Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.

Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.

The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children: 
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.

This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.

under the chiming bell
I learn to move as ghosts do
after thirty five years of belching
I finally qualify as a trophy
in the woods I am mostly small
~ insignificant ~
in love with nothing and no one
boredom is a kind of armor
capitalism no longer contagious
seeing with my own eyes
each raindrop ceasing to exist
still I fear birth as much as death
the non-consent of existence
will never be resolved in no lifetime
has anyone ever lived
through someone else’s ending
or just me?
so weird being allowed to enter
not as a servant
but as a guest
the crudeness of patronage
all those childhood prayers
wasted essentially
in the end I was not too beautiful for this
failed to be much of an exception at all
at least I can still dream
to possess the kind of face
often inscribed into archways
mid-scream like a gargoyle with nothing
better to do
the holy don’t need us
wretches of a different order
looking for someone or nothing
I was supposed to be staff
then everything changed
and it didn’t even matter I was born wrong
will someone tell someone who I am
will someone please please tell me

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.