Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

O Sweet Spontaneous

4/24/2022

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

             fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

        beauty      how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
         (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

             thou answerest

them only with

                              spring)

- e.e. cummings

Love Song

4/17/2022

Paintings by Jessica Watts

I hear other names for You – The Inviolable One,
God, Allah, Wakantanka, Higher Power,
The Ineffable. But why bother,
when You call to me by no name at all and I come.

Neither of us have a word for each other
save Us.
And even that is nobody’s business
but Ours.

So let’s forget such partitions as names
and discuss this April day within,
which captures birds in flight
and all their eggs and songs
in one straight deed of liberation.

The mighty have fallen around this peace.
But let’s not get into that, when every moment
is roses, and the scent You give off tastes
in my nose like Now.
Like Forever. Like Now.

All I want from You is nothing.
Peace is a dance, after all.
Peace moves. Peace laughs.
And Peace’s discussion is boughs of trees,
light, carriages, actors at their bent,
bravery in and out of action,
for after all, what, what, what
in this world is possibly not roses?

- Bruce Moody

Betwixt and Between

4/10/2022

Vienna street art

Betwixt and between.
Not confused.
Conjuring a poem.
Sitting between
dawn and day,
health and illness,
the mundane and
the sacred.
But wait!
The mundane is also
the sacred,
is it not?

How do you
station yourself
in the middle
of the same thing?
The left hand and the right
are not separate entities
(though they are).
Betwixt and between them
are the body, the head, the legs.
We are positioned very securely
in the center of things,
and it is all of a piece.

Where am I going with this?
I suppose I am trying
to get comfortable with
living (and dying) all of it.
In the midst of being
betwixt and between
is exactly the place to be.
Don’t let it confound you.
Betwixt and between
is the practice ground.
Be welcome here.

- Maya Spector

Speaking Tree

4/3/2022

Photograph by Ken Kingsbury. Used with permission.

I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree.
—Sandra Cisneros

Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken--
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there--

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry--

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music--
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft--

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset--

I cannot walk through all realms--
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark--

What shall I do with all this heartache?

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway--
To the edge of the river of life, and drink--

I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:

Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge. . .

To drink deep what is undrinkable.

- Joy Harjo

O Sweet Spontaneous

Love Song

Betwixt and Between

Speaking Tree

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O Sweet Spontaneous

Love Song

Betwixt and Between

Speaking Tree

Archives

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