Am I leaving or arriving/packing or unpacking/the traveling case of my life is scuffed / bejeweled with memories/soon I will transfer everything I can hold to another plane/soon I will reach my destination/soon and very soon/but I have a few more journeys until then

Mothers and fathers of all degrees of separation pray/for our children/tonight/and every night/open your heart and pray for the child you cannot love/listen you may find your own salvation

I learned/once/ that the wide expansive boughs of a mighty tree/are matched/by a root network/just as wide and intricately spread/below the earth/though we don’t remember/there is always a root system/ I need to find the root system of a few choice trees/ lay down in the cool loam and tell some stories

Maybe riots are the voice of the voiceless/like the forgotten raisin in the sun/the explosion of frustration that the occupy movement and talk of the 99 and 1 percent makes cerebral/like the fluid leaking from the brains and bodies of the slain makes/ real/ the crumbled and ash coated lives that may never be righted are not only on other continents/ to be sad over property/ is one thing/ to be mad over human lives cascading in pipelines of doom is another/ neither rights the world/ covenant with me to believe the teeming voiceless die and suffer in geometric systemic numbers/ while we fill our carts and fuss about the long checkout line/ it maybe time for a new tenderness towards all flesh

Just when it seems/hate wins/slips a sea change/an angel to light the way/a heart once given/ scorned/now you hold a flower that can never fade/but may shatter

When the life you thought was solid/falls/there is a wall/for wailing/someday collapse waits/for all/ exhausted/shocked that you live on/know this/other hands/that knew abyss/ prepared a place/a fit together jagged/ made with inspired hands/place/so make the lowliest stone/ your lichen hewn couch/from which you rise

Places our people loved/continue in our lives/not in some ethereal way/ as familiar territory/we have yet to make our own/still know deeply/as we were loved and know/we’ll someday come home to again

Hand at Rest: This hand/appears alien to me/too old/once too young/tremor subtle/something awful/this way comes/not that my quiet hand at rest/as hers never was/pays any attention to fear

I have hushed steps in rainforest majesty in a hemisphere not my own/scrambled down dunes anchored in valued grasses/fascinated myself/with rolling waves gray green crashing/against my own pallid anger/I have held the hand of a child as we walked the deep red carpet of earth/seeking Gods autograph in solemn admiration/and I count such moments/when the cracks in the carpet of cement and asphalt yield tiny bits of determined weedy heroics/I admire life’s endless struggle to be born in all/ the earth draws breath in my soul

We walk past beauty everyday/such is the frame of moments/of being/beauty/ lovely/in truth/comes wrapped and framed in ugliness/ the key to going in joy/may just rest/ in giving every hideous beauty/ this light of unconditional love