home by the river path

knee deep in nettles

i stand

brim full

with silence and sunlight.

an ancient self awakens

beneath the unmarked sky

spacious as the blue above

untrammelled by plane trails.

an eldritch swan call

harrows my heart

with kinship,

and i am one with the swan

the nettles thickly green

the silver sliver moon

the birches whispering in wind

the otter twisting in the water

the badger sleepy in her sett.

i think---no, i know---

we were finer when fewer

closer to heaven 

when it had no names.

the only true pilgrimage

is looking for home

where we left it.

zero card

It isn't what we thought it would be,
this world we have slipped into
like a coma...

Where even the elders are not so wise
and childhood has little innocence
and animals make ghost images
where they used to be.

Open a textbook and expect
blood to seep from the pages,
a litany of the dead and dispossessed,
the underbelly of Civilisation

Open a news app and expect
not to want your breakfast next
forgotten, the tea goes cold

Your daily dose of depression
rolls across the screen
scroll down, and see...

             This is the rising tide
             that will take all ships down---

Voting feels like shouting into the wind,
a million people jamming thumbs into
the holes in Civilisation,
staring at their phones
while storms and seas rise
behind the walls

Our children have not deserved it;
less capable and less prosperous than their parents
they will inherit promissory notes
and exist in the echo of things gone by

We made great beauty, at times,
but it is sinking like Venice,
proud poster child for all our
glittering, top-heavy, rotten at the base
Civilisation

Marching toward dystopia
with a case-full of patent nostrums
and duct tape and dreams
and bright screens of things to buy...

                But still
                I have not given up---

History is a long sad song
of things that rose and fell
We may fall in a slow unspooling
or a resounding crash of what was wrong,
and rise again

Wearing a patch-pied coat perhaps,
knapsack in hand,
striking out across a greening field
whistling up a dog,
or, dare I hope---a wolf---
to wander with us
on our way to that new world.

woman’s work

she changed her child’s body for a woman’s,

changing shape, echoing the moon’s dance with her blood,

a wild and wondrous thing.

is that not magic?

she walks into a room, without a word,

and men young and old look up, 

suddenly alert as startled bucks.

is that not magic?

she grew a new life under her ribs,

out of nothing, nearly

and rich milk to feed it, and it thrives.

is that not magic?

she soothes children and animals,

banishes sorrow and fear

with a touch and a murmur.

is that not magic?

she moves among the grass and trees, 

finding food, finding medicine.

is that not magic?

she brews and bakes and churns 

one thing into another

barley into beer, wheat into bread, cream into butter.

is that not magic?

she wraps wool about a weighted stick, drops and pulls, 

making thread to weave into warmth.

is that not magic?

she hears her household in the night hours

wakeful elders, hungry babies, amorous husbands,

and leaves her sleep and dreams to be with them.

is that not magic?

she dances, shimmying her hips, 

shaking her shoulders, swinging her hair,

and all of nature awakens.

is that not magic?

she takes a handful of this, a scattering of that, 

from the not-much of her pantry, cooking a daily feast.

is that not magic?

she knows that what she knows 

is worth all the world, though the world takes no notice,

and offers it anyway.

is that not magic?

contradictions

sometimes i think that we are wisest

where we know the least

strongest when we sink in grief

or rise in joyous sparks

most able when we cease to try

and simply lie unresisting in the stream

of all that is, 

just sitting with it in the quiet dark 

where we hatch our souls.

lunacy

i know why chained dogs howl at the moon

i turn my teeth on myself

i rend what is already tattered

rather than tear at the one who tears at me

how mysterious, the changeable and ever-cycling moon

how mysterious, that people can say they love,

and mean such different things

we make our chains by what we give or keep

i gave you all and freely

i made you all that mattered to me

if my lonely spirit sings in the dry spells,

if it sings to you of rain, of waxing full again,

it sings to the unhearing, incomprehensible moon

grammar lessons

past, present, future

there is a grammar to life---

you need to know how to conjugate

your hopes and memories,

how (and what) to decline,

what tense to use for the tensions

amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant

cogito, ergo sum.

(the sum is sometimes greater, sometimes less,

than the parts.)

past tense:

after my daughter was born,

i asked him

more than once---

come with me, i said,

please, come with me

on this journey i cannot help but take

because it is my life.

present tense:

i sit at the window

watching cold rain

slide down the glass,

confronting all the ways in which

i've failed,

fighting the temptation

to keep doing nothing.

future tense:

i want to take these broken pieces

that were my life

shake them up and let them fall,

glittering and turning

and watch them land,

to read a pattern into random shards

and hope they make some new whole.

grow

who among us is not

a girl interrupted,

a woman spinning wildly

as she tries to find her center

we face our challenges

as best we may

long weeping nights

and long enduring days

we spin, we fall,

we pick up, pack up, and move on

we bravely enter and re-enter

our own unknown

we turn aside from fears

and stubbornly we say

we will care for all,

no one excepted

not even ourselves

time to plant the tears.