from Seeding the New Year, Dale Pendell and Laura Pendell:

There were coats and shirts and other articles of clothing draped over the sofa and all the chairs were covered with stacks of books.  It could have been a place where no one was expected to visit and where no one did, but visitors appeared.  Children’s voices echoed down the dark hallway and moss on the fireplace sprouted tiny pods on slender filaments.  Dreams wandered through the kitchen, brewed chocolate, and left messages taped to the cupboard.  Voluptas, he thought, or voluntas, a vulval crevice in the imagination from which small winged insects hatched from papery shells and hovered in the air like wisps of smoke forming patterns and pictures.  Starlings. A kind of semaphore. An alphabet of cranes that whispered his name.  Somewhere there were ships with oars and square sails.

the dance begins

a ceremonial sash passed

crafted of beads, shells,

starshine and the ineffable

hand to hand

most hold it

some fold it

all honor it

speaking to it

through it

stories to share

words that heal

and what cannot

yet be said

it holds in safety

until some other time

when the tribe reconvenes

the moon singing silver

or the fire blazing

so brilliantly that

all the dark corners

are illuminated

and the space

always safe

is safer still