Category Archives: poetry

Crying to stop

27 Thursday Apr 2023

Posted by in history, pain, poems, poetry

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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

Posted by in approaching, becoming, change, poems, poetry, welcoming

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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

Posted by in listen, Love, poems, poetry, presence, silence, slow, song, sound

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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

Posted by in change, motion, nature, poems, poetry

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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

Posted by in change, land, poems, poetry

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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

Posted by in Love, lovers, loving, naked, pain, poems, poetry, prayer

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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.

With one slow turn of the head

21 Friday Apr 2023

Posted by in dreaming, Immortal, movement, night, poems, poetry

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With one slow turn of the head

eyes sift softly through glass and

who should appear but the swallows;

The swallows are back,

zipping and gliding and making mirth–

they are the mirth-makers–

and my heart goes lightly, up and out

with them.

They emerge from a crack in the world,

from beyond there to right here.

How lovely to be with them again.

Together, as sun says goodbye this evening,

we will cut the sky.

We will cut silent sky,

and pull down a net of stars

to sprinkle dreaming

across a blooming desert night.

Enough

20 Thursday Apr 2023

Posted by in naked, poems, poetry, prayer

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Troubled by this cultural grab for legacy

that older people writing books and making speeches and

facing death

fixate upon,

the strange ego javelin

aimed towards making a lasting mark–

with their initials starkly upon it–

I pull my head out of my own ass and look

at a simple and wondrous case in point,

the early spring burst of a small crabapple tree:

With first new leaves gathering food of the sun,

and deep pink buds tucked between pale open blooms

offering food to the bees in pollination’s blessed exchange,

not a cell in that tree requires recognition

or hungers in desperation to be remembered

once it’s gone.

She is born, feeds, is fed, shelters, shades, and grows,

creates new life, diminishes, and becomes earth.

That is thanks enough,

perfection enough,

selfness enough.

Enough.

Like songs of sparrows sputtering in wing flutter

all about the garden,

this gift and given

of spirit to form back to spirit,

in this, how can we forget

no loop of the Divine

could ever

go wrong?