A Tanka Before Moving
Slight flicker of wind
wakens, Soft cooing doves fade
fast, rising sun-sear.
Transitions are natural.
How many more transitions?
Slight flicker of wind
wakens, Soft cooing doves fade
fast, rising sun-sear.
Transitions are natural.
How many more transitions?
I will die in Kentucky on a rainy day in spring
perhaps on a Thursday as today is a Thursday
and I’m pondering continuing Pilates
where I resist the Nazi rigidness
though I long for strength as my body enters
elder status. I long to nurture the tautness
of youth, the resilience of a dancer.
You know it was the Russians who perfected
ballet– classical music and repetition and turn
after twirl after turn. They were escaping
their Dr. Zhivago winters with only a fireplace
for warmth and so they had to spiral and spring
and create long strong muscles to ignite the heat
required for life, survival.
Jesus wept tears
Onto whip-cracked backs
A healing dose
While listening to the overseer’s prayers
seeking forgiveness for the sins of the kidnapped flesh
He was about to punish
sometimes you wish
you could remember
your prior lives
the ones with quiet love stories
and old age endings
ones with deep roots
birds nesting in your body
you miss the forgotten feeling
of walking on all fours
of having furred fingers
of sinking claws
into cracked earth
birthing 9 children
and teaching them to fly
hiding in caves
seeing sound against their walls
all this time you’ve thought you were weak
but God
if you could have seen
yourself with skin – scaled and gilled –
separating atoms to create air
performing miracles just to breathe
you wouldn’t need anymore
idols
to worship
I am a witness to a wrong I could not prevent
calculated with malice, intent
revenge designed to destroy
ravage of lives for profit and joy
Windmills chant Gregorian verses
laced with accusations, encouragement
and my face presses into my palms
I am a witness to a wrong I could not prevent
callousness that is appalling, deliberate
ruined lives, livelihood and soul
reverberations of immorality smudge my epistemology
A seasoned janitor’s key ring
of excuses
Jangle jingle as I try to make them fit
and Charles said “People are not good to each other”
And I am a witness to it.
please.
I want chocolate
you say
from the backseat
strapped in
sippy cup in your hand.
it’s my favorite.
strawberry.
strawberry’s my favorite.
I want strawberry.
chocolate AND strawberry.
they’re my favorite.
and I wish for a second
that all decisions were like this.
the clarity a balcony in the summer brings:
last night it’s almost as if the world had decided to purge the hate that we had learned to carry on our backs.
rain and warmth mixed together.
hanging on the leaves around us.
we sat across from each other sharing chapters from our ghostwritten lives.
to be understood.
the severity
the fatigue
the anger
there was a pain in the air that I had never felt comfortable with. that I had never shared before with someone and the trees.
A stem of my foxglove hangs like a broken wing.
Family: Plantaginaceae
Genius: Digitalis
Species: x mertonensis
Otherwise known as Strawberry Foxglove
She’s a real beauty, her trumpet-like blossoms arouse
a stir, but she’s also hiding something.
We want to touch her, like we do with beauty.
Like we just can’t help ourselves.
She’s dangerous through and through,
every part.
Don’t.
Don’t rescue her.
Don’t lift her stem, don’t stake it to a rod of bamboo.
Don’t cut her brokenness, take it into the house
and put her in water or press her flowers in a book.
Like some forms of beauty, she can kill you.
Along the stream I walked
My breath a small cloud before me
The last of autumnal leaves behind me
I see the beginnings of winter
Of frozen streaks of water
Dancing along the mossy rocks
The early morning fog
Levitating above the earth
Suspended like a ghost in limbo
I long to find peace, silence
The cold numbing my thoughts
I simply attempt to seek
Solace and tranquility
Amongst the last bird chirps
Singing above in the tree branches
Before they reluctantly leave
Right before the first day of winter
The ground frosted
Glistening from the early morning sun
Against frozen dew drops
Sprinkled to the earth
In an early morning mist
I see through the haze everything before me
But my eyes do not race
Across this landscape
I only take in the beautiful peace
That I sought in my morning travels
