You come to me
with tears in your heart
holes and rips in the shape
of all the orphaned stories
that are lost to you
a song that is scratched
in a skipping loop
jumbled poetics
searching for their meaning

Your eyes ask
if I can sit in suffering
not just any suffering
your suffering
your personal battle wounds
raw and bleeding
if I can hear your pain
without flinching
without running
if your despair
is as safe with me 
as your joy.

You say you feel small
unworthy of your own integrity
of your own shine

My dear one, I see you
in all your disjoint beauty
in all the ways your pieces fit
even the ones that have not yet
found their way home.
You are so much more
than a catalog of experiences.
You are a piece of art
as complex as you are moving
unique and powerful
in the courage of your vulnerability

I will sit with you
as you heal from within
for I am not an answer
but a bound space
holding your unsafe truths secure
I am not an answer
but a question
patiently opening your locked doors
I am not an answer
but a mirror
reflecting your story, 
witnessing your pain
I am not an end, merely the means
with eyes that see you,
with ears that hear you
with a heart that weaves
all your wayward pieces 
into a cohesive whole

We sit, staggered
Words with edges
The pen-cut of written history
Dove-tailed justification
Exalted as legacy building.

While beneath the ground
Of this once prairire nursery
Lay the bones and rot
Of so many broken promises.

The system that raised me
Did not have a language
For the relationality of wonder
How then do I express how
wrong it feels to see value
as only an economic proposition?

It lives beyond these words
Beyond the signs on lawns that
name this Settled space
as something that lasts. 

It lives in the space
beyond this language, this story 
In a millennia of thundering hooves
rumbling in my chest
In the slow, stone-song of glacier remnants
steadying my breath
In rippling remembrance of wind-borne seeds
tap rooting downwards

This is what endures. 
Land. River. Sky. 
And all the relationships
carried within. 

 

I am the river dream of my ancestors
The downstream living of so many choices
So much circumstance

For what is it to dream but to envision
A future where you children's children
Never know the gnawing hunger of want
Never know the sound of bombs dropping
Never know the song of despair

Their stories live int he space between my cells
Invisible hopes that flow through
Blue-eyed tributaries of father tongues, mother tongues
Babbling rapids of generations moving
Shaping, changing, the landscapes
Of need that carry them onwards

The shoreline is long
Knots upon knots of this migration umbilicus
Palm prints holding the sweat and tears
Of each waypoint
I can only follow so far upstream
Before the imprints obscure in the floods of time

The headwaters are so far beyond
The sightlines of memory

I ask myself: 
What secrets does my blood carry?
What home do my bones remember?
What language is my longing?
What land belonging can be claimed
By a river ever flowing?

Exhale. Time slows
to the pace of remembrance and anticipation. 
A circle around Kokum's scarf
of intersecting resonance.
Energy flows.
A stone gathering stories
warmed as it passes
hand to hand
heart to heart
The beating drum
of so many ancestral dreams
spiraling into the moment. 
Threads connecting past to future
Navel lessons, umbilical
tethering to place
To our passage into and beyond
the tingling liminal
space of shared
sacred breath.

metoo, you whisper
all these years later
from beneath
the crushing weight
of a mythos
constructed
from the storm god
privilege
of boys will be boys
bad behaviour

You are so much
more than the
diminishing names
they call you
behind the safe
pages of white
male history
So much more than
the cold titles
bestowed, as empty
as your marriage bed.

floating weightless
on the smooth glide
of vacation days
I move to the edge
remnant heat radiating
from sun-soaked pavers
while I hold the warmth
of Spanish laughter
as a prayer
until the mango pulp sun
is swallowed into
the Western sea

My son graduates today
And a classmate of his died yesterday
I am told it was a spot
The young went to test their mettle
Leaping, wild-armed off
To taste freedom in 
Their metal courage

This is not the rite of passage 
They thought they would have
Celebration heavy with loss
Making sense of what doesn't

I stand downstream
Knowing his blood 
Mingles with the water
Knowing the rivers of tears
His parents will cry
Knowing I will let mine fall
Even as I dry them
To drive my son to the stage

How can anyone make sense of that?

Today they will learn
Lessons not taught in any classroom
The cost of love
The frailty of life
And the river flowing ever onwards.

The time of holding tight is over
This held breath, a cage
Of constricted ribs and stasis

Your secrets are your own
Hidden beneath old layers
Of childhood debris 
Suffocated and suffocating

I can no longer search for them
Dive into the tangled nets
And rusted memories
Claw my way through muck
Hoping to find that one key

I have been under too long
Breath held until my muscles
Forgot that they are tides
Meant to move endlessly 
Expand. Retreat. 

I spit your dirt out of my mouth
Gulping, I breathe in
Fill my stale lungs 
With movement and song
Work at breathing
Until it is no longer 
My habit to hold. And wait. 

Now, I will ask myself: 
Is there space for my breath?  
Is there space for my voice?
Is there space for truth?
Is there space for beauty?
Is there space for flow?

And never give away my airspace again. 

A poem of prayer

So much of work 
Has been heads down
Focus
On all the minutia
Built up 
To mechanize
A routined output

I see this
Even as I know
It will all crumble
Into the dust 
Of obscurity
As all things do.

Maybe the real
Work of my life
Has been to 
Slow into stillness.
To befriend death
Sit with her
On the bench
Beside the river.

Her laugh
Light dancing on small waves.

Her joy
Gulls swooping in a crystal sky

Her patience
Seasons pulled on solar tides.

Her delight
Fingers plunged deeply
Into the rich loam
Beneath the pine tree
Nourishing from
The decayed work
Of all this living

This has to be
What prayer is

Not knowing. 

Coming to the end
With the sweet taste 
Of love dripping down 
My chin
Eyes full of stars
And wonder
While my body 
Slowly releases
All its earthly striving

Meeting my cherished
Friend
Disrobe myself
Of all the certainties
That didn’t really fit 
Anyway
Free to open
Each hidden doorway
Within her cryptic smile. 

dear friend
you have waited so long
for me to hear the call
of home.

a sweet singular note
steady low beneath
high-pitched tremolos of worth
beyond all those songs
not in my key
named “you don't belong”. 

yes, finally, as dusk
lays like fine dust
along the long lane
i arrive at your doorstep
weary and worn
through all my threadbare excuses
out of tune and step
 

i come, unsure of my welcome
gone so long
craving different
as though it were better
than the tenderness
of your patient embrace

the door opens
we meld into each other
a resonant wholeness that lights
all the empty windows
inside

a song that sings: I belong to myself.