Long Downriver Poems

Fear of Climate Success

If you're like me,
which probably already reduces the size of my captive audience
to Zero,

Regardless,
if we're like we used to be
when we were born
with all the potential integrity neurons
of the uniting universe,

Through childhood...

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I finally finished retiring four years ago,
a process that started in my mid-fifties
due to late adopting kids with special needs,
including needs for me to be home
to personally walk them on,
harness them in,
and wheel them back...

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I was tying up her second shoe
when the second coming came.

The first had been the night before
when the bus demons dropped her off
to say they might be back
but weren't exactly sure when,
while I tied up...

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He retired to his sanctuary
on the Eastern shore of the Thames River
three years ago,
an often frustrated permaculture organizer
for building cooperative social health
by creatively communicating climate wealth
growing ZeroZone positive multicultural tao-energy.

This proves reclusively frustrating
in large part...

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The river boils and burns
Churning the soil downriver
Silencing the calm quiver
Halting the anaesthetic shiver
This fissure in the earth was the sliver of hope in this dearth
A cool spring, the fuel to my being
The Sun has...

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I check my empty bank account
 And wonder how am I gonna make it.
 I look at those red numbers
 And think I can no longer take it.
 I have trouble breathing
 Because I am...

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The Senior Center was a beehive of active waiting
to die.

Bingo
but not ballroom dancing.

Knitting
but not garden expansions.

Physical therapy
but not yoga
and not chi gong,
much less mindful meditations
sung in four part harmony.

The new guy,
just growing into sixty-five,
asked them
How...

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The ravens swarm before me
above the railroad tracks
I walk
downriver pilgrim toward silent wilderness,
away from more civilized savagery,
pre-revolutionary, I fear,
as they chatter and clatter flap their wings
roosting and dry clatter bones stalking me,
inviting me to continue...

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I was young – no more than twenty
Just a child in the minds of most nations
Even back then, I believe I had plenty
There was hope and grace in my foundations

Even at that age, I knew...

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Winter survivors
open downstream
thawing toward cooperative green thrivers

Spring green economic
and democratic empowering,
multiculturing fertile resilience

On through summer climax
and then autumnal equinox 0-range
Transitions back to winter's more vaccinated closing

Closeted fear of losing
survivalist right brain terrified
by white privileged winter
punishing...

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Eroded,
undercut,
sagging for years beneath the weight
of a dead sycamore,
the bank gave way
when the lake was closed
and the dams opened up
during the winter overflow,
leaving the tree offshore,
hunkered down in the water,
half submerged,
its white branches groping the...

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Aldo Leopold recommended
to would be ecotherapists
that we deeply learn
to "think like a mountain"

At life summit and death ebbing
silent scales of health
becoming
and polyculturing wealth
being burned
and drowned
and starved
and dried out

For a monotheistic capital harvest Season
of winterish waiting

To...

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If downriver a conscience sliver should make me wonder
Why in the face of challenges I should blunder
Fearing to thrive into a hope giver, preferring to pull asunder

Pangs of conscience, veering away from sticking out my...

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My drinks enticing and sweet
On a chair in the middle of the street
My little floaters been dinged
Roiling waves the edges singed
The wood alive with roiling flame
Waters pulsing like a broiling brain
The cars flow downriver like...

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Upriver - a place where she goes to fetch water and firewood 
Hair is neatly decorated with a collection of cowries and coins 
Stretch marks that cover the entirety of 
her growing belly

Beautiful eyes -...

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Sitting on a hill with the sun in our eyes,
Blinded by the light, but no one really minds.
Enveloped in music,
Caressed by the grass,
Dreaming of our futures,
Reminiscing in our past.

One kid saw a cloud shift into...

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Somewhere downriver, among thrushes and the swallows,
Ducks in hidden hallows have silky, satin wings 
Among the reedy shallows, swim  ducks in hidden hollows
rest awhile where willows lean, and haloed twilight clings

Summer's been forsaken. ...

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You tried to lead me
	(surely)
by the hand
across the shallows
but we were both too drunk
and the stones too slick
so we slid stumbling and laughing,
falling toward each other
all the way across and upriver
	(rocks bruising our feet)
until we...

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During colder winters the river freezes over
A vast sheet of ice spreading shore to shore
While the traffic awaits March’s spring thaw,
Old boatmen share traditional waterway lore
And skaters, cautiously marking the depths,
Note where the ice is...

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Radically impacted from forming shadows
Moon on my back as i walk through the hallows
Picked apart, shifting dark, using rare powers
Don't let the internet waste all hours
Making that, Taking back, soil for flowers

Changing concerns with the...

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Warm holes
anticipating slick poles

Wet holes
embracing warm poles

Bipolar linear dark division
flowing downriver nurture valleys
Dipolar round visions
forming mountainous spiral hierarchies
naturally uprising

Ecofeminist journeys inward
and down-valleyed
Egofatherist conquests
growing outward
and up-rallied

Deep waiting 
vulnerable black holiness
before highest transparent
widely diverse 
best practice polarities

Wet...

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the only sound was the wind through the sage
it blew icy cold with a whistling rage
I zip my jacket but still I shiver
against the unknown and what floats downriver

I don't sleep and lay wide awake
gnawing...

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Never Downriver

My mind is in a “shiver”.
Thoughts are going here and thither.
My soul now starts to wither.
I can feel the serpent slither.
But I shall never dither
When it comes to my soul’s wither
I will shout, “Dear...

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