30 Sunday Apr 2023
Author Archives: feralpoet
Plum blossoms
29 Saturday Apr 2023
Butterfly sipping on plum blossoms,
pink singing tree crowned
with a cloud of happy bees.
This morning,
an inch of powdery snow,
this afternoon,
sun has melted it in blue.
Spring loves its wild swings.
Two girls
28 Friday Apr 2023
Two girls
walk a small street in balmy late afternoon,
past nice houses,
down a line echoing the coastline,
ocean sand steps away.
They stop on a mounded grassy spot,
at muffled edge of sun and tree shadows,
to sit.
And where, while being girls,
have they chosen
to park their behinds and stare
but directly across from the wide concrete stairs
leading up to the boys’ army and navy academy.
To watch and wait.
One girl, daughter of another daughter
molested by her own father,
later becomes a stripper,
breasts hugely augmented,
spending her nights being watched.
The other, also daughter of a daughter
molested the same way,
runs into the arms of men twenty-plus years
older,
never wondering why.
Two girls deliver themselves,
prey to predators.
This
is a common story.
Crying to stop
27 Thursday Apr 2023
Crying
to stop the dread,
‘Please don’t make me go.’
Crying to be heard,
‘Don’t make me go.’
She pauses. (Thankfully.)
My small body leans, limp,
into hers. Hers sits now
on couch spine, hands around me.
Before us, the hall yawns toward stern front door.
‘Please can I stay home today?’
Another shudder,
more tears.
In my growing self I know
what school takes, what it gives away
as if useless and bad.
But.
I was marched out to face again
what I hated,
and these many years later I know–
had my little heart been heard
that day my life would have changed.
Into the arms
27 Thursday Apr 2023
Shaving my head on the mesa,
white sun rising behind juniper hills,
I became myself again.
I did not know I’d been gone.
With each new song of bird, new ray of light
and dropping hair,
freedom lifted, heaviness fell.
I did not know I’d been gone.
Voicing thanks to Sun
and all goodness that surrounds,
I also fell,
fell fully into the arms of Spirit.
Talk, talk, talk
26 Wednesday Apr 2023
While endless talk,
noise of commercialism, opinion,
celebrity,
fills too many spaces,
when chatter closer to home gets
incessant
remember
that is sound of a disturbed heart.
And we’ve far, far too many of those.
Step silently back
and recall what tender talk,
a creek rolling through, touching
sides, stones, roots
speaks of–
its landscape of blood, tissue and bone–
that which sustains, holds and guides it
along the journey.
When the child enters, or one of the countless
yet to be heard,
please,
listen.
Robins do not sing
for nothing.
Spring storm
25 Tuesday Apr 2023
A wall of slow spiraling cloud,
a great grey hand,
comes in low against the skin of the earth
swallowing the mesa,
sky, and all that proceeds it–
the West has sent its claim for the mountain.
And as first rain drops heavy and loud,
smell of December bursts full into the air,
only here, here artemisia sings strongest
not in early clutch of winter
but, like now,
in spring.
I drink desert storm
and laugh at the strangeness of time,
dusting of snow on far hills while
a flowering plum turns pink.
Three
24 Monday Apr 2023
Three jackrabbits chase each other
round and round in circles,
three butterflies spiral together
low to high,
three parcels on my doorstep
wind, sunshine and shadow,
half a breath from where coyote trots by.
No holding the movement, we break open
to change.
Clouds scoot over a mountain in the north,
I follow their calling
back to the land of bone. Back
to a land of three.
When touched
24 Monday Apr 2023
When touched, woman’s nipples are not to pucker inward,
When touched, woman’s soft cave is not to dry and contract,
When touched, her heart is not to hide away while
her clothes are removed.
When touched.
This earth, this fertile woman
bringing all life, creating
breathing pulsing offering–
always offering–
She is not meant
to be gashed stripped clawed mined
TAKEN
.
When touched, we women
are to be held, to be sung to, to be danced with,
our laughter our moisture rising
to swaddle and bathe the world.
Sing to us, allow us, see, listen to, wait for and
welcome us…
Let our own hands guide you.
When touched,
above all
be gentle.
The snakes are waking
23 Sunday Apr 2023
The snakes are waking, I feel them
stirring below ground.
With each step through dry arroyo,
around sagebrush, around stone,
I prepare for the sliding S–
Sssssss.
Warming earth holds us both,
one oval hole under plump cactus,
one casita on a hill.
Hello quiet ones,
we two stretch ourselves toward growing light.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 