​It’s autumn, and we’re getting rid
of books, getting ready to retire,
to move some place smaller, more
manageable. We’re living in reverse,
age-proofing the new house, nothing
on the floors to trip over, no hindrances
to the slowed mechanisms of our bodies,
a small table for two. Our world is
shrinking, our closets mostly empty,
gone the tight skirts and dancing shoes,
the bells and whistles. Now, when
someone comes to visit and admires
our complete works of Shakespeare,
the hawk feather in the open dictionary,
the iron angel on a shelf, we say
take them. This is the most important
time of all, the age of divestment,
knowing what we leave behind is
like the fragrance of blossoming trees
that grows stronger after
you’ve passed them, breathing
them in for a moment before
breathing them out. An ordinary
Tuesday when one of you says
I dare you, and the other one
just laughs.

​    - by Dorianne Laux

Come,
sit a while
in the seat by the window--
near the birds, who have shaken off
their dreams and opened themselves
to this never-to-be-again day.

​Today we won’t be asked
to bumble along the beaten byways.
For Uncertainty has come;
she is our unexpected houseguest.
Put on the water, set out the homemade jam.

Uncertainty will listen with us
as our bagels pop
from the toaster’s dark mouth.
As the teakettle wobbles
on her deep blue flame
and the coffee grounds weep
their pungent bittersweet sobs. 

The truth, of course, is
that although she’s Mystery’s Child
with no history and no proper name--
she has always been with us.

If you wake in the night,
you can hear her hum as she busily
prepares our day. She is the one
who wakes us each morning,
to drizzle new questions
into our imagination, new stories,
new colors and light.

The wind is her breath.
Her body is the water
we bathe in and drink.

Uncertainty, with the soul of a gypsy,
knows the unpaved roads
to gratitude by heart.
She is our barefoot dancer
come to show us a multitude
of ways to bless the ground.

But of certain things--
like tomorrow--
she knows nothing,
and because of this,
her love knows no bounds. 

Come close now…
she waits, like she always has,
to give all she has--
a love for each of us,
as silver as tomorrow.

​    - Prartho Sereno

​The Calling

In third grade I kept raising my hand
desperate to be called on
even though I had no idea what

the answer to the question was.
I only knew that to be called on
was the best thing. And isn't that still

the best thing--to be called on?
And all the days of uncertainty
and the lonely nights, the ends

of all the ropes, the whole house
of cards collapsed, now become
an answer to any question

that life conceives--like how the purpling
of dusk lingers between branches
after the sun sets, or whether it's better

to sit on the soil or eat warm, crusted
bread. How lucky to be chosen to answer
for the chickadees who stay all winter,

the daffodils that bloom too early, or a gull
tattered on the shore, wings half-buried in sand
each of us a grain, hands held high,

called on to notice it all, and answer.


Speaking in Tongues

It's funny what you don't have
to worry about--last night, after
a few warm Spring weeks,
the mercury fell to the 40s,
but today the corn shoots
poked their rolled green tongues
out of the garden soil. And while
the dryer we bought was a lemon
and in principle a ripoff, it still
works well enough. Which is
to say that, while my small
reactive and conditioned self is still,
more often than not, in the way,
the love that is living me and you
and the corn and the dryer--
the whole mercurial mystery
of it all--is already there, just
waiting to poke through the cold,
the unjust, the broken-down
garden soil of us with its playful,
green, giving and forgiving tongue.


Sky Writing

The wind dictates a memo,
fleet and legible, brailled
on the surface of the pond,
read by lilies and water shield,
telegraphed through stem, root, mud,
into the dreams of a turtle.

The message is clear and a little forlorn--
don't forget me, dear--I miss
the way we touched, moist and close
in summer. The pond itself is never lonely,
shows its moods skin to sky, sequined
in sunlit shadows, its depths unsecret,

transparent, receptive to a fault.
Whatever stirs the mud--turtles
reborn to spring, worms that burrow--
the pond takes note, allows, embraces,
the way the eye holds the world,
the way you might love your enemy.


Death Was Gentle

I asked Death to be gentle and she was,
knowing how terrified I'd been of her.
She took me to the soil, the bright womb where
all life is born from dun decay and rust.

And then I knew the one I'd feared was Earth,
whose every fold and wrinkle I adored.,
whose creatures were all siblings of my birth
whose beauty fed me still as through a birth-cord.

And so, to have been made of Death herself,
to sojourn on my mother, as matter--
nature, with no need to be another--
rock returned to beautiful rock in death,

from one whose terror told him not to be,
now I'm at home in life, myself, and free.

​    - Chuck Madansky

​I grew up in a family that did not tell
the story. I am listening to it now:

Even the morning you see a robin
flattened on the street, you hear

another in a tree, the notes
they’ve taught each other, bird

before bird before we were born.
And elsewhere, the rusty bicycle

carries the doctor all the way
across an island. He arrives in time.

Somewhere his sister adds water
to the soup until payday. And

over the final hill in a Southwestern
desert, a gas station appears. No,

the grief has not forgotten my name,
but this morning I tied

my shoelaces. Outside I can force
a wave at every face who might

need it. We might
spin till we collapse, but we still

have a hub: Even at dusk,
the sun isn’t going anywhere.

We have lamps. The story insists
it just looks like there’s only

enough oil to last one night.

    - by Brad Aaron Modlin

Come closer.

This fire will all too soon
be ash.

I would tell you the story the moth knows
for making peace with the night.

The story tears have for making medicine
out of grief.

The story for eliciting the purr
in the belly of the tiger.

If you listen to your blood
you can hear the story of the sea
pulled by the moon
in the open sky
pouring the water of rivers
into your heart.

You can hear the aria
of the wind that the birds
know by heart

singing the story of your body
a hundred generations
in the making.

Come closer:

This is the story that will be yours
long after I have left this place.

​    - Madronna Holden

There will come a time when you know
you cannot be understood.
And you will open your hands,
curled fingers sliding into grace,
and you will let the wind blow away every seed
that wanted to be good.

You will know that to speak up,
to own your preferences, silliness, brilliance and delight,
it will cost you everything
you've known so far.

This is sure.

Take heart,
you are becoming real.

The goal is no longer to make certain the boat doesn't take on water
because you've rocked it a bit too much.
You are the ocean, for god's sake.

There will come a time when you know
the vines grown around your throat must be cut,
when you must unbind your pelvis and thighs
and unleash your wild no.

You will know that your hair cannot be 
compliant and well behaved,
a feral mane moving in waves,
straight lines denying the holy ruckus inside.

Nice no longer works.

What have you said yes to in this lifetime?
What is yours to be?

Great Mother holds your warm, round face in her hands
and says, "Free."
And you know it has always been true.

There will come a time when fear will be a too-small shoe
and being misunderstood
right-sized.
All your gold-plated judgments will fly away,
birds that fathom nothing of bad or wrong.

You will know that slow, deep and in
is the unsung path, the only way left after all the
trying to be shiny.

This will turn everything to tears or fire. Mostly both.

The womb of the oak is down.
Roots and soil, blood and bone.
There is no mountain, no method, no modality.

This is the slow gestation of Love.

    - Jessica Browning

​once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water every day

she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

a woman holding
a small god
​
    - Richard Vargas

Because after the snow and the rain
the redwing blackbird trills in the cattails
and the song of the inner life is born again.
And from out of our dark caves
we stumble and call to each other
wondering what has been transformed
in the winter months and who will now emerge.
We are like bears bounding
out of the mountain, slightly bewildered
blinking in the bright new light,
ravenous for the world.

​This is eros unleashed​--
the seduction of apple blossoms--
petals raining on wet fertile earth,
hummingbirds unzipping the cerulean sky,
the glint of streamflow and bare skin.
How the full moon pours Maylight
upon our upturned faces,
and the breezes carry the scent of longing
and melancholy, lilac and the spice
of all that is greening.

We have died a thousand times
and been reborn for this.
To lie back, even for a moment,
into the arms of the world--
to meet eros in every turn--
to be courted by you who stirs
the inner waters and tears apart
the old husks. Yes, you
who makes us want to eat fire
and lay down in every meadow.

We have been waiting for your arrival
and now you are here,
no longer a Stranger, but a Storm--
you, who strikes the bell of awakening,
so the whole body rings out
with Delight.

​    - Laura Weaver