be still, my child, and listen
to what the forest has to say
the way the wind whispers
all the secrets of the universe
the bubbling creek with its
lore and sage advice, millions
of years of stories rolling gently
over rocks speckled with moss
the songs of birds called between
tree tops, the sweetest music that
you will ever hear in your small life
what a joy it is to be still and listen
No.
It has been said
it is
a complete sentence.
Why then
is it
not allowed
to stand on its own?
Why is there
a searching
a turning
a pushing
a luring?
Is it
because
I said it?
or
Is it
because
you were never
interested
in hearing it?
why
did
you
even
ask?
You smile like you’re still growing into your face
Revealing the perfect gap between front teeth
Bright blue eyes crinkled shut
Blinded by your own inner light
When you run you do it with every inch of your body
Your body still fluid and amorphous
A butterfly recently emerged from a chrysalis
A deer two hours out of the womb
So new this all must be
So magical
So incredible sweet
The sensation of simply being fully alive
Terry’s email
came in a few weeks.
“Sorry I took so long to write.
The Italians left this place in a mess.
I’ve finally got it in better shape.
Their junk cluttered the whole base.
but I pushed everything up in piles
around this compound.
I sent you a picture with signs
to warn all these guys.”
I opened his attachment.
It was a picture of a blue Portajohn
with two red- lettered signs,
one on each side warning:
absolutely no dumping.
The first days of my June have gone like this.
Day one included a perspective shift.
Day two—summer fun with my little buddy.
Day three’s highlight was Bible Study.
6-1-26
Divinely protected.
Now operating within a fuller cup perspective.
Sipping this with half and half.
Though halfway out, still halfway in.
Nope, don’t have to give in.
Yes, forgive, but don’t have to forget.
6-2-26
Summer library kickoff adventure;
joy and wonder with a dash of overstimulation.
Animals,
bubbles,
popsicles…
of course, books, too.
Beloved characters to meet and greet,
kids on top of kids,
but oh, so much fun!
6-3-26
A royal priesthood.
A holy nation.
One with borders,
not everyone can go over.
Only the sweet fruit bearers—
in covenant— shall occupy the land.
The way to unite is to get out of our way,
be in His will,
and stay in the Word.
smile with bubbles stuck between gleaming teeth,
tendrils of cheap wig floating
as they wave at me
from behind the glass, but tail or not, they
remind me of the old woman who carried her tank
of air on a walker, every week told me how much I’d grown.
I look away while the mermaids take a hit of oxygen.
the point of creating is the effort
let your brain percolate like weak coffee
on the diner counter. buzz like a stuck fly
against the closed windows of your ideas.
yank a thought from the stream like a prized
monster fish. release it once, give chase, and drag it
back into the boat, flailing triumphant against persistence.
people with expensive cars will sell you efficiency
it will be efficient for them to forget your name
dig a pair of cufflinks from your junk drawer
and become the oddest bird at the bicycle rack.
choose a pen name just to change it. write
cantos and haiku and sonnets and shopping lists.
recite and pontificate and gesticulate your way
across the long bridge back to ourselves.
Crystal ashtrays stuffed full.
April showers filled them with
Carcinogenic soup
Ran through a pack sitting next to you
Crying as things ended
Honeybee wings and
honeysuckle vines and time
dripping with summer sap fat
as bears—grizzlies, polar—and sweat
stuck on the neck of July,
baptizing dancing feet of flies.
Swat the buzzing, the humming, the
unceasing sunset drowning
a cricket’s fiddle, a band of cicadas,
a woods so thick with haze it held
no edges, like a dream, a porch light
flickering a code every child knows,
without knowing why—come home.
Is it for your wake
or someone else’s that
you have stockpiled too many bottles
of fine barrel aged whiskey?
time will tell.
