucy Meskill



photo credit: Judith Meskill

caritas...

watching
birds
saves lives
as sure
as water     in ponds
saves fish
to embrace
with eyes
the vital force
that fuels
the beating heart
of creatures
so vulnerable
at every turn
the person
who wrote:     "look
at the birds
of the air: they
do not sow
or reap
or stow away
in barns"     never
watched a bird
closely at all
ever not even
once      birds
sow more
seeds in a short
and perilous
lifetime
than most
farmers do
in a year
and they     reap
and plan
and stow away
in barns
                          and rise
no matter
the wind
or the weather
or the wound
if they are not dead  
they rise
till their last day
as they did
on their first
day with hope
and song
and a deep
and righteous
longing for more...


Lucy Meskill

oracle...

I consulted the nothing
that is my everything
and a Catbird on the wire
just outside my window
who reminds me of just
what a human is supposed
to move and sound like
that bird who rings in the daylight
so fantastic--bobbling in the wind
over and over again resounding:
"You are here, you are here,
you are most indubitably,
undoubtedly and certainly here,
and so why in this world filled
with the rampant music of all
you have forgotten on your way to
remembering, aren't you dancing,
you mobile and reflexive, tenacious,
and reflective, wind-filled human being..."


Lucy Meskill

eclipse...

the expiration date

on this small truth

that I wanted to share

elapsed a long time ago

tucked like a moonbeam 

in a purgatory of caution
it patiently waited 

and shone its shifting 

honest little twinkle 

on the dark things near it
that vining from its glimmer 

wound ever so tenderly 

their way around its glow

to form a compact more fertile

perfect and complex oblivion

that at this particular point in time 

has become impossible to decipher

lucy meskill

listening 2...

Pear tree

in parking lot

informs me 

that: "life

is about loving 

the soil you are in"

spoken from:

a three foot

by three foot 

patch

that cars

pull up to

and people
pile carts on

and the birds

who see trees

from the sky

that shelters them

in context of the 

massive earth curving

outward and downward

from beneath their roots 

recognize all life

as the capitulation
to random placement

and the harnessing

of incidental light…

lucy meskill

one size fits all...

mercy extended is 

truly mercy gained, 

a gift given by the giver

the grace of which
is utterly retained…

lucy meskill

comestible...

we

are the nightmares 

that pigs have

that cows have

sleeping fitful in fields —

they feel our hunger
like we feel lightening

crackling in leaden air

standing in a field

in a raging storm

beneath a big tree

whose conductive roots

we imagine travel all the way

to the place that we call home

— we strike from a distance

fiercely decisive, with appetites

that split living breathing beings

full of desire and longing 

clean down to the bone...

lucy meskill

read

here's the way the word works:
one, that I only lonely speak
at the two of the moon, and
why, that I whispering shout
at the scream on the wind, of
you, in the room with your
hands on the clock spread, to the
tick of the lock on the door,
like the bell in the head, of the
eye, through the hole in the leaf
of the how, do I sing in the night,
me, with the shoe in my hand
since the lamp where you stood
sounds, like a keen on the taste,
of a river of patches gone green,
loud, as a hovering lawn
on the slip of an island of
stay, till the sentence is done,
when the sentence begins in the
quivering, wavering howl
of the opening end of a, play

lucy meskill

an ode to emotion...

I'm about to see you
and you're ugly
but I don't mind
because I am ugly too
the best thing is that
you are really real
and that am really real
and we can ring our real
together—keeping chime—
like clear and darkling bells

because every pretty
is its own brand of ugly
that denies the honest truth
—like the most comely shirt
in the whole wide world
that goes sour in the drawer
remaining static and unworn
because we are afraid
that its beauty will not last—

and honest ugly can be

splendid in its own honest
open, gleaming way
—like the torn and tattered
edges of a really fine
piece of handmade lace
more beautiful as it
—slowly threadbare—
unravels deft secrets
about its knotting over time—

every real thing has a beauty
that fake pretty never owns
and the border towns of honest
shelter hordes of awkward
blessed ugly aspects that
enjoin to form a rampart
around fortresses of truth—which
are often gentle ugly places—
where no honesty is shunned

Lucy Meskill

for nothing...

I loaned light
an attitude that
light loaned back
to me

I loaned sky
an altitude for
soaring high
to see

I loaned grief
a vessel which
for awhile
it sailed

I loaned dark
a cover that
it could remain
veiled

I loaned time
an envelope to
help contain its
weight

I loaned faith
ample room to
contemplate
its freight

I loaned love
my everything that
it gifted back
for free

I loaned sight
my open eyes for
bending light
to see

I loaned life
my willingness to
drive it here
and there

and contemplate
my gratefulness
for everything
I share



words and image by lucy meskill

particulate...

Dust shrouds the bright glint
of brutal remorse. It blunts the sleek,
stealthy, and powerfully muscular,
half-submerged contour of earthly struggle,
that progressing, cleaves the cloud-reflected
glassy illusion of tranquility and success,
questing unceasingly, at the deep water's edge.
Dust is the wholly uneven emperor
of even the largest incoming wave,
riding weightless atop the roiling foam.
Dust is never conquered, only shifted,
it coats the bars of every dank prison
and the moist nostrils of every free soul.
Dust is our destiny and our inescapable,
weightless, transcendent and mobile density.
Love the loess, move and be moved by it.
Pray, as you shake the mote laden rag,
beat the woolen rug, empty the canister
shake the coat and hat, on your own personal
inevitable, cleaning-day/moving-day/play-date,
lifelong, intimate and inscrutable love affair
with this spiraling glimmering universe
of unfathomably balanced light and darkness,
curated by shimmering layers of blessed spiraling dust ...

Lucy Meskill

transit...

Sometimes
I think
that my whole life
has been
advancing
towards a moment where
I walk into a room
and see
an insect flinging itself
against a window pane
trying to get out
and I help it.
Life is that big
and that small
that full
and that empty
it is delicious
even when it is not...

Lucy Meskill

enkindled...

Weaning myself
of the usual darkness,
insuperable and unkind.
Un-practicing sadness
like a tree-chained dog
now able to unwind.
The quicksand, slip-step
into pea soup party light,
is the road which I un-travel
up this path from endless night.


Lucy mMskill

mote...

I will never bemoan the honest dust of you

whose fractions lie dreaming in the voids 
and crevices beyond the reach of clean. 
Thick, slow blown, and mattress same 
perfectly honed ashen drifts do build to 
echo delicate alpine flowers formed slowly, at altitude, 
between rocks, and crisper than crackers, snow. 
You are the seeds of matter in cell-sized portions, 
that falling, seep into darkness. Fragments and granules roaming 
where now my daily jettisoned particles collect. 
I am the fresh snow that is tithed to the six inch gap 
betwixt floors where now you hum with the grit of all 
who ever loved and lived in this humble place. 
As your generations argue, mouse and bug stirred, 
about the colors of my walls, carpets and benches 
about the placement of my dressers, chairs and couch 
I ponder grateful the wholly inextricable nature of you 
oh marble, sequin and pin, oh coin, plate chip and clip. 
Residing in interstitial space, you are the soil of this place 
and I am a blithe bird careening joyfully through your sky. 
I will embrace the sun, moon, wind, trees and stars for you 
as you catch me in pieces while I dance here upon wooden clouds 
in the upper atmosphere of your bounteous heaven.

do the dishes, make the bed...

enlightenment arrives
astride a simple word
or sentence, a simple
sight or sound, it steals
in unannounced like
a sudden breeze through
an open window,
like a mouse through
a narrow little void
uninvited, unexpected.
it translates everything,
all at once, in all directions,
past, present and future
retroactively, as suddenly
with a subtle thrill,
we attenuate, and
go about our day...


Lucy Meskill

photo credit: Judith Meskill

redress...

sleep is a land
where we heal
the waking dream
as the slow melt
of the rumpled day
runnels into streams
memory needs limpid light
soft with which to plead
lonely case in quiet place
deep meaning for to read
we are but the ferrymen
discernment is the raft
we draw the oar stick
with both hands
slowly fore to aft
as crabwise down
the stream we work
dissecting the flow
wisdom as our ballast
harkening we go...

Lucy Meskill


photo credit: Judith Meskill

leap...

the

biggest

hurdle

we jump

on

the

way

to becoming

good

close

and

forever

kinds of friends

the biggest hurdle

we jump

is ourselves...

Lucy Meskill

never fear or everybody poops...

opinion
is the dump
that
perception
takes in
the mind...

lucy meskill

portage...

A series of survivable moments

is sometimes what constitutes a life.

Those, put down the rope and

step back from the ledge instants

with better instants attatched to them.

The necklace, a building circuit, spills out

like a string of imperfect gibbous moons

progressing slowly through their phases

one side visible, one side always concealed.

Nestled warmly right up against our skin

they are places where unspeakable beauty, mystery

and the unresolvable, raptly attennuated, resides.

Run the rosy tinted, creamy, glassy placid beads

over your enamel teeth, feel the sharp squeal

as their realness reverberates its diaphonic music

throughout the bones and sinews of your jaw.

These beautiful gleaming imperfect pearls

are the unbearable grains of painful sand

that we transit from sharp grit into smoothness.

Those brief hells which we daily encapsulate

to form a long and wearable necklace of years.

Every soul is a mother who bears its own life

over the narrow bridge of the seemingly untennable

safely through the valley of the deepest shadows

fearing all evil and yet somehow, against all odds,

living brightly, blithely and further on to tell the tale...

Lucy Meskill

image by John Crane Dower 1846/Museum of Photographic Arts Collections

belief...

Nobody x-rays a four leaf clover

to see if the luck is working,

it circulates between petals

of the thinnest, palest green.

Tucked between dry pages

still viable after fifty years,

succulent, parched or crisp,

its shape activates wishing

at a slim moment's notice.

It uncorks the worn bottle

with the notes in it, that drifts

at the cusp of land and sea

just beneath the curling wave.

Its power rests in whispers, that

ossiclate to and fro remembering

the strength that gusts of strong wind

build into everything that is small...

Lucy Meskill

convene...

Who started the silence

in the tree just outside

my kitchen window,

that through the frosted

glazing caught me

as static birds perch

ornamentally still,

is anybody's guess.

As my eyes, over the sill,

gazing upward for death

from above and downward

for death from below,

sense that nothing is amiss.

Only the stoppage of time

in an envelope just outside

my wooden bubble of warmth.

Sparrow, Junco, Cardinal and Wren,

like overwound clockwork toys,

wait in avid, anxious torpor

for the right moment to slip by

that will fling them into motion,

and it does, like a taut jump-rope

on a city street in summertime,

that meeting warm slate at intervals

loosley keeping time with breath,

causes heavy feet to rise into thin air...

lucy meskill

the girl in the red hood...

over the river and
halfway through
the woods primeval
you begin to own
that you yourself
are grandmother
and that the cabin
deep in the forest
is wholly yours
that the wolf was
your wild youth
and the woodsman
is the bridge
that you built
between the two...


lucy meskill

Construe

fashion is
style with a cramp

courage is
fear with a lamp

genius is
error with aplomb

coiffure is
hair with a comb

fiction is
hearsay with a twist

action is
intent with a list

beauty is
allure with a flaw

dumbstruck is
a soul full of awe

love is
allegiance with heart

planning is
a dream with a chart

living is
flesh that prevails

hope is
old boats with new sails

friend is
an ally profound

music is
solace in sound

patience
is friendship plus time

for poets
inclined to pen rhyme...xo!

lucy meskill


photo credit: tyne & wear archives and museums

fracking...

earth groans
under the weight

of our collective
individual

self-loathing

she reeks

of our sadness;

people who love

themselves

do not steal beauty

at any cost

they create beauty

for no reason;

there are no more

frontiers to plunder

out of keen

willful boredom;

there are no more

virgin places to

simply lay waste

but there are

so many lonely

mysterious

abandoned lands

the has-been

once beautiful

now are wrecked

unloved wildernesses

billowing out

beneath the dress

of petulant, childish

bored and hasty

advancing/there are

neglected worlds

fomenting inside

guts, hearts

minds and souls

pick one, anyone/

everyone, pick ten

or twenty, really

really love the
unlovable self

and begin to know

precicely what

true discovery and

real adventure are...

lucy meskill

fragment...

I can imagine
setting down the
open-mouthed scream
shivering inside me
and stepping into
a quivering meadow
shimmering with life
to rest my mind

lucy meskill