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.