Scattered
Compelled to move
to prove we’re not dead,
we wiggle our toes and blow our nose,
issue decrees and climb trees,
change like weather in wind and degrees,
rhyme our time as if singing a song
pray each day we’re not doing it wrong
They surely, willingly flattened
it’s not just flesh and bone–
there are greater forces at work
you may choose to be oblvious
to the Larger World–it remains indifferent–
but it is there, nonetheless
you may wish the universe
operated in some other fashion,
but Nature does what she does
and there is not one thing you
can do about it
you are not in control
of much at all–
the little you do control
are those things
beyond what
the eye can see–
the things of which
poets and pastors
speak
yet many, like volunteer zombies,
ignore the capacity
of their soul,
trading it–willingly–for
a nine-to-five,
a cell phone, the
approval of others
I grip the wooden handles,
And look out across the team,
In the early frosty morning,
As I watch the rising steam.
I know before the work is done,
My jacket will be replaced,
By a warming sense of accomplishment,
And sweat upon my face.
How many miles will I walk,
In the furrow, six by twelve?
Turning over patient soil,
Inch by inch I delve.
I hear the scraping of the landside,
And gliding of the soil,
I hear the squeak of leather,
And the feel of honest toil.
I know in this new tilled earth,
My daily bread I win,
As I swing around at the fields far edge,
And head them back again.
The team and I connected,
By leather, wood and chain,
Perform this ancient rite of man,
And it’s more than food we gain.
There’s a deep sense of pleasure,
In the feeling of the work,
And a contract between myself and land,
From which I cannot shirk.
I’ve fed the soil, all winter long,
Which now will feed me,
I slice it deep with the coulter knife,
And open it for seed.
I find I’m caught in a cycle of life,
Myself and the land I tend,
I’ve no notion of when it started,
And I cannot see an end.
5 a.m. weekdays, I drive to the YMCA,
water-aerobicize in the pool’s deep end.
Same route each morning, but after
sixteen years of heading out the condo
community’s curved entrance, my heart
races when an oval boulder looms out of inky
black—standing on one end, poised to lunge.
In headlights, striations mirror overlapping
plates of an armadillo’s armor. Not sure
they’re this far north, but heard they’re on the move.
Another morning, I thought the boulder a large turtle.
Its shell held a rough spot, scar of some trauma.
Giant tortoises can live 200 years, but can’t survive
in Kentucky. Alligator snapping turtles do dwell here.
Did it crawl out of our lake to lay eggs in grass?
Strange, how our minds work. Even though I know
the boulder’s there, when my headlights flow
over it, I’m still surprised by the memory,
the wonder of what comes at us in the dark.
After Jean Valentine
I don’t know what love is
I was fed enough as a kid
As I grew, it became more about survival
Only myself behind locks and closed doors
Love at that time was full of conditions
My axis shifted when I fell for you
Love like honey
Sweet on your tongue and sticky on our lips
Love like a flower
Soft to the touch and delicate
Love like glass
Protective, sharp, and transparent
Love like sunshine
Radiant and warms the soul
A love so good, so pure, I don’t know I deserve it
I don’t know what love is
But you’re teaching me everyday
That this is love
unavoidable
