The Two Rivers

We bring out joy
at the saddest times
to fuel buoyancy and life;
for joy does not contradict
sorrow,
both arising from the
wellspring
of free-flowing
emotion.

Raining Cherokee

Shock vacuumed up the years
into its tornado,
dropping them back from the sky
piece by piece
decades later ...
I, the gangly 1960s girl
with a space between her two buck teeth,
long unrecognizable
after braces and four teeth pulled for them,
teeth which, like others still surviving,
might also have borne traces of
American Indian heritage,
advised to me as Cherokee.

 

[Todd Rundgren, below, resembles the younger me -- and I do so love this song.]

The Roeboat That Sank a Nation

Moment of joy,
eclipsed;
slaughter of the innocents
real now --
titanic.
No room, no time
for victory.
Bow heads.
Press on.

Broken Kitchen

When life slows down to one pinpoint at a time,
you notice the buds, the blooms, the tendrils --
your world writ big by God's life force.
And that is all that matters.
When you are no longer useful
except to love,
you weep as you rejoice
in still being alive.
Run, body and soul, to the
embrace
of all that is innocent and peaceful --
the only worthwhile and loving
place to run.

May Leaves

If the wind would just stop
blowing this way and that
in random indifference,
gusts breathing out
the forgotten,
rushing to leave them
behind.

A Song of Hope (Singing with my son)

 

CC134 · All That Is Hidden - by Bernadette Farrell (cover version)

Becoming

Freedom
is an inside thing;
to love,
a joyful choice.
To choose to give, to choose to forgive:
the most meaningful freedom there is,
as one's own heart is sculpted
by its strengthening of another's.