Solstice thoughts

 The seasons change and each time

I am reminded of the last, 

as though this hasn't happened

again and again.

Each red leaf like a forgotten belonging

Appearing unexpectedly before you.

The way the leaves glide easily with their broad

 surface area, an incredible feat of ingenuity- 

to be the first to touch the light 

and then, in time, the ground.

The way the spiders appear in my bathtub,

Seemingly oblivious to the frightened children, 

as they venture out to dance for lovers. 

And people, how we burn and bake,

ever pursuing warmth,

as we have since we first walked on two legs. 

The world continues to grow and then senesce, 

to make space for future iterations. 

What luck to bear witness to so many.

Succession

The alder tree, its limbs broken in the ice storm, resprouts soft green stems from the smooth empty middle of its trunk;

Takes on a new shape in order to begin again, continue capturing light to fuel life.

I have watched it from my upstairs window all these years.
Now I too shed my old hopes and the idealism of my younger days as I adapt and grow where the light continues to break through and touch me

But I am not a tree- rooted here for all of my life, sending my pollen and seeds as far as the wind can carry them.

I have a body that travels wherever I point it, and the world is vast. For an animal, adaptation is also our behavior- we sense danger and we move on.
I am a mother and so I find a safer patch of earth for my young.

But first I give my thanks to this place for sheltering my family and my life.
I give thanks to the earth where I have planted, and have found what other beings share this space.

The alder tree outside this window will continue here, enriching the soil and giving more than it has taken.

When my body makes its final return to the earth, may I too have given more to this world than I have taken.

Still point

Exhaustion arrives

Like a receding wave, revealing the barren belly of the world;
Smoothed over
by the weight of the water
and its ceaseless movement.

Surprised creatures burrow and flee their sudden exposure,
But the sand, no longer caught in the changeable waves
Settles deeper.

Gravity is the friend of the weary.
Its subtle power makes itself known
in the presence of unbearable mass.

It speaks- feel me now.
Not to rest, not to recover-
Just to witness the vastness of the sky;
Just to find the still point 

in the storm's shifting eye. 

Bridger

The dearest sound I know
is the light rhythm of my son, now 10, as he breathes.
I linger here beside his sleeping shape
knowing all too soon that he will outgrow
quiet moments like this one.

This moment contains so many others within it-
The countless nights rocking him to sleep,
through fevers or nightmares.

The very first swish of a heartbeat on a monitor, how his father and I sobbed such deep gasps of relief.

I cannot keep the sorrow of the world away from you,
But I promise you that somehow, the pain can be a doorway
to something sacred beyond words.

It connects us to all things.

The tenuousness of a life on this planet, the intensity of parental love. The finality of the passing of time.

How precious, how painful, how good it is
to be.

Wellspring

I have fortified my spirit 

with stones

In order to withstand the sorrow of being 

alive, sensitive, and aware.

But each rock was placed carefully as a cairn

on the ruins of my dreams.

An homage to their beauty and the color they added to the world.

They are with me;

like friends left behind on distant continents. 

And I have doggedly resisted the panicked voice inside, advising

 to build it up into a levy

so as to keep the world’s pain apart from mine.

Such an act would sever the human sacrament 

of bearing witness.

Instead it has become an aquafer, 

whose bedrock is steady even as 

the groundwater of my grief permeates everything.

When other sources run dry,

this deepest well sustains the resilient ground 

of generosity.

A riffle is springing up 

across the center of my being.

It is a space that everything must pass through.

There is refuge here;

wild things may shelter here

for a time;

and breathe.

And when I am still, I hear the rough waters

singing.

Homeostasis

We are held together by the smallest things,

The osteoblasts and myocytes,
keratin and collagen.

Nothing that is alive can grow
until it splits apart;
nor mend without a multitude
of unseen actions that come together exactly 

 right.

The intricate synergy of our own self-organizing;
The cellular orchestration of its own volition.

As long as we breathe, we evelope,

 reincarnate, and repair.  We flow with the

endlessness of order and chaos.

The healed places are knit together most

tightly, and yet they are a liability. Less

yielding, unforgetful.

Bodies are as dynamic as lives.

To rebuild is not simple nor guaranteed. It is 

fraught
with errors easy and incalculable. 

The process lasts as long as we are willing

 to continue it, or
as long as the microscopic labor 

can be sustained.

It is by those unseen cellular deeds 

that we are made alive each day. And by their grace, 

we heal.

In the forest

 In the forest I am a child.

There in the moss, I laid the weight of everyone’s tears.

Breathing in the sweet tilthy floor,

its spongey small tentacles and sharp snaps,

I was enveloped in her playful goodness.

Amidst the song sparrow and red-legged frog,

the world is still and alive.

There, the large world of my young life is smaller, but also wide.

There are no monsters to stare down. No children to save.

No one to rescue but me.

Like an elder, she surrounded me with her quiet power and granted me a stoic sanctuary.

In the forest I did not need to be brave, or strong, or good.

In the forest I am a child.

Co-evolution

Truth is intrusive, like an exposed screw that catches my loose threads,
and unravels what seemed so solid, so mendable.

We once had a dog that would fetch until it’s paws were skinless. We’d discover the wounds in shock, there was no indication he was in pain.

You say it’s like you’ve been running and discover your leg had been broken the whole time.

I think of Dr Margaret Mead explaining how a broken leg was a death sentence for our wild kin. A fossil of a healed femur shows the branching off- from a species that had to survive alone, or die; to one that was helped.

We cannot heal alone. When I say I love you, I mean that my mirror neurons fire freely at your joy and your pain.

Grief and gratitude are not a duality. They are a perfect dialectic.

Each breath is a gift, yes, but also a tether
to this fragile and tentative existence.

My best teachers taught me to return to my breath and find its softness; to let it spread through me.

To cease to breathe can also be a gift, a freeing, a small death.

We die not at once but in starts- the punctuated equilibrium of change within one lifetime,
and over eons. Each extinction we survive is a doorway
as life inexorably reinvents itself.

We can only see such a small piece of the story
to which we are inextricably bound, long after our time ends.

We can move back and forth, leaning into the uncertainty or fighting
the changes, bewildered and raw-knuckled. But one day, all that we have accumulated will be dust. Recycled, reimagined, conserved in the story.

What can we do, but meet what comes with humility, and the courage to want it all?

Noise

If you haven't put any skin in the game, stop talking.
Your voice is adding to the noise
that is obscuring the stories that must be told.
Your intellectual interest in the marginalization of others
is not contributing to our collective liberation.

If you aren’t willing to be transformed by the truth, stop talking.
The fact that you are privileged is only news to you;
you aren’t adding anything new to the conversation.
The Devil doesn't need any more Advocates
but the oppressed sure do.

If there isn't a sense of urgency for you, stop talking.
These systems of oppression serve to insulate you
from the painful injustices that uphold and perpetuate your comfort.

You want to be the Captain, but you've never put any skin in the game.

Song of ten

The oldest truth holds steady, like a center
when groundlessess is the only choice-
love is transformative.

I fell into your warmth softly,
a gravity that kept me close
until I could again meet the rough beauty of life.

The enormity of it held me in its orbit for a time
and I let go
and found a vast wilderness in the spin.

Dear one, you have never tried to tame my fierceness or lay claim;
instead you show up,
to bear witness and participate in the precariousness.

Every day with you has been precious.
Today, ten marks the years since we found ourselves on that street corner,
agape.

When faced with my own mortality,
my erratic heartbeat served only to illuminate
that you are a boundless star-filled sky,
and I am grateful to to stand, bewildered, in that light.

drift

I may have drifted,
but it was a favorable wind
and my sails were full.

My guiding light has been
curiosity
and love.

It's true that I have meandered.

An explorer,
never a conqueror.

For My People

The following was based on an assignment to re-create Margaret Walker's poem "For My People" based on a group we belong to.

For my people who show up for class on Thursday night, gently shaking from exhaustion and longing for their children.

For my people who made Cum Laude while working a day job and staying up all night rocking their babies. For my People who were passed up for the promotion anyway to the young and affluent white guy who spoke Middle Class much better.

For my people who took out the loans though they knew full-well that they'd be paying them back instead of saving up for their own children's college, but had to take them to keep a roof over their child's head right now. For my People whose parents are just so damn proud that you finished school and can stand on your own two feet- the hard won result of all of their sacrifices.

For my people who remember where they were the moment they first saw with clarity that Justice For All was just a dream. For the ones who've been illegally stopped and searched for the crime of living in a poor neighborhood. For my people who've watched gentrification move toward them like a tsunami. For my people adrift and afraid.

For my people who not only have no safety net, but who daily weigh out the vacuum of need around them. For the bills you wish you could cover and the family members you wish you could comfort. For my People who still say “When there is only one loaf of bread left, we split it”. My people who have nothing saved up, but donate whatever they can, in earnest- for the world they can still envision for their great-grandchildren.

For my people for whom “self-care” sounds amusing but keeping your head above water means no time to rest. For my people who skip the self-help section of the nonfiction titles on their way to the used copies of A People's History and How to Unionize.

For my people who see our interconnected struggle. For my people accused of being subversive for telling the truth. For my people who take a knee anyway.

For my People who've walked through fire and come out unafraid; for my People relentless and fierce in spirit, unimpressed by money and status. For my people who meet heavy pity with rebellious joy. For my people who would never trade our gritty, interwoven, beautiful lives for an easier journey.  

Field Bind Weed

"Another way is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
-Arundhati Roy

We never claimed to be unbreakable, but rhizomatous.

Snap us and watch a new iteration emerge.

These seeds are viable for centuries. Our roots go twenty feet down. Our vines stretch hundreds of feet up.

With stems thin as spaghetti, we pull down trees. We fill the fields.

Fragment us. Poison us. Tear us from one another's arms.

Persistence is imprinted in our DNA.

We are endless.

home

Standing by the gnarled old maple tree,

The path to which is worn bare

By countless others who, like me, make the small climb from the park to visit it.

I sat here the day I learned my family was divorcing, and on an early date with the man who would become the love of life, and at eight months pregnant, and now-

I wonder if I will be able to keep coming here now that so many people love this place too. Displacement moves toward my family like a visible tide; a funeral march.

So let it come. The relics of my life are gone. The childhood homes, the secret groves, the family places, the manufactured home by the ocean.

What was that I swore at 18, backpack slung over a shoulder, leaving home?

Home is a living breathing being. Its form can change. 

Grief is the bone that holds our love together, and only what we love can save us.

To live is to grieve endlessly even as we are simultaneously broken open to the beauty and tentativeness that is living.

I offer the maple my thanks and turn back..

Dream

Last night I dreamt of a Tsunami.

The waves crushed everything dear to me and sucked my body into wild churning saltwater.

I struggled to keep my head above water, gasping as I went under for increasingly longer intervals until I began to fall.

As I drifted deeper in the water, I saw something solid and grasped for it- it was slippery and rough, with small grooves. I gripped as well as I could, my fingers slipping again and again as it pulled me to the surface and we moved forward. Finally above water, I saw it was a Sea Turtle.

All night I held onto this groundlessness, my fingers cold and aching, regripping every few moments over and over, but managing to hold on; failing and then finding again the rough shell, unsure how long I would manage.

Just as morning came I felt the softness of sand under our bodies.

Exhausted, I crawled, shaking, onto the beach and collapsed beneath an enormous tree. I laid on my back without the strength to move and watched the branches sway in the wind. The tree was endless, and on every branch was a nest filled with nestlings. The birds were so plentiful they looked like flowers. My mind was quiet.

This was when I heard growling.

A wild dog stood inches from me, gums pulled back over its teeth and hair standing on end. I looked into its eyes, and it lunged at me. It slashed at my chest and I began to bleed, but I continued to stare into its eyes. A moment passed, then it relaxed, turned, and left.

This is when I awoke.

The Reach

Hand over hand

a dirt stained body rises.

Hand over hand

clinging to the coarse woven fibers;

Skin burning with every red inch.

Moment by moment giving up

and holding on.

Hand over hand, rising above the canopy.

inch by inch into daylight;
The breath a chant, a prayer and plea.

The expansive sky in defiance

of everything once believed to be closed.

Terns drift by on their long migration.
To the endless world, the climber offers a small cry

merging in a wild chorus with every pitch.

Surge

When you can no longer recognize the sound of your own dissonance

Forget not
your strength has already been ground-truthed.

Engraved in your body are the coordinates
Of a basalt bedrock that is deeper than the waves of change,
Steadier than despair.

Courage is to live what is;

To look the truth in the face without blinking.
A place pretense cannot abide,
Where ugliness reveals itself to have been God all along.

To stand amid the fearsome water rushing wildly where it will,
Dislodging riprap from the banks
And carving a new way,
Moving ever on in infinite power.

with boundless love

What if it was your child,
                                       Don't say it
being pulled from the rubble?

I don't want to feel it.

What if it was your mother
bleeding from her ears?
Could you hand her over to spend her final days in quarantine?

Cover your ears, close your heart, run from the words.

But how can the world heal
if we don't let the pain in?

Scream the pain out.

And how can we weigh a life-
what is the exchange rate
of a Liberian to a Palestinian or Iraqi or Honduran child
to an unarmed black American teenager,
to a beloved celebrity?

Stop
running
from your beautiful, living compassion.

We're all in this together.

Compassion emboldens us and gives us the courage to cross into war torn cities, to offer kindness to the suffering, to sacrifice, to speak out at great risk.

We must be the voice for the voiceless.

Our weapons will be our compassion
and insight.

If you are afraid of the pain, hold on to me.
We will not break apart.

Beneath the apathy is immense power.

With boundless love, we will work
to dismantle arsenals of hatred and indifference.

May we be a refuge to everything that lives.

To sit

To find a quiet spot to sit and watch

how the bumblebee lands so gently on the flower petal, how the petal lightly bends under the weight and curls around the soft body until it turns and is gone.

See how the sparrow turns its head a dozen times to be sure it is safe before its beak disappears into the warm ground and surfaces with a worm, so clever to have known all along what was there.

And my clumsy hand can hardly pull a weed without snapping the stem of the flower I wish to save, and cursing. What the animals must think of my gracelessness, my noisy oblivion.  

Perhaps they think nothing of it, only wait for the nuisance to pass; while I spy on them (not undetected) with rapturous curiosity.

Saturn

Who are you in the dark-

where no one can see the days that brought you to this moment

or the moments enshrined in the quiet inner room of your heart

that once created a sea change.

Who are you when the quiet is broken only by the rhythmic breath of your sleeping child

and you must face how stupid it is to have believed your ego, that trickster

that anything matters but an open heart.

In the darkness you make a promise;

Cherish those that are dear

and let the others believe what they want.

The fear that keeps you awake deep into the night

is a lie.

In the darkness you resolve

to let it all fall

to save what burns in you.