eyes ears merge with nose and tongue
sadhana on yoga mat becomes a Healing Hat
larks fly through open pane, hark the sparks
rockery abbatial austere watching with autonomy
grass blades gigue in spring’s spritely breeze
long to lavani across sky, teach rootedness keen
_______________________
he sits in his wheelchair
waiting
her visit
to ease his world of rubble
to snap shut a sense of aimless
in a nursing home of minimized living
its weariness that closes in like shutters
she bends to greet him
her touch a force that shapes his joy
shedding his decline like shaking off soot
two decades together till a swirling tempest rained sorrow
an accident, gut retching moment
swept aside the bliss of living
one couple, hands held
to unfasten latches of closure
to comfort them, re-imagining what's familiar
a vibrant rootedness
unbroken, he knows the glow from her kiss
crumbling gloom
when he hears her approach
the clack of her heels
like chimes in wind
Poem composed November 14, 2021
Atheism,
without patriarchal narcissism
but more matriarchally cooperative,
polyculturally impassioned,
is not necessarily multiculturally anti-theistic.
Theistic
need not be an abbreviation for monotheistic rootedness,
but could remain androgynously agnostic
to include more widely pan-theistic
and more deeply suggest poly-theistic healthy wealth
nondualistic his/her-storied outcomes
strongly felt
and more flowingly thought
transparently and vulnerably outside
our own repressed RightMinds.
A golden day, my mother said.
She had taken my father (who was dying - in the final stages of metastatic lung cancer, his face swollen and disfigured from the medicines, his once thick head of hair long gone from the radiation, his sure-rootedness now reduced to an uneven, unsure, unbalanced, slow unsteady sort of halting rolling step) to a place in a woods where they could see the tinseled leaves glittering in the sun,
Hear them moving in the breeze,
Smell the woody, loamy aroma of decomposition underfoot.
It was near a river and so water could be seen in the near distance.
One of the last good days.
A goodbye to the life they had
Lived.
A golden day.
See the sun.
Feel it's warmth.
Feel the air.
Hear the insects, the birds,the crunching of the leaves.
Smell the freshness,the marshy fecund scents.
See it all.
Feel it all.
A golden day.
My body is made from fire
fire, flesh and blood
just like my mother who holds me
clay and earth and mud
My body is made from water
who flows and carries through
protecting, healing, easing
with ocean force and gentle dew
My spirit is made of sunshine
vision, heart and light
rising from rich, dark rootedness
into the world of sight
My spirit is made of ether
emerging from within
to reach the breath of consciousness
the connectedness of kin
When I lay my body down
in sacrifice, in birth
I offer myself to Creation
I return myself to Earth
But my spirit joins the many
moving freely through storm and dreams
to flow like balm, like smiles, like solace
to all earthborn beings
For now I am a seedbed
for all that spins and comes to be
as all that came before me
was for me when born a seed
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