23 Exit 7

all night i dream of missing
the exit 7 pushing a baby in
his stroller i go backwards
humm at 62 my life consists
of caring for a one year old
and his 7 year old brother
holidays and week-ends
sweet boys their needs extreme
not like some species who
fend for themselves almost
at birth forever
they are our children and
we wish it to be so but still
that pull sometimes is a chain too
does it keep us from our place
in the world does it work to
distract us from our larger calling
or is it actually our deepest calling
it’s pretty obvious women are
needed to transform
this larger nest so i sit here
writing poetry for nothing
more than to seed the world
with words and ideas
and Sammy boy keeps me
close to the heart of the cosmos
keeps my feet and butt on the ground
of my being when  i dream of missing exit 7
i wonder if my life path has not yet been passed
numerology says # 8 is my place
still farther to go, back on the road with
our boys all our grands the girls the boys
of this world keeping us on our right path
inspite of some inborn need i have to exit

Sammy and Big Brother Ben

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22–All Day I Pray

all day i pray for light

impatient with the state of

things i go down for a deep dive

hold my breath and continue

to come awake the days of this

cosmic death are numbered maybe

winter has it’s place the rules may

not be the same here, but i have

walked so far in shoes of very earthy

origin have ridden star tails and told

tall tales sold my birthright for a bowl

of soup when it got too lonely to bear

the dream to watch from such a lucid

place seeing  is costly but not nearly

as expensive as never wakin up

this way we live has no substance

it’s not that it was so much better in

the old days it’s just that now there is

no passion left, no soft skin of desire

alive in the universe, only the empty

wish for some thing to fill the space

made by Creator for soul connection

and so I pray all night and day

pray as a revolutionary act do the

hoochy coochy and I turn myself about.

No Return

No Return

Halfway through night, the girl whimpers in her crib,

and from a dream of flying in bare branches, a woman

leaps from her bed without her robe and rushes to soothe

the places that cannot be soothed. Her dream wings

return to her scapulae. Her hands return to their flesh

and she presses them into the little girl’s back.

No longer bird, the mother re-enters her familiar scent,

part milk, part sleep, part sheet-warmed skin,

and from a nightmare, the girl inhales her way home again

without ever opening her eyes. Her breathing evens.

Her body stills. The mother remembers her wings.

She returns to her own bed, cold now, awake,

and her hands find her womb where the girl once flew.

She is nameless. Vaster. An amorphous is.

Out the window, bare branches bow to the wind.

Somewhere We Know

Somewhere we know

that without silence words lose their meaning,

that without listening speaking no longer heals,

that without distance closeness cannot cure.

—Henri Nouwen

And so I praise the miles that carve

the mountains, praise the hours that cleave

these dayfulls of distance. Praise the longsome weeks.

In the meantime, wild geese delineate sky

with their dark floods of November wing.

They will fly places we’ve never been—

how I want to meet you there and there.

And I won’t let want steal the splendor here:

how the spindle of night unspools till the stars

spill above the rumors of wave in the river

that does not stop. Mygod, it is so beautiful.

I have not stopped loving you across silence.

Between words, this winged love does not stop.

21 The Blind Side

it was a simple movie

The Blind Side based on a true

story, don’t know why

it was the antidote for

the holiday sadness that

had again settled in my

soul we were at the cheap

dirty theater, but everybody

there smiled so unlike so many

inhabitants of Greater or Lesser

Los Angeles, the Angels here

are not always friendly

but Sandra Bullock made us

imagine that we didn’t

have to be politically correct

to love someone whole just

audacious and open well and

i guess rich, but that’s just

Hollywood where we live and

move but thankfully do not

have our being, just our movies

and sometimes these stories

we produce do heal something

god is for sure everywhere and

she hangs out here leading me to good movies

Thanksgiving

More than these greens tossed with toasted pecans,

I want to serve you the hymn I sung into the wooden bowl

as I blended the oil and white vinegar. More than honey ice cream

beside the warm pie, I want to serve you the bliss in the apples’ flesh,

how it gathered the sun and carried its luminousness to this table.

More than the popovers, the risen ecstasy of wheat, milk and eggs,

I want to serve you the warmth that urged the transformation to bread.

Blessings, I want to serve you full choruses of hallelujah, oh so wholly

here in this moment. Oh so holy here in this world.