The River is Today Becomes Yesterday Becomes Tomorrow
The sun bathed my crown
throughout this forgotten sanctuary visit.
Even when I dropped my bones on the tree-lined riverbed
remembered
shed layers
submerged my atoms
so that a Baby swam inside a Body that swam
inside a melted glacial estuary
coddled and swaddled
by this volcanic stream-cocoon.
Even as I dreamed
and when I woke
from the remembrance,
solar flares slipping between lids.
And as I gathered the energy to collect cottonwood buds
fallen and offered and delivered
from swelling tides and currents.
These pods pile upon each other
one of so many collections I have acquired.
But the furthest away is Memories and I don’t want to talk any more about those.
I hold tightly now to the experience of the earth’s support
Am I awake and what have I missed?
I am gripping
I am releasing
Watching my three babies, now grown into enchanted warriors
wielding driftwood swords,
I remember their dependence on my own body’s nutrients.
I remember the moment we met
(when I learned that nothing is our own).
Each child having travelled through portals and lifetimes of ancestral space.
That time of vulnerability contrasts sharply with this landscape
of bold beasts grasping silken sand, determined,
then watching, surprised but relieved, as the wind carries the treasure to other worlds, right beneath their feet
For Mrs. Show, who is now Ms. Hubert, During a Pandemic
We are suspended in pause
Between the rote haze of Before
And the ambiguous After
The After an ancestral memory
I dreamed of as a girl
my fourth grade teacher invited us on a spontaneous walk up the road
20 full spirits skipped dawdled whispered held hands pulled pigtails kicked acorns felt left out sang songs
widows and homestayers peaked beyond their curtains in curiosity at this
Spectacle of Daydreams
We were invited:
“Lie down here”
“in this parched flaxen field?”
“Yes, lie down and let the grass border your bones so that you cannot receive or offer judgement”
I wondered if I was dying the most beautiful death or if I was being reborn which are two stories upon one page
My only memory from then is the sky holding me and the earth calling and that this was the day I became a poet.
And that the surrender was not a submission but a response to a call that is echoed today, in this alternate in-between time
The contagion is spreading stopping moments and it is the only thing that continues the rise and fall of this grateful breath
One Piece of Art Made on a Machine Built by a Slave
When truly free
we will release reasons
that we are less than enough
for our own heartbeat and our own desire
Imagine ourselves into the shape of tenderness
float our Selves
into the scent of intimacy
When truly liberated
the sense of self will be determined
by the sound of our own dreams.
I wouldn’t be part of your story
unless
I was the network of you that you defined and chose or that you cannot define nor choose
And unless you were un-less, not less
Worth and Value are the endless reflections
of a mirrored landscape
profiting off the lies your heart aches to hear
from your own voice
recorded by the darkness in the dark
Your mind is full of stories that were never for you
Your heart is covered in the mud of the pain of an unloved child
Your blood is viscous and slow
Because of the sediment
of the boxes
the identities
the careers that you should have pursued
And you fail to create your art because of the fear you accept- though rejecting it will bring you more suffering in some spaces and more relief in others. So you are paralyzed into numbing consumption as you think: what’s the difference, really?
But the difference is beauty and eternity and light and redemption
The difference is ancestry and connection and senseless stargazing
The difference is a gift to the earth and peace returned
The difference is connecting a story
with a sound
with a breath
making music that fills a silence of the deepest grief
(though our only instrument is supplied by the Master)
So we close our eyes
breathe air into lungs, step into our own power
And watch as moonlit feet make their way on one pathway toward daylight
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