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Poetry
touch the sky
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"I 'tan't touch the sky!"
Tilly exclaimed as she jumped
up and down in the family room.
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Her little body barely lifting off the ground,
as she tried to reach.
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Chris and I laughed and she grew frustrated,
as if we weren't doing enough to help
her reach those heights,
or even think it possible.
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As I write it now,
it feels like a metaphor,
but maybe she's right to be mad.
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I want to help you touch the sky little girl,
lift you up,
support and cheer for you.
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I will never laugh at you for reaching,
because, without reaching,
you never know
if it can be touched.
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greybird
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Greybird, overcast, mostly cloudy with cottony skies, that descend into rain streaks, above the valley.
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The mountains loom behind the sheerness of the mist, aware of their presence and unknown vastness.
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Where the buffalo roam, sagebrush, prairie, homesteads and barns.
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Mormon Row lines the middle of nowhere and persists against the wind, snowdrifts and imposing civilization.
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Cottonwoods tell of the route of the river, giving landscape to the desolate.
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Wyoming winter, near its’ end, as Bluebirds flit from post to tree.
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Snow flurries suggest spring is at bay, the diminishing drifts tells us it is not far away.
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Life continues its cycle, even when you want it to cease.
Growth through loss seems counterproductive.
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But as one cuts back a tree, plant or flower, each springs forth new buds, in new directions, taking shape through experience.
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As the sky envelopes the peaks to the west I can only hope they will reemerge from the darkness of today, into the light of tomorrow.
pennies in the sun
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“I like to jump around that penny! It is so shiny in the sun.”
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The copper gleamed and flipped from heads to tails on the backyard trampoline.
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We jumped and laughed as we avoided the one cent toy.
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We can jump into the dark, until the neighbors get annoyed with our laughter.
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Sit down and talk with me about little girl thoughts and dreams.
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You don’t need that big pink plastic princess palace,
we should trade it for that penny on a trampoline in the afternoon sun.
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Your Zen beauty amazes me. At six years old, “Crack the Buddha,” not the Egg.
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Can you jump into the lotus position and fall toward the earth, as if it were your fall from innocence?
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Big inquisitive brown eyes, longing for understanding and control of her environment, but having none.
amokuru: what’s the news?
“Who’s Rwanda?”
“Why should I care?”
She is dying,
her scars are still there.
Difference caused,
by Colonial Crown,
banana jungles,
nation up-side-down.
Lake Kivu explodes,
like political tensions,
Hutu…Tutsi
news didn’t mention.
Kibuye graveyards,
church, school, home;
this is hell
internationally condoned.
Her mountains, tainted,
the rivers ran red,
baby left crying,
900,000 dead.
sleepy continental drift
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Drifting farther away,
Two continents pushed apart,
By bodies our love created,
In the very bed, they came to be.
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Rifts, mountains, valleys.
We roll to the edges,
As the space between increases.
Further isolated,
Too hot,
Too cold,
Extremes are never in the middle.
Our babies dream peacefully with us,
Their tiny bodies starfish and kick.
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They snuggle, we can’t.
They sleep, we can’t.
They breathe; faces together,
We can’t.
terwilliger twilight
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Does your openness to the female form stretch to the marks my babies left on my belly?
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Tight tummy nymphs bathe in the deep wood,
the underbrush now clear
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The age of the forest gone,
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as the fires burned through the past
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Warm pools ascend the river bed;
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warmish, warmer, warmest and hot
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Young women share their perfection
with the woods as we soak,
Life scars a body,
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age is marked in lines,
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Would you be comfortable seeing your future in the pool below?
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Brush thick,
grown in,
grown up
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st. maries spontaneous confession
I should tell you something I haven’t told before, about a time when I was young and rebellious.
In a town, outside of town we decided to take what wasn’t ours, to get to a place we had never been.
Along the banks of the Bennewah, we broke into the Country Club and stole their Crown.
We walked with the moonlight, up the dirt road, to the familiar field where the baptism in the Royal waters commenced.
Ponderosa’s, lilacs, lilies, the smell of rain in the Cooley. The Flying D, North of Rocky Point.
Terrible was the taste of the Kool-Aid and Crown, but it took us to that place of initiation.
Under the stars of an Idaho sky we drank… we drank until we fell down from dancing in the alfalfa.
We heard the deer come quietly out of the forest, to take the sprouts that were fresh.
Their steps were felt as much as they were heard; as they grazed the virginal foliage.
Once we had drank all of our potion, we laid there under it’s spell; breathing the cool summer air.
We spoke of times past, we spoke of the present, until we got to now.
We wondered why it had taken so long to get to where we were then.
If I could go back to the days of youth and rebellion, I would walk up that dirt road again.
I would dance under the moonlight, listen to the deer in the alfalfa, sip a sip of our potion, and linger with you there.
monarch's mexican migration
Flutter by, butterfly
in a lackadaisical manner.
A Monarchs gold
and a lilacs lavender
and one bright blue
like a summer
tank top,
What makes the butterfly
more beautiful than
a moth?
Tell me about your travels,
from flower to stream;
grace my shoulder with your
presence.
Your wings tell secrets of
symmetry and flight.
Iris, velvet, Mexican migration.
