All that you already are

for all that i am, all that i was, and all that i'm going to be.


Your little feet press
a rolling wave,
noting with one move
that inexplicable brought by night's sea.

Say hello to the universe.

Mommy has a purpose.
more than the million steps
she's walked to the sand--
intent on her breath,
awe in her guise.

What your eyes will shine.
brightness of immeasurable moons,
the reflection and tug
of tides of my being.
May too, they twinkle like daddy's
but capture the light all their own.

With one blink, our world will turn.

Mine has turned on its axis,
water merging into land;
each continent of experience
shifting and colliding
for your soul in my belly.
your golden molten of Ipseity
swirling in cradling palms
until you're ready to sip
and emerge from water.


e. chayes
(erica chayes wida)

This is a day for poetry

i woke, the air
yawning frost on the window,
round underbelly making ripples in red
cotton sheets. A warm orb
like neon petals and natural light,
cream awakening and kisses in flannel.

You are safe,
you are loved,
i am so magnetic already.

Your silken hands press,
we are weaving you like worms,
and we will always be your roots,
whenever you need them.

Your heart looked like a butterfly
the first day I saw you--
expanding your wings
and pumping little pulses
of magic and reality.
You are so small;
my sockets melted salty bliss.
You flutter in me and I feel you,
each and every night at 9:54.
You flap your feet,
do you like when mommy writes,
do you hear the music?
"Flutterby" means so much more.


e. chayes

Pendulum

there's light beaming from within,
where the little thumped.
but today there's fog,
a morning of black tea and bruised pears.

little kindness
where a man spits on the street
and the reaction, unusually,
tames the green light with disgust.

from what inside this feeling trembles?
weeping humid,
blanched in vinegar and sun.
the teabag gathers maternal molecules
and specs of worried dust.
the feeling is above the womb,
the chest constricts and bosoms swell,
like a wave i wanna curl into
and be carried away with.

chords are spinning into autumn,
falling before fall.
the trees are not what i need.
i don't need oxygen; i need air.
salty, salty
air.

craving the wave
and not to be saved,
i don't need saving.
it's others then and under
pressure. this hot air balloon heart.
i'm dangling from a basket of woven hair.
i'm swallowing the poison without it
even being fermented.


e. chayes

A Day at the Beach in August

I had reached into the pockets of a yogi,
ayurvedic medicine

A wave
tagging to another,
shifts into something big,
better than separate.

The swell,
vertebrate curling,
thrusts surfers from its insides
spilling microcosms, plankton;
head and neck and tongue.

the waves thrash
the waves explode
the waves breathe and breed;
coagulations of mermaid blood
turn to white tips
and reign the sea.

We all fall on land.
sediment and sand,
our legs bound by seaweed
our limbs reaching
for the peach pitted sun.

Foam is rabid from a wave's mouth.
It is hungry to see,
and blind to swim.
We climb into the barrel
and drink salt.
We starve ourselves
for the quiet pumping of silence
within the sea's ever-growling tummy.

A wave crashes alone,
relinquishing easily
itself to the shore.


e. chayes

Igneous Lavandula

Ladle your lids
with this white-lily mystic.
Fall deeply, follow.
The ground's weeping

viridian blades.
Glow worms gnaw softly
the zaftig trees, and

16 moments before night 

is always.

Canyons curve and slope,

the red sediment stamps our feet

because we're turned sideways

and flying.

Humidity sighs.
we're Non-existent.

i emerge from the mountain.

i emerge from the deep water belly

of my mother's womb.

i blast into fields of lavender and sage,

only to hang them dry with hot breath

from my lioness insides.

i am the spark tiptoeing on fire.
i am ripping off the covers
to coruscate
on wooden floorboards,
on wednesday mornings.
i am electric in eight feet of snow:
want, calm, and chaos.


e. chayes

Eulogy for the Present Body

What do we say in solitude?
When we're snowed in
and feeling loss?
The celebration was beautiful of David's life
something that could only be molded
from the exquisite eccentricity that was
our childhood;
from the homemade wine,
from marriages that have broken but
given threads of firelight
just for the night
were sewn together.
There was closure in the old wood beams,
in the house and office
that were always like a second or third home
to my own.

And later in the calm of fleece sheets,
laying dry from excess drinking
and jubilant mourning,
we ladies of the house discovered
yet another man gone.
Yet another love,
a close one.

It is strange to not know pain beyond
your own sphere--
not war nor genocide or things so horrible
they become normal.

But I sit here being challenged.
Feeling life stronger and more intensely
because two have now advanced
from what we know.
I see photos of Hunter
and see him smile, feel him passing.
I feel my family on a different coast,
and cannot do much more
than love.

Sunsets are electric when the air is polluted
and the white banks gleam wildly
in the whites of our eyes.
There is strength here within us,
immense and penetrating strength.
There is also loss and sadness and pain.
But there is light coming through
the shadows of the barren trees
and we who are here,
we are the ones who rouse,
who wake from sleep
to rub our lashes
and feel the soft airs of change.


e. chayes