Is it technology that speeds and deafens?
Is it inflation that blows survival prices?
Is it running from center to stay in the beat?
Is it gotta grab it first ~ it’s my piece of meat?
What brings me to being is breathing
What soothes me to seeing is pacing
What coddles me to calming is listening
Coming H ‘OM’ E to ‘OM’
I am ‘BEING’
How present are birds?
– are we all, are we all?
To pitch a song into the air does
not make a creature present, even
if it calls to another living thing,
mindful of predator and prey.
The spiced crisp ice of wild
hot fear traps us all in
its glittery aquamarine
/too often/
taking us to another dimension
before work,
after work,
and all day into the evening.
The chorus of life is
a dense old protein, and
fearful awareness of it the
doorstop to living.
Yet to be a mindful person is to
be, most of all, resilient –
willing to wade into the
bleary muenster of all voices
and sounds.
To be mindful is to sit present
on the beach not thinking –
adjacent to the water,
yet still swirled up in it.
Avian trills
sweet morning bells
trickling brooks
whispers of wind
wind chimes tinkling
soft leafy whispers
fountains trickling
crickets chirping
kittens’ meow
your voice speaking love
sounds that tickle the soul
and let it sing
“What number is this for you?”
She points to my swollen belly
I rub over the stretch marks
A timeline of the babies I bore
6th my soul whispers
3rd my mouth says
Lies and truth all the same
My broken body couldn’t bear them
Can other people see the secret shatter
Can they see the words searing through me
Detonating on impact,
A bomb that sets off
A chain reaction inside
My heart the blasted apart
Stained glass windows
Of a church in a war zone
Nobody knew them so nobody grieves them
Save for the parents who prayed to have them
Sometimes the grief evades me
But it waits until moments like these
Springs back up,
A tsunami of love, longing, regret, resentment
I wait upon the shore as the surge approches
Knowing my survival lies
In swimming through the swell
Years underground,
Slowly sipping sap,
Emerging
Finally fully grown,
Males vibrating their timbals
Females clicking their wings
Creating a racket
Clicking, vibrating,
For three frenetic weeks
They meet, mate,
Lay eggs in tree slits
Forty days gestation, then
Nymphs hatch, tumble
To the ground, burrow,
The cycle starting again.
It sure was sweet water
spilling out of the earth
shooting stars
all over my face.
The locals told us
we would never hit water
as we watched the old douser
witching for the well.
They told us the Crider soil,
reddish-brown silt covered dark
red clay would prevent the drill
from breaking through layers of denseness.
I watched young naked bodies
dance through the fan of precious rain
shooting upwards and remembered when
they too spilled out of my body.
her birthday so I think more diligently
today
where she sits in the constellation of all things
her patterns and the road which has led her
here, what has ushered her into this particular moment
the distance she will travel to the next place
now past girlhood, moving well into the years of still being young yet an adult
joy is in the span of lifetimes, dreams captured and stories lived
I know it’s always easier in the summer, but
