Poem: (Obscurity)

Walking this morning to the wishing well,

Now that the rains have come,

Amal Amal is flowing.

The ducks have returned,

As have I,

Though I was there too

When it was dry as stone, dirt and bone.

Running dry.

A man on the corner,

talks to himself, keeping his own company.

Do you have a place to stay? Food?

Me in my pajamas, though you might not know,

slippers wet with dew,

Empty pockets

Heart full of prayers.

He under the bridge,

with others camped along the stream.

The bees have once again occupied the old sycamore trees.

A woman runs to her car, “I forgot my badge,” she says,

I imagine she works at the hospital around the corner.

Running, running.

Two men in masks, one of floral fabric, made by hands,

exit their construction vehicle.

We greet each other with our eyes.

I walk home,

On empty and quiet streets,

Full of our shared predicament -

picking flowers along the way, from the overgrown yards of my neighbors.

Just as I have always done.

Though as a small child,

my parents had me return each blossom, one by one,

to teach me, I presume,

about not taking without asking.

Who owns the flowers?

I wonder.

And the street corner,

and under the bridge,

and the sycamore trees - leaves soft like the tiny hands of some distant relative, whispered on the wind?

If I Were A Tree

If I were a poet, you would find your way to me through my wild love of rivers,

the way water finds its way to the ocean and the low points of a place; sometimes meandering and sometimes with a purposeful force downstream.

You would marvel at the gentle way the light is reflected off the pine needles of the fir, cedar and hemlock this afternoon. Or is it the way the leaves themselves emanate light in their holy communion with the sun?

I could not help but make you fall in love with Madrone, painting your imagination with the soft ruddy skin of those majestic beings.

We would sit quietly under their canopy, our bare feet on the dry earth, and watch the dragonflies skim over the still face of the nearby pond.

And what about the meadow? I am in love with meadows. The variety of flowers just blooming their way to seed. Yarrow, Goldenrod, Lilies - purple, yellow, white. The openness of a meadow, trusting, bare and available, just there, at the edge of forest, bird song, and mystery. Not simply absence of trees. Meadow invites. In a language I have known since I was small and know now still when I am alone to court the wild soul of things. 

I am in love with trees. I have been since the beginning. How can we not be? In my first remembered dream I am in the branches of a very large tree, around me are all of the other animals in creation. All colors, creatures, textures - tails and talons, wings and scales, claws and tongues, fins, teeth, feathers. The tree is spinning, or rather, we are spinning, around, in and with the tree, as the tree, as, and at the center of, the world. The tree of life.

If I were a tree, you would know the tender wound in your own soul that leads some to violence and others to despair, and others still to magnificent beauty and creativity. You would know the fierce love that defends and protects. You would feel the fur of your skin quiver as you sense the lion approach the meadow, and the clench of your jaw as you pounce.

If I could, I would introduce you to Manzanita, Oak, Cottonwood, Alder, Sycamore, Cedar, Pine. Hone my voice, and raise my voice, and sing a love song of mourning for the trees. A poet’s song, like the mockingbirds, who sing their most beautiful song just as they utter their last breath.

This summer I witnessed mountainsides of dead trees. In Colorado - Blue spruce, Englemann spruce, Douglas fir. In Washington - Broad leaf Maple, Whitebark Pine, Western Redcedars, Western hemlocks, Douglas fir. In California, they are burning now. The trees are burning. The world is on fire. Drought and flames, blight and climate change. 150 million trees dead in California alone over the last years of drought, 18 million just last year, and as we breathe, their breathe, they are falling now, too many to count. Honoring the fallen. 

If I were a poet, I would weave a tapestry of words to give us courage to stand strong and proud as trees, knowing why we are here and what we need to do, strengthen our voices to praise and defend all life, help us carry our dreams home, bring us to safely to shore, belong us to this world, fill our plates with plenty, cleanse our waters pure, ease our bones, protect our children, tend our seeds, ignite our imagination, open our ears to the music, celebrate the beauty of all the tones of our skin, speak to you in the language of your ancestors, remember us to who we are, honor the gifts, practice wild and unabashed kindness, make us fall in love with each other, all of us, rest in the spaces between, hold you close to my heart, turn this world around and around in a sacred rhythm of we. 

Oh my dear friend, if I were a poet, you would never ever feel alone again, nor harm another living being, including yourself. You would fall to your knees for the beauty, and the horror of it all, in a merciful embrace. You would weep for the utter madness and perfection. And then you would rise, you would rise, in full splendor, to love this world with everything you've got, and give it all away. 

I am a tree, come rest in my shade. Come rest in my shade, there is work to be done.

The World is a Gift to Come Home To

Night time comes so quickly.

The not doing still stirring.

Is it the gestation I feel? Or simply fear?

I pick up the tools on hand to write these words.

Hoping beyond hope for a thread of inspiration.

That something beyond myself will take over and deliver me to unknown shores.

It is this magic I crave, this spontaneous aliveness, I witnessed in the black phoebe this morning, as she flitted from driftwood to driftwood.

What even makes sense anymore?

There is so much to lament. So much to recognize. So many names to speak in reverence and remembrance.

Does it have to feel like entrapment? Are the songs of my ancestors too quiet for my ears?

I still wake each morning and watch the light change. This gives me solace.

I am a wild creature, held hostage by ideas and pictures of another time. A beast living within four holy walls, crumbling to nothing.

I only pray to wake up. Help me not engage unnecessary process.

The entitlement echoes … Show me how to live. Spark my wonder.

While all the wild ones dance in the shadows of unsuspecting mothers, distracted fathers, the young who know another way, and our own karmic manipulations.

If there is one thing I know, it is this,

The world is a gift to come home to.

Poems of Remembering After War

FROM AUGUST 2012 - For a couple years I worked with an organization leading weeklong wilderness based, trauma informed healing retreats for women combat veterans. These poems arose out of that time.

Take the scars,

The tired bodies

My tears.

The broken names

Of all the women

Unstoried by time and privilege,

Anger and betrayal.

Take the arms

Of the forgotten children

Maimed by our own desperate grief

And untold trauma.

Let the earth rock us to sweet sleep

In its spinning through space-

Let our voices cry out, sing out

Together in unison, in harmony,

In chaos and beauty

For the love of the unborn child,

The first light

A tender embrace.

Don’t talk of strangers at this hearth

It is the fire of our mutual longing

Our together call for freedom

The connection of true belonging.

In each others eyes

Under an ancient sky

Where all who breathe are sacred,

scared and trembling,

At the vulnerability of being.

Let us tell the story of love

To our children

And our children’s children.

How we came together

To care for each other and our home-

The earth.

This is a woman’s way,

To respect all life.

We know the true cost of things,

the value and curse of silence,

The necessity of friendship and kindness.

Call me friend

On this path

Where all our journeys end

In the great mystery.

And I will call you sister

As we walk toward

Our ancestors breath

And the destiny of our hearts

Written in the stars.

Recovery

Smite the steal,

The cold metal blade

In those soft hands.

Be gentle dear heart

And bury me home.

Wake me again

I am so frightened and forgetful

I swear to never return.

I call out my own name

To remember myself.

This is my life

I claim it again

For the third time…

There is no bargaining now

Only a mighty wind

Blowing the dust (of war) from my eyes

Blinded by memory

It has been days since I awoke smiling to the east

To greet the morning sun.

This day, today

I call back my heart

To itself.

I will wait here

Patient as cedar

Until you return.

This time

I surrender.

Your Eyes To See Myself

There are too many dark places

which in their darkness

provide the fertile wisdom which gives birth to and contains,

dances with the light of clear seeing.

Needing each other, like the ocean needs the shore,

the day needs night, space needs form.

This love feeds the invisibles.

And the darkness pulls me towards it, to devour me in ecstasy.

I resist, yet know it is what offers me the remembering I have sought for so long.

It is toward this dark remembering I turn and face and dance.

My dark dance of remembering.

Will you watch me? How the edges of my mouth curve, how my feet caress the earth, how the fury in my gut sends flames through my hands?

I need your eyes to see myself.

Please don’t turn away.

Help me defeat the forgetting by dancing with it, embracing it, embodying it…

(be)Longing

To drape the longing casually

over the back of the kitchen chair

or leave it hanging on the hook (a little off center) on my bedroom door,

perhaps tuck it in the pocket of an unsuspecting stranger

or stuff it under my grandmother's Persian rug.

but to make of it a holy offering

adorned with wildflowers and honey,

turquoise and tobacco

delicious in its beauty.

This is the code of the stars

and the task to which I am committed.

and you (I have put a sprig behind your ear)

drenching me,

quenching my thirst

with the sweet rain of tender

love.