Here are a few spontaneously-arising poems from these times. Feel free to share with attribution.
To Our Elders
When you turn off the news,
When you sit for a breath in the sunbeamed chair,
What is the stirring in your heart?
The memory that dances across your mind?
We’d love to hear.
We need to hear.
Not answers, nor certitude; not even a sense that all will be well. (We are not well.)
But a story, perhaps, of how time has lived you,
Pulled you into and out of the wilderness,
A memory of mystery unfurling,
A tale of mutuality amidst turmoil,
The saying or story that an elder once told you,
And that has tumbled through your being so many times
So as to grow smooth like a riverstone.
This is an invitation to take the riverstones from your pocket and put them on the community altar.
If you’ve never considered yourself an elder, this is the invitation to become one.
Not because we’re expecting perfect words of wisdom,
But because in this unraveling of the world, we are reweaving the village—
And you have a role to play.
Listen in, and know that we’re listening too.
Know that we’re seated in this circle together,
That we need you to stay,
And want to hear what you have to say.
March 20, 2020
"Zoomed Out" or "What To Do When Everyone You Know, Love, and Dream of a Better World With Is A One-Inch Talking Head In A Pixelated Box"
Praise their presence, grieve their absence.
Grow in your capacity to be touched by other faces, and to not touch your own.
Look someone directly in the eyes (they won’t know) and send them love and a prayer for the wellbeing of everyone they care about.
Try to wrap your mind around how they got here, in front of you.
If that doesn’t spark radical amazement, try to explain how *you* got here, and who “you” is…
Wiggle your toes and watch the freshly budding tree rustle outside your window.
Envision that tree occupying one of the squares on the screen; ask what they would like to contribute to the conversation.
Take your dreams off of mute and drop your spells in the chat box.
Then, dazed by days online, unblock the gridlock with a tech Sabbath—
Recover three dimensions, reach for a fourth.
And remember, we’ll be back at the bonfire before long;
Gather your poetry, prepare your song.
March 27, 2020
Vows
Life has taken vows;
To evolve continuously and creatively,
To waste nothing,
To make more life more possible.
Either we will take those vows, too,
Or they will take us.
April 3, 2020
*Star News*
At last, a worthy question.
Uninterested in the concerns of the grown-up world, your friend interrupts the chatter, squints at you, points up at the night sky, and asks:
“What’s your star news?”
Your heart takes a quarter turn and bows with reverence to the four year-old who posed the question.
Your head tilts up toward the celestial dance and you scan the expanse of your mind for an answer.
Your mastery of today’s news headlines offers you nothing of use now.
Neither astronomer nor astrologist, you’re not practiced at translating ancient flickering into star news. Another art lost to the void of assimilation, materialism, convenience.
But if ever there was a time to peer into the darkness with an imaginative eye it is now.
Your friend waits patiently.
“What’s your star news?”
You wonder how the early astronomers found their constellations. Did they stay up all night sketching different possibilities, debating with friends about how to connect the dots, finally choosing one storyline over another?
Amidst the dazzling uncertainty of this moment there are a thousand shapes we might draw from the shards of light in the dark.
A broken angel wing?
A phoenix?
A dancing skeleton?
The shape we see becomes the story we tell.
The story we tell becomes the life we live.
The life we live becomes our star news.
“Perhaps there’s a new constellation taking shape” you finally respond. “And it’s going to take all of us to see what it is.”
Your friend’s eyes widen. She smiles briefly, then swiftly returns to a quizzical, or maybe skeptical, squint.
Your response is just sufficient or insufficient enough for her to let you off the hook and pose her question to the next person standing around the fire:
“What’s your star news?”
The question lingers in your being for days and weeks after. An answer feels deceptively close and distant.
For now, all you know is that a new constellation is coming into focus—and that it’s going to take some long, patient nights of looking to fully see.
April 11, 2020
Underlying Conditions
An incomplete list:
Stolen Land
Broken Treaties
Stolen Lives
Systemic Racism
Corporate Greed
White Supremacy
Extreme Inequality
Ecological Devastation
War Economy
Cultural Erasure
Patriarchy
Xenophobia
Etc…
“If you have one or more underlying conditions, it makes it more challenging to fight off a virus like this,” says the doctor on the news.
When it comes to dis-ease, no wonder it’s America First.
When it comes to healing, it’s no secret what we need.
Remedies abound.
Will we find the will?
April 18, 2020
Tubes from rolls of toilet paper used in my home during almost one year of pandemic quarantine.
Forty-Seven Rolls
One year of unraveling,
of tearing away at the
thin, but convincing, premises
that prop up our preposterous
arrangement—
of getting to the core, which is
itself a portal.
Each undoing an invitation
to come home, become home.
Each beginning a reminder of how
much still there is to strip away.
One year of shit to compost—
sorting, turning, layering, and gifting to time.
A marvel, how much we consume,
and how little we need;
how busied we become to fuel the machine,
and our own frenzied minds;
how much life is still possible,
despite our furious attempts to
subdue it;
how much further we still must fall to
touch ground.
Forty-seven rolls: tempting to burn, yes.
Or, perhaps,
turn into a home for pollinators,
whose praise for existence comes so easily,
and whose existence gives us a chance yet at metamorphosis.
Feb. 24, 2021