The Field That Prays



Prayer weaves its colorful strands
As we wander around the field
Inside the circle we cast in awe
Of the center where nothing resides.

We imagine our souls go there

A Day is Coming


A day is coming
in which misery will end.
A day is coming
in which poverty
will open bank accounts
in every nation.
A day is coming.

Ovid in Tears


Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. “In the cities,” he said,
“there are places walled off where...

Bearing Witness

Sometimes we are asked to stop and bear witness:
this, the elephants say to me in dreams
as they thunder through the passageways
of my heart, disappearing
into a blaze of...

Anthropocene

Even the word feels claustrophobic
Like endless lines and crowds
Of one color only. A species

Alone without context.
How lonely we have made
Ourselves, how poor.

Earthseed


There is no end
To what a living world
Will demand of you.



When apparent stability disintegrates,

Bullet Points

I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trash bag, and if I do,
I promise you, I will not do it
In a...

Green Apples

In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
To the back porch
And slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
Telling me something:...

A Prayer for the Post Office


This is a non-partisan prayer
about something as mundane as mail,
as gentle as the swish of a letter
falling to the floor by the door.
This is a prayer
for...

Some Girls


Some girls can’t help it; they are lit sparklers,
hot-blooded, half naked in the depths of winter,
tagging moving trains with the bright insignia of their
fury.
I’ve seen...

Returning to Kindness


I am returning to kindness
a place where I am strong in my softness
I will start by kissing all of my scars
and washing them in rain
collecting dust from long journeys...

Kindness


Before you know what kindness really is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCkjSUb7K5o
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What...

Letter to My Great-Grandchildren


Dear Chance and Aurora,


Maybe your grandparents
told you about this, maybe not.
When they were a young couple
raising your mom & dad

Ashes Among the Remains


My father responded
Just throw them away
I did not nor did I cast them into
ocean or bay where we’d fished
flounder and fluke nor strew them
over the golf courses...

What We Packed at 3 A.M.



The dog

the drugs


The cash

The Inheritance


around the table
each taking a turn
they described how everything was lost
when the fire roared through


speaking last, the 74 year old grandmother ...

The Cure At Troy


Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

If, On Account Of The Political Situation




If, on account of the political situation,


there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and men

A Woman Speaks


Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the...

To Susan B. Anthony on her eightieth birthday






To Susan B. Anthony
on her eightieth birthday
February 15, 1900

Waking


Get up from your bed,
go out from your house,
follow the path you know so well,
so well that you now see nothing
and hear nothing
unless something can cry loudly to you ,
and for...

2020 Walk to Salt Water

When they go low, we go high. Michele Obama
How low can you go? Chubby Checker

I.
A spring-loaded clip
unchains the first gate.
Our path heads for
a grey...

The News

The big country beat the little country up
like a schoolyard bully,
so an even bigger country stepped in
and knocked it on its ass to make it nice,
which reminds me of my Uncle Bob’s...

Initiation Song from the Finders' Lodge


Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes....

We Have Come to Be Danced


We have come to be danced
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLzsaEwZ9tY&t=34s
not the pretty dance
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
but the claw our way...

Two Suns In The Sunset


In my rear-view mirror the sun is going down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyzfHmPJqM4
Sinking behind bridges in the road
I think of all the good things
That we have...

Sorrow Song

for the eyes of the children,
the last to melt,
the last to vaporize,
for the lingering
eyes of the children, staring,
the eyes of the children of
buchenwald,
of viet nam and...

Ode to the Joyful Ones




Shield your joyful ones.
—from an Anglican prayer


That they walk, even stumble, among us is reason

San Gregorio Sands


the last sweet drops of the tangerine sun
trickle down, and the surf is tangerine foam
San Gregorio sands are honey and gold
and the fog is waiting till we've gone on home...

To World War Two


Early on you introduced me to young women in bars
You were large, and with a large hand
You presented them in different cities,
Made me in San Luis Obispo, drunk
On French...

Here for Life

(Vandenberg Air Force Base, January 1983;
first blockade of the MX Missile test)


I am here —
I wear the old-ones’ jade —
it’s life, they said & precious,
turquoise I’ve...

How I Discovered Poetry


It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I...

At the Bomb Testing Site


At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.


It...

Those of us who live in safely Democratic districts can have an impact by working with groups like Flip The West (www.Flipthewest.com) and Vote Forward (https://votefwd.org/) to write postcards,...

A Cry From Down The Rabbit Hole In The Time Of The Pandemic

I have gone
down the rabbit hole
chasing a bright
promise of information,
which I believed to be
the quick tail of elusive truth,...

Drawings By Children




1


The sun may be visible or not
(it may be behind you,

In the Eighties We Did the Wop




If you end your crusades for the great race,


then I will end my reenactments of flying,

Irony


France forbid burkhas in its elegant cities,
Americans persecuted those with covered faces


Our President forbid the entry of those people into our country
Schools/universities made...

Poetry At The End Of The World


Indigenous peoples do not believe the world is ending.


The world is changing, they say.


Even before the scientists named climate change

When I Am Among The Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would...

Berry

Figural lugers rove-ovalling over ever dagger-doomed time-bend.
Sectioned seconds severed slightly, silently.
Space-slivers tomb-riddled busily biding dial-driven dome-dance, endemerail....

I appreciate all them for stepping up in these difficult times!

For John Lewis


In an age of outrage there is love.
In an age of fear there is love.
In an age of unspeakable grief and loss there is love.


Gratitude remains intact.
But we must act.

If Only…..




If only we had all worn masks…
If only every human had good medical coverage….
If only our nursing homes were safe….
If only every person listened to scientists and medical...

Dear spiritual friends,

A few important talking points by Jason Hine:

Fictional conspiracy theories such as Qanon, and conspiracy theories about the imaginary "deep state" are cooked up by...

On Breathing


I held mine, at a cash point
by the police station
when I saw her kneel to speak
on his level, a mother telling
her not yet three year old son you don’t
need to be scared,...

Huck




Where did you go my little one?
Your puppy paws and milky breath,
brown, spotted fur
with the eyes of Mary Oliver

Weather


On a scrap of paper in the archive is written

I have forgotten my umbrella. Turns out

in a pandemic everyone, not just the philosopher,

is without. We scramble in the drought of...

Help Me, Love Poem


Help me, love poem, rise up from the broken glass,
The time to sing has come.
Help me, love poem, to reestablish integrity,
And to sing again about pain.


The world...

You Reading This, Be Ready


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...