Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Right Here

2/26/2023

- In gratitude to K & G

Stop moving. Stand in
one place – this place.
Breathe slowly; in, then out. Repeat.

Repeat again. Let your
shoulders sink and relax. Unclench
your jaw; slowly close your eyes.

Listen for your heartbeat; really
listen. Feel it pulse in
your fingertips.

Lessen expectations. Under-do all your
efforts. Requisition the time
for your soul

to catch up. Lean
into the wind; feel it
like a tree and test the ground.

Learn to trust the resilience.
It would be treason
to move quickly – left or right –

from this place. It is alright to be exactly
what you are, who you are, where you are.
Right here, right now.

- Dane Anthony

The Goddess of Reality (excerpt)

1/15/2023

Lelihanah: She who Licks up and Devours the World
the eternal Goddess, eternally shines in fullness, containing all things
Painting by Michael Zieve
https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/michael-zieve

Let it be known—I worship the Goddess of Reality

The one with tangled hair where insects nest,
the one with blood soaked thighs,
The one who crushes my concepts with her razor teeth
and spits my mind into the wind

She shakes her belly to the beat of primordial passion
and feasts on the meat of ignorance

She wanders in the garden with a basket woven with the chaos of stars
She is savoring every petal and thorn
while casting the seeds of manifestation
without rhyme or reason

She is innocent and free
and her eyes are the sound of laughter
She can not be contained or rationalized
and she will not conform to my ideas
of how reality should be

She stomps to the beat and throws her hips
She is the prowl of the panther
and the leaping deer of supreme delight
She is pure in heart and the darkness of thunder

Her ruthlessness is the compassion
that severs my arrogance
and undoes my separation
so that I may know her deeply
and drink in her wild radiance.

With all that I am
I devote myself to her insane beauty.

When I am humble and true
She comes to me: “Dance! Why aren’t you dancing?!”

She will not be tamed
yet she is the Grace that opens up
the blessed wound of living

Let it be known—I love Her
this feral beast Woman
the one who is drenched in the Nectar of Love.

I dance with her
because there is
nothing left
to do.

- Maya Luna

Naked Athena
protesters vs. the military
July 18, 2020, Portland, OR
www.adn.com

October

10/16/2022

I used to think the land
had something to say to us,
back when wildflowers
would come right up to your hand
as if they were tame.

Sooner or later, I thought,
the wind would begin to make sense
if I listened hard
and took notes religiously.
That was spring.

Now I’m not so sure:
the cloudless sky has a flat affect
and the fields plowed down after harvest
seem so expressionless,
keeping their own counsel.

This afternoon, nut tree leaves
blow across them
as if autumn had written us a long letter,
changed its mind,
and tore it into little scraps.

- Don Thompson

A Glint

9/4/2022

Photo by Eva Seidenfaden

I watched a glint of morning sunlight
climbing a thread of spider's silk
in a gentle breeze. It shinnied up
from the tip of a dewy stalk of grass
to an overhanging branch, then
disappeared into the leaves. But soon
another followed, and then another,
glint after glint, and though they made
no sound, what I could see was music,
not melody but one clear, shining note
plucked over and over, as if the sun
were tuning the day, then handing it
to me so I could be the one to play it.

- Ted Kooser

Reverie in Open Air

8/14/2022

Photograph by Nihar Ranjan Adak

I acknowledge my status as a stranger:
Inappropriate clothes, odd habits
Out of sync with wasp and wren.
I admit I don’t know how
To sit still or move without purpose.
I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.

But this lawn has been leveled for looking,
So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green.
Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids?
My feet are the primitives here.
As for the rest—ah, the air now
Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing
But news of a breeze.

- Rita Dove

At the Window

7/24/2022

I was at the window
when a fly near the latch
was on its back spinning--
legs furious, going nowhere.

I thought to swat it
but something in its struggle
was too much my own.

It kept spinning and began to tire.
Without moving closer, I exhaled
steadily, my breath a sudden wind
and the fly found its legs,
rubbed its face
and flew away.

I continued to stare at the latch
hoping that someday, the breath
of something incomprehensible
would right me and
enable me to fly.

- Mark Nepo

Personal

6/12/2022

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal--

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain--
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

- Tony Hoagland

You Reading This, Be Ready

5/15/2022

Photograph by Jennifer Martin

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along the shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life --

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

- William Stafford

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

Today

3/27/2022

Frozen Soap Bubbles
Photo by Angela Kelly

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

- Billy Collins

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