POEMS FROM SPOTLIGHT TRIO PERFORMANCE, BOULDER LIBRARY, OCTOBER 9, 2025
—WITH RICHARD TURCO & ROB MCWILLIAMS
In the Understory of Her Being
[I]
Give to me, again, your laughter
like a pier among waves and fishermen.
We could walk for days out upon the sound.
Lifeboats arrive from the wreck
peopled with your words,
but you are gone.
Your heart landed like an owl on my shoulder,
light and lost, surprised,
shivering--
each night shapeshifting into hunter,
bringing into the interior
fish from a foreign sea,
writhing,
stunning my arches and toes
with their frenetic fins.
I buried them in the damp sand
under nets wave-washed and coiled,
wave-washed and coiled--
for what hunger now, this food?
© Christine Weeber
[IX]
Garter snakes sleep in curled, dewy leaves of night--
the end, the beginning of what we both lost.
White flannel sheets sandy, twisted--
binding ankles, thighs, folds of skin and wetness.
Hands reach for the clay of mortal shadows,
curling instance of fingertips entering.
What ground underneath us except all ground.
Tongues desperate;
alabaster’s search for the sculptor’s wear.
Flying through solar systems,
moon’s blue mountain-shadows,
to get to you, to this.
Your slow eyes, now,
here in this skin.
I am afraid of time,
of slipping,
of the one blade of grass dipping in the moonlight.
© Christine Weeber
A Home, a Trap
I am inside the full moon
as it skins, skins rainbow trout
she looks up-
stream,
plies the pool
Caddisflies hatch,
emerge
from pupal shucks [1]
their own slow dawn
clouds as runoff heats
We are inside that rupture
pupal skins floating
water pulls us
down-
stream
we
wing
against shuck
edges
Our emergence
bleeds
an ephemeral
sun-
wash
we carry
with us
wings ablaze
scooping air
© Christine Weeber
[1] (www.troutnut.com/hatch/12/Insect-Trichoptera-Caddisflies)
Inside Empire
I.
Our perimeter a refusal. Silence overcomes mountainside.
We are still inside windless prayers.
Messages to ravens,
Northern goshawks,
moose mother and baby,
bobcat pair--
all who occupy, whistle, slink,
mate, scream, dismember, digest.
We listen.
Still.
Without
your intervention.
You have not captured
these ears.
Days lengthen into hush. Moonlit snow floats,
conversations of white mirroring our emptiness.
Let go.
Our souls straddle peace among the ashes.
We here
among your ruins.
Raven pair re-mates for the long haul.
The honk and twist. Uninterruptable communications.
We among the slate sky, flakes drifting in forest wordless.
Boughs burdened, not breaking. Silver medallion sun
a gloss among mottled grays.
Your empiric embers are out.
A door ajar, dangling: grandfather,
not mine
but his,
now a refugee, southern Gaza,
holds the key to home.
Key you could never have, do not know how to keep as he does.
3/29/24
© Christine Weeber
XII.
What Sufis know: Not victim
not savior
but whole dancer ::
Light.
Whatever wound you tap,
empire,
I shroud with belonging: arterial,
ancestral,
an overlay of hands, a seal.
Direct communion.
No ego feast.
No “winners”
all dancing
11/16/24
© Christine Weeber
[I]
Give to me, again, your laughter
like a pier among waves and fishermen.
We could walk for days out upon the sound.
Lifeboats arrive from the wreck
peopled with your words,
but you are gone.
Your heart landed like an owl on my shoulder,
light and lost, surprised,
shivering--
each night shapeshifting into hunter,
bringing into the interior
fish from a foreign sea,
writhing,
stunning my arches and toes
with their frenetic fins.
I buried them in the damp sand
under nets wave-washed and coiled,
wave-washed and coiled--
for what hunger now, this food?
© Christine Weeber
[IX]
Garter snakes sleep in curled, dewy leaves of night--
the end, the beginning of what we both lost.
White flannel sheets sandy, twisted--
binding ankles, thighs, folds of skin and wetness.
Hands reach for the clay of mortal shadows,
curling instance of fingertips entering.
What ground underneath us except all ground.
Tongues desperate;
alabaster’s search for the sculptor’s wear.
Flying through solar systems,
moon’s blue mountain-shadows,
to get to you, to this.
Your slow eyes, now,
here in this skin.
I am afraid of time,
of slipping,
of the one blade of grass dipping in the moonlight.
© Christine Weeber
A Home, a Trap
I am inside the full moon
as it skins, skins rainbow trout
she looks up-
stream,
plies the pool
Caddisflies hatch,
emerge
from pupal shucks [1]
their own slow dawn
clouds as runoff heats
We are inside that rupture
pupal skins floating
water pulls us
down-
stream
we
wing
against shuck
edges
Our emergence
bleeds
an ephemeral
sun-
wash
we carry
with us
wings ablaze
scooping air
© Christine Weeber
[1] (www.troutnut.com/hatch/12/Insect-Trichoptera-Caddisflies)
Inside Empire
I.
Our perimeter a refusal. Silence overcomes mountainside.
We are still inside windless prayers.
Messages to ravens,
Northern goshawks,
moose mother and baby,
bobcat pair--
all who occupy, whistle, slink,
mate, scream, dismember, digest.
We listen.
Still.
Without
your intervention.
You have not captured
these ears.
Days lengthen into hush. Moonlit snow floats,
conversations of white mirroring our emptiness.
Let go.
Our souls straddle peace among the ashes.
We here
among your ruins.
Raven pair re-mates for the long haul.
The honk and twist. Uninterruptable communications.
We among the slate sky, flakes drifting in forest wordless.
Boughs burdened, not breaking. Silver medallion sun
a gloss among mottled grays.
Your empiric embers are out.
A door ajar, dangling: grandfather,
not mine
but his,
now a refugee, southern Gaza,
holds the key to home.
Key you could never have, do not know how to keep as he does.
3/29/24
© Christine Weeber
XII.
What Sufis know: Not victim
not savior
but whole dancer ::
Light.
Whatever wound you tap,
empire,
I shroud with belonging: arterial,
ancestral,
an overlay of hands, a seal.
Direct communion.
No ego feast.
No “winners”
all dancing
11/16/24
© Christine Weeber