Scars

Scars

attest to bridges crossed battling dragons,

to threatening rivers entered

that pushed at knees, sucked at ankles.

To deep mountaintop scree, ragged, sharp and steep where

falling

meant death and dismemberment.

We were there,

we know,

we learned.

Yours lay upon your body

differently

than mine;

equally, they shape us.

Scars pulse out of step with the rest.

Each must be attended to,

honored,

for what they give,

for what they gave up.

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Sing to the waters

Where salt meets sweet,

I sing to the waters.

Where sand holds wave, pelicans slap

great wings,

and solitary duck pops up from below

in stilled bowl

waiting for winter,

I sing

and Wind joins in,

ruffles the surface, wavelets building

a pattern hypnotic and old as Earth.

Sing to the waters,

their reply waits for your greeting among reeds,

rushes, willows and stone.

Where are the Grandmothers?

Where are the Grandmothers?

With family torn, history unknown, stories never uttered,

lineage not spoken,

where are we?

We become dangling dolls, feet like bell clappers,

swaying this way and that with no ground

beneath us.

So utter.

Utter.

Utter your questions and longings to the Grandmothers,

the Grandfathers, the Sisters and Brothers who couldn’t grow up,

the sharers and protectors from the other side where

viewing carries a different, sideways, deeper,

beyond kind of knowing.

Stir the waters you can not see,

the current carrying you, and ask.

Ask.

Ask and the formations for you to hold and gaze at

reminding you of the support in the surround

can shape, at last, in the wet red clay

held by your praying hands-

Grandmothers, Come to me…

In the cross-hatch seat

In the cross-hatch seat of the chair

wooden, dusted in time and use,

a cat

curled

and sleeping.

Looking over at her, floor boards below and sun

reaching through a far window,

doubt can not waver the sweetness

of a morning with feline, coffee, a book

and silence rising from the woods outside.

Where lies

If a push,

somewhere a pull.

Where taken,

pray it has been given.

The Western sense of community..

in itself a paradox?

We’re part–everyone–of centuries of history

cycling, tumbling, molasses-thick onward

with nanosecond “advances.”

No mystery that you, and you, and I

can not seem to catch our breath.

Faster is not forward,

as bigger not better, nor more money success.

Where lies the soul stuff making life

Life?

Now

He slams the door behind him.

You think, Good riddance!

When next your heart stops and breath catches,

out comes a gasp, What have I done?

Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes

from complete sense to non-sense,

and it is on that iceberg of moment

(and each drifting ice island following)

when wondering, Is this true?

might most gather you back together in a form

strong enough,

wise enough

to hold all the sensations and feelings

threatening to tear you to pieces

to be with Now,

an actual fullness of Life

for which you have the grandest capacity.

This day

This day he walks slowly,

approaching in nearly a shuffle.

Handing me a candy- the kind once known as penny-

saying, this aging stuff, not so easy.

I used to think, he shares with a soft shake of his head,

I could stay a perpetual teenager. But not so.

His health, not good,

the poetry, music and culture

having always fed him

no longer enough.

Or so it seems to him, on this day.

Clutching a small handled paper bag, one somehow

always carried,

he steps away, looking emptily into distance

not physically there,

leaving me with a golden,

foil covered chocolate coin never to be eaten

and an appreciation for his difficult facing

of what he long imagined

could be outrun.

Twenty-five years on

Not until the attentive itch

do they exchange glances to mean

It’s Time.

And off we pile into the car, heading deep

into night and whatever flight waiting

with breath, rolling, in the wings.

Winding round and up and up and round

through dark and sensation

into rolled down window sweetness of valley grass and oak,

Stumbling, graceful, grit of dirt road scuffing,

spinning under 2 a.m. sky and flopping across hillsides,

the stars, sharp and grabbable,

become a spiral

spiral

spiral

as alive to be tucked in a pocket,

as hover, massive and in reach, directly overhead,

as rest in mind twenty-five years on.

Ancient and known

What name can be given

to soul hunger for nature,

for bodily starvation of slow rhythms ancient

and known?

Waking, sleeping, sunrise, moonset,

yes

even in the most stricken times we can find ourselves there

part of the ever-larger cosmos,

not pinned tight to trivia and misbehaviors.

But

skin suffers thirst for soil-

this hard concrete place rebounding with noise

can’t feed what does not eat the civilized.

Sit down with me, here,

let’s break sidewalk together,

chip away until earth smiles again at sky-

silent seeds await their patient growth into trees.

The rest

An initiation ritual,

in the dusk-scape of dream,

of shared finery, costume, camaraderie,

and non-blood family

emerging from here, over there,

here, here, there

unexpectedly,

for the me before me,

with a gathering of eager others,

to mark time with life.

Saying no, no but I am not she

not anymore

no–

But as beads pass over head, and colors add up,

layers of feather, bone, cloth

none mine

each display on this body

currently

a light in mind shifts-

not for me

but she

who may pass through, closing

beginning years, finally,

in step with those knowing when it is meant to happen.

Dressed, prepared, without doubts,

I walk the procession.

To celebrate.

To say goodbye.

To welcome all the rest.