It is 2am, the way you reach for me in your sleep
And I can curl into your core and my legs don’t even reach
Your ankles.

It is the way I can’t quite wrap my arms all the way around
Your chest,
But I try anyway,
On my tippy toes with
My face turned up,
Asking you to kiss me
Again

Because three hundred thousand kisses

Is never enough.

It is this love
That does not capture or possess

Or give up.

And in the morning, the way I smile when my phone rings and I
See your name.

It is laughter and silly voices
And when you toss my children end over end on the bed
Until you’re close to dead but
They’re screaming "one more time!"

And the way you can see the magic in their eyes when
The rest of the world
Looks away.  

And the way
I can break

All snot-nosed and crying,
Throwing things down and
You just fold yourself around me

And just like that,

Inside my heart there is

Only love.

I wear false armor against a darkness that I profess to have pushed into a whimpering corner
Where it coils into itself and dies,
But really waits,
Yellow eyes muted in temporary resignation,
For chinks to appear in the illusion of hardened steel
That is actually feather light webbing around my heart
Painted swiftly in the silver
Haze of hope.

I call upon a greater light to solder these strands into something Fearless that can
Take flight
And never again be caught by the claws of a black night,
But every time
This armor shows a hidden *****,
A careless gap,
And like the weakness near a dragon’s heart
Depression finds the space to shoot that all too familiar
Dart.

Once again,
Curled up against the door,
Megaphones of violence, screaming,
“Don’t you know you’ll never be more than a false warrior in false Armor,
Destroyed on the bathroom floor?!”

And I just don’t give a **** anymore
And I almost give up, every time.

But this is not a poem about dying.

Beautiful soul, pick up your armor,
Paint it as steel,
Paint it as gold,
And breathe into it your pure, unadulterated inner light that
Every time
Can make fragmented things
Whole.

I wear this fragile armor with pride. It is not as strong as I sometimes pretend it to be, but each time I Sew the pieces back together with my own light
it becomes more beautiful to me.
You are all more beautiful to me.

Stitch along the seams of your brokenness and heal.

Funny how the gift of one soft moment is only recognized
In the sharpness of its disappearance;
In the harshness of the void
When the insignificant details
That were nothing but edges to a forgotten minute
Take on the weight
Of the world,

And suddenly, that small moment
Swells with the power to curl
Inside your heart and burst it
At the seams,

And in your mind,
Flash images of all of those things you never
Appreciated nearly enough;
Never savored like you would,
Had you known that
In the blackness of the night
They would disappear

Like dust.

Every trickle of morning rain into the rushing of the creek
Every solid step I can still take along the banks

Every breath

Every breath

Every breath

And every time I caress my son’s cheek
And every time I can still feel his tiny arms
Wrapped around my waist
And every time

I should drop to my knees in thanks.

My daughter’s face alight because she can spell her name
And how their footsteps echo on the stairs
Like rain

Caught in a moment in time.

And, I can see now that

It will change.

So, let me hold them
Like gravity
Holds the stars
And let me clutch you now in these small moments that are still ours.

And in gratitude
Let me hold these fleeting minutes in my palms,

Like the tears of angels

Like holy water

That rains upon desert

And is gone.

A blinding desert sun and the sky like a looking glass, fractured.
Light streaming through the tops of Baobab trees
And red, sub-Saharan dirt kicked up
Like a dry mist.

There is a broad vista,
Some kind of savanna and
I am standing,
Face raised to the wind
Straining to see the horizon,
And in that quiet moment,
They come riding.

Atop the lumbering, gray bodies of Mastodons
They are dressed in cloths
Of red and orange and black.
There is an ancient, robed shepherd
Sitting astride a great, trudging beast,
And in his right hand
He holds a staff.
Solemnly, he pushes his behemoth mount on
Faster until the ground
Might split within the tremulous thunder of it.

And I must not run.
I hear a quiet voice urging me to walk on,
Walk out,
Walk up to it.
Face this thing.
And so, I do not cry out or hide
Or even step from one side to the other.

I walk a straight line
As swiftly the rider approaches,
Sand flying like fire,
And soon they tower above me,

But the eye,
The eye of the beast is kind, and it stops within inches of my face,
And peers down like some
Great, all-knowing thing.

Above him,
The rider leans sideways and extends the staff towards my neck.
Gently, there is a touch against my skin
And in that moment
There is a transference
An instance of knowing
Something given from Him.

I remember, it felt just like,
“Your soul is never alone”
And I fell to my knees with the relief of it.

Imperceptible
Transformations
In higher elevations
Herald a sea-change in the sky.

A warm front slides over the frigid edges of autumn
And pushes the cold away.

In these few hours
The atmosphere rolls
And turns over
Drawing the warmth down to the tree lines of the hills
And to these streets
Where we feel
A gentler hand upon the skin.

Imperceptibly,
Like the permeating of a warm front
Through the cold

I am drawn to you.

I turn over in these sheets
And push the winter away.
With every movement, I
Pull your body to me.

For this small space of time
I rest in broad shoulders protecting mine,
And I am hiding in you.

I will strip off these layers
And leave all of these barriers
Strewn across the floor.

I am not afraid of the cold.

Pressed into you
Skin to skin
There is only warmth.

All of these fires of the heart
Burning on the surface like the last remnants of
Of a civilization nearly gone;

Huddled forms tending flames that
Beat back the dark
Through short hours
Stretched along a dying road.

Ever since I was a little girl
I knew
We would all leave here,
Alone.

Are we really anything more than scattered bones
Across the open undulation of the plains?
The scavengers stretch their wings into the sky and dive
To sift through the fragments of life we
Leave behind,
No more significant than fallen leaves along the forest floor
Before the snow comes;

Yet, there is warmth in my skin so strong
It wants to burst forth and form a new star out of love;
Something that hangs above this pain
And calls rivers out to run
Across the dust of nothingness
Before the sun dies, at last.

And yet, it is not enough

To halt the trains of time.
My children and I
Sit outside a hollow station by the iron tracks
And keep these flames alight;

Their laughter,
How it
Colors the sky
Red and orange
And their souls hold back the night.

Still, beyond the shadows of our bodies at the edges of the fire,

The darkness is a tide.

What words should we speak into the void so that it does not

Rise?

“Til the rocks melt with the sun;”
Is that how long love goes on,
Beyond the trappings of time and the outer contours of the mind?

I learned of love within the cadence of Celtic songs.
Daddy played them on an old piano
And mommy sang along.
The walls they rang with something that wasn’t
Really so hard to understand;

The aching of one heart for another,
Always swept apart by the sea
And the way a lifetime
Can make it too far to reach
The other, distant shore.

But the sorrow at the core of Highland songs,
I understand better now;  
Now that every tangible thing from those years
Is gone,
Their voices silenced and a home knocked down,
Lullabies buried in the ground.
The piano sold and gravestones too far away for me to hold,

But love, love is the Moorland in my soul

And it is wide and open
And the purple heather grows
Forever and descends to a churning sea,
And melodies, on the wind, they whip between the rocks and disappear.

And though I can no more grasp voices from the air
Than hold love here,
I will stand on this shore and I will sing these

Forgotten refrains

And though they drift across the sea,
This love has been worth it all the while,
Even if time carries it away,

Like music,

And it never comes back to me,

You had the strength to survive the devastation of war;
The height to overcome, to surpass;

Yet, somehow I, so small, on my tippy toes,
Chest to your core,

Still hold you like the most breakable glass.

Wounded and bleeding internally
On the side of the road.
Trying so hard to breathe
Trying so hard to live
In a body that is inevitably dying.

He does not expect help.
There is no way out.
Blood is staining the markings on his legs.
Blood is staining the pavement around his broken shape.
Blood is falling, falling, falling
And there is no end
But pain.
There is no solace in this suffering
And no savior came.

We drive on by.
He must have jumped the fence at the wrong time.
Though meant to scan the wild grasslands,
His eyes
They were simply
Resigned.

Sometimes there is no one that can help you.

I remember when they pulled the lines
From the back of my father’s hands.
All of those medicines of hope
No more potent than sand.
No other alternative
No other possible plan
Than to accept this death
Like a lone animal
Crumpled by the side of the road
Eyes fixated on wild lands
He will never, again roam.

And it is similar with the soul.

Bleeding out from secret wounds
That bore into the insides of our bones.

And no one knows.

And no one sees.

And so we sit in silence
And so we hold our grief
With the resignation and the glazed eyes of broken, dying beasts
Out on some empty road.

Until someone kneels
Down beside you
And finally, finally

Sees

Cupping your face in his hands,
He says,

Look at how you bleed

And though he cannot completely, ever
Stem the flow
And though no one can completely
Save you now.
It is like a burden lifted because

Finally,

Someone sees.

Finally,

Someone knows.

You are no longer simply abandoned at the edges of the road.

Someone hit their knees beside you
In the pools of your own blood
And reached through this impenetrable emptiness

With only love.

Only

Love.

I’ve been to such depths

(with you)

That the shallows are forever ruined.
The sand is covered in shells that crack underfoot
And do not sing.

I hold them gently to my ear
But the whales are crying in the trenches of the sea
And their songs cannot find me here.

Melodies weep through the mantles of the earth;

Liturgy seeps through the dirt.

I’ve been to such depths

(alone)

Falling backwards into the stars
From the rock strewn ridges of Medicine Bow Peak,

Forever haunted in the shallows,
I am pulled to the deep.

Let me sleep beneath the blood moon tides.
The starlight glints off the crashing seas,

And there are fathoms in your eyes.

And when the butterflies returned,
They fluttered down from
Hidden caverns draped in verdant moss.
Trailing dark tendrils of apocalyptic dusk,
They settled on the fragrant grass,
And like recessed memories,

Forgot.

And when the butterflies returned,
They flapped their harlequin wings,
Like Ashanti dancers in the wind,
Clothed in Kente cloth,
Alighting on graveyard moss,
And like the faded wording on a wooden cross,

Forgot.

And when the butterflies returned, they skimmed like vibrant gems
Across the sea,
And gathered like scattered drops of multicolored rain  
Across the fallowed fields,
And rivers that had healed,
And where man’s touch had once disfigured,

Now all forgot.

And so it is in life and death.

All that was once fire and depth
Breaks from the body

Like falling wings and

We are left

Forgotten things,

Each new day reborn
In glorious colors

Like a swarm of Monarchs across
The yellow of the dawn

Drifting

Forever on

Without us.

You are sitting alone by the tallest trees of the forest,
Perched quietly on that stone that was turned over by the erosion of silted banks;
The wild river, a little ways off,
But still the roar of it fills the air.
Your hands are clasped in front of you
And your backpack is slung to the side.
Above your quiet form,
The mountains rise like citadels
And their alpine slopes abound with pines
Like sentinels, watching,
Hiding the yellow eyed wolves
That dart within.
But they will not approach you.
They also attend the dusk,
And the secrets it brings.
The singing of the coyotes
Calls the stars out
One by one,
Emerging in a deepening blue,
While the fire of the sun’s descent
Subsides too,
Into blackness.

The night birds call.

I am here, my love.
Can you see my silhouette against the moon?
The darkness between us thickens
Like blood from a wound.

Reach for me

High above you, a white owl alights,
Beating its ragged wings against the thickness
Of the wilderness;
The dark shadows of the pines, motionless,
Yet, I shake.

Reach for me

You shift your weight and turn to face
The space where I stand.
You lift your hand as if
To gently place my hair
Behind my ear,

Remember how you always loved to do that
When I was here?

You touch me, almost!
We are so **** close!

You are crying now, alone,

The night birds sing to a ghost.

These secret gardens are watered by tributaries of pain
That cut through the wild meadows that fall from the edges of the mountains,
Untamed.

The waters run deep in the fertile dirt
And though they slice hard with the knife-edges of agony,
They nourish the most beautiful
Worlds;

Fields of the rarest wildflowers and thick forests of enchanted aspen and pines.

The pain.

It grows terrible things in the darkness
But look,
Look how beautiful your wilderness is
In the light.

I place my hands on your heart.
Inside, there is a small child,
Crying,

Shattered by violence

And I am just trying to say
That all of your secret gardens of pain,
Those hidden corners in which I played,

Never, ever, held any shame.

The depths of your brokenness and the strength of your love for me
Felt just the same.

I grew in your meadows of sorrow and your tears they watered my spirit

Like rain.

Don’t you even close your eyes
Lest you miss how bright
This morning is.

Even the ice will fall in
A masterpiece of light
And though it cuts hard
Through the warmth of the night
I will lay my palms outside
And clutch it.

Reach with me now
Into the crackling cold
And feel something there
So pure
There are crystals dripping down
The insides of my soul.

Don’t you even close your eyes.
There will be diamonds drifting from the skies
From clouds so thick
And so white
This stabbing pain
Will be shredded into
Wild kaleidoscopes of light,

Similar to the ones in your eyes.

Let us not miss this moment.
Strip the blankets of summer
And feel the sting of truth,
A biting wind along my skin;
It sings

I
Need
You.

Don’t you even close your eyes
And if you should
Be it only in the circle of my arms
Where our hearts
Move in a quiet beating
And the rest is silence
And rest is peace and

A bright moment worth waiting,

In.

Every day, I'm just trying to make it.

Things fall apart constantly.
Cracks appear in solid walls and
The wolves wait at the door
For a weak moment to pounce
And demand
What I don't have to give.

I'm holding us together by the skin of my teeth
I'm holding them up
With broken limbs
And the whole thing is shaking
Like some snow globe
Whose glass is too **** thin
And on the inside is the most beautiful scene.

I can easily see what it would look like
Painted across the firmament.
I can easily see what it will look like
In pieces on the pavement
Snow flakes and
Little hopeful stars
Smashed into the dirt

When the thing is tossed like trash
Because fate doesn't really give a ****
And it is all up to us
Alone
To walk that road
Alone
And make it
Or don't.

My little one is fevered and laying across my knees
And I remember the time he was hooked to machines
And the medical industry never blinked
When the bill was more than our income for a year.

The powers that be really don't care.

All of these little ones deserve a hero.

How easy it would be to talk myself up,

But the honest to God truth is,

I don't know if I can be one.

There is a little man
Staring at me,
Cradled in my arms,
With eyes so wide
It is as if
They could hold
All my stars.

And yet, to him,
I am the universe;
All the darkness
Folding gently
Around his innocence.

And in this galaxy
I will hold
His hands forever,
Cloaking these tiny fingers
In the astral winds
Of memory.

Always, my little man,
Clutched to the shores
Of my skin,
Forever sheltered by
The indestructible force that
Once born,
Cannot be undone;
A gravity of love between
A mother and her son.

Come straight for me
Hold me up
Tear me down
It feels so **** good to
Truly feel
That I don't care.

The sun is stronger than it has ever been
And the cold cuts deeper than a knife
I turn my bones outside
And fly down the highway
With you
There’s nothing like the truth
There’s nothing like the way you move
Towards me in the night
Cut the lights
Push me back
Into the void
Of blackness
And you’re still there
Behind me.

I lean into you
Before I ever fall
These stairs descend to hell
And I’m not going.

Set yourself to burning

With me

Now.

Like the blue hues of a summer sky
Stretched above the trees.
When the warmth of the evening
Rests heavy on the skin,
There are just some things that
Cut valleys through the heart in their absence.

Yes, only when the cold
Seeps in across a whitening October sky
And the red-winged blackbirds cease to fly
Do I sit with the spaces
Where they used to sing
And feel the emptiness that comes
With the absence of wings
Somewhere inside the pieces of me
That can only ascend

When you are here.

See, I can never let go
Because then the mountains disappear
From the horizon.

I need to feel them rising against the pale
Brightening of the morning.
Every time, it brings me hope and somewhere firm to
Lay my hands.

Hold me here.

In your presence, I can stand
Without shaking
And absence is silence and the aching of a
Winter sky without wings.

There is a little boy who plays at the edges of my yard.
He flips rocks into the dirt and then pushes them around like cars;
He draws lines with sticks and occasionally raises them to eye level,
Whispering “bang, bang,”
Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians
But always all alone
With no one but the birds to play the other roles.
He is a sweet little thing
With a mass of tussled hair and ***** knees,
And the brutal truth is
That I can feel his hunger
When he looks at me.
It isn’t that he is thin,
But that he is starving for something that I freely give
To my own kids.
I can’t even put a name to what it is.
Something about being seen.
Something about mattering
When the rest of the world seems so big
And you are still so incredibly
Small.
Yesterday, he startled me when he called me “mom,”
Just like that
Because I smiled.
How lost must be a little child who so easily claims such a bond
With a stranger!
I cannot be your mom, little boy,
But I see you, and I see your little spirit that has been, perhaps,
Pushed aside for too long.
I will always offer you a smile and small piece of time
Before you run off home and I can only hope
That the ones who open the door
Might see what kind of chance they have been given in the beautiful
Form of a child.

Could it be that the rivers of my heart run with good waters?
Could that really, ever be?
The fragile banks erode and
Crumble into sorrow,
But the sun glints off the surface still each morning
And there is solace in the shining.

Could that brightness really be mine,
After everything I should have done
That might have changed the arc of time?
Like words I could have said
That would have left
Certain hearts alive.

I haven’t fought all the right fights
And some beautiful things have died
Right here in my hands,

But I think there is a chance
That these waters still run true;
The mountains stand unmoved,
After all.

And the rivers of the heart rush and fall.

They rush and fall down the rocks and

They are still pure.

Can we ever win this war, baby?

The front lines explode and they are closing in,
Riddled with bullet holes and rough with the wreckage of darkness.
Each blast makes me jump out of my skin
And maybe I should run,
But the sun is dripping tendrils of fire
And the only place I can ever really hide
Is somewhere in the depths between us.

It is a dangerous game and there are enemies outside and within;
Galaxies colliding
In the spaces where you end and I begin.

I like how it feels to break apart in your hands,
Limb by limb, vein by vein,
Spreading out like the fires of battle that can’t be tamed.

I don’t know if I can withstand the flames that

Gently lick my neck.

Lie down beside me in these dark trenches.
I’m not ready to surrender yet.

Mommy, daddy, you left me to the ragged and violent
Winds of winter.

Do you watch over me in these storms that
Venture on and on and on?
Am I fool to think that there are arms
Within the endless fractals of the sky that might
Reach down?

I can’t feel them
Anymore.
I don’t see you in my dreams
Anymore.

Is there a moment when the spirit turns from the edges of
This life’s shore
And simply
Walks away,
Disintegrating into nothingness and leaving us here below to

Pray

Into a void that doesn’t hear?

The sky is white today like blank paper that might await some
Prophecy or simply drift across the hills into the sea
Where the lonely petrels and the albatross
Skim their wings on the surface and pronounce

There is no message there for me.

There is a darkness,
No, a place of emptiness,
Where everything is nothing but mist
And fog and it stretches forever with no beginning and no end
And I can see it when I close my eyes.
And all of the color of life
Even the chatter of my children through the house
Is drowned by
The thickness of this dense shroud
Laying heavy between the broken fragments of my mind.
Neurons and synapses are scattered like ruined monuments to some other country and I can’t
Recall its name.
My country fell and I can’t stand.
I’m cold tonight and thinking of snow;
The way it could fall upon my face and deafen all of these rough voices.

I would just let go.

These winds of restoration
Rise above the rocks of prominence
And drift down the valleys of the Rockies
Like the gentle Chinook in early summer.

These winds herald the coming of the cold,
But in my heart they drift warm
Like shallow waters that carry the sun
To the shadowed inlets of
Hidden rivers.

I will let you in
Breath of rushing things that ends and then in reckless flurries,
Begins again.
I will throw my head back
With my mouth open wide
And I will draw you down to the hollows of my bones
Where you can find the marrow
Of my soul
And carry from it the bitter dusts of regret.

I don’t want them anymore.
I have walked with these sands heavy in my core for too long
And I am done.
I ask these winds to restore this weathered ground to something more;
This wasteland is dying.
Let these winds lift the surface and expose the verdant roots within.

Yes, it is true.
Sometimes, I am eight.

I stand by the mantelpiece and watch the clock tick upon the wall.
Each second seems excruciatingly extended.
Is there really a purpose to these endless days that stretch into years
That stretch into meaninglessness?
She rests in bed again.
Depression shifts itself into the corners of her room and her smile
Does not reach her eyes.
Mom is very tired.
My father gently guides me from the room,
But she draws me back to say you know I'll love you
Even when I’m gone,
And then I run outside and throw a vibrant red ball into the sky as
If to stubbornly defy her

Hopelessness.

I so want her to see that there are bright things yet.

I dig them from the ground with my hands
And find them in the remote groves of pines
That stand in harsh wilds outside the boundary lines of
The sadness drawn across her eyes.

I wanted to shatter them with light;

Yet, now it is I who has to fight the darkness in my veins,
Using all my strength to push it away
From my children,
So they do not have to do the same.

My heart is a smoldering ember
That too easily ignites,
Melting this skin of innocence  
Releasing feral things to flight.

But oh how they are beautiful,
Like solitary wolves, slinking from the hollows of my heart
All glistening and yellow-eyed,
Gliding through the midnight forests
On the inside portion of my soul;
The part that only others like us ever know.

Yes, I can see the untamed wilds that make you whole,
And I release the ravens from my heart each time I walk with you.

And sometimes they are beautiful
And sometimes they are dark
And sometimes they cry as their wings beat a breathless pattern to the stars.

With this pen, I trace the elegance of their arcs across the
Uncharted corners of our skies.

The vague shadow of an ancient oak pulsing
Like an image through static
Through drifting fog
So thick that only the wind
Can lift it and let slip
The outlines of
Where I began.

My ancestry is incompletely buried.
The sharp rocks of drunken nights
Slice upon the roots
Disfiguring, pummeling, smashing,
Rendering mute the stories their craggy hollows could tell
Dissolving in that same fear
My grandmother must have known so well.

I don’t know how to find her,
To reconstruct a broken form
From all of these pieces,
These fallen leaves that
Drift like secrets,
Like the ones my mother
Whispered to me in the dark
When I was nine and old enough
To hold them, to hold her,
When she fell apart.

Because they took them, you know.
My mother, her sisters, her brothers,
The county clipping the roots like
Plucking flowers,
Like it was nothing at all to scatter
Children in the wind,
Like fallen leaves upon the shallows
Of some lonely pond,
Like broken branches
Overpowered by a system that
Only wanted them
Gone.

So, you see,
It wasn't just the wind that ***** the tree,
But a system that decided
Whose voice to wipe away and
What to keep.

My ancestry is incompletely buried.
Sometimes, I'm sure I can hear her sobbing,
A broken, fragile song, emerging from the earth
Just where the roots, interlocking, stop
the dirt from completely blocking
The story of a battered woman
Buried for too long.

The vague shadow of an ancient oak pulsing
Like an image through static
Through drifting fog
So thick that only the wind
Can lift it and let slip
The outlines of
Where I began.

What if I run my hands along the bark,
The broken pieces, the empty spaces,
Where her voice might be?

Grandma, speak to me.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
- Emily Dickinson


Waiting for the angry sky to spread across the mountains,
Shifting its vehemence from the high plains
To the undulation of dark pines
And valleys
That meet at the wild boundary lines
Of the Dakotas.  

The distant sound of thunder shakes the ground
And does not rumble like a gentle summer storm,
But implodes within the atoms of the air
Like somewhere in the night
Exists the frontlines of a war.

It draws ever near.

And it is enough to scare this little bird away;
Yet, she sings into the dying of the day,
And bravely turns to face the
Driving wind,
Wings extended out and in
To the torrent of the rain.

She is accustomed to the pain
Of singing all alone
Abandoned in the darkness of a soul
That has almost given up.

But as each storm approaches, I am beginning to trust
That she is always there.

Her bright wings flutter in the deepest hollows of despair.
Her colors light the air between the clashing of the clouds
And when the lightening flares
I can see her
Suspended there
Still.

I reach out to grab her.
Surely, she cannot survive a storm of this magnitude,
Not this time.

But you take my hand in yours and tell me,
“She will be fine,”
And even though the sky is falling
I believe you.

Sometimes I send my spirit to the hills
And then down to the rippling creek
Now raging from the permeating spring rains.

I have always done this,
Perhaps to let my spirit rest within some other element
That is not myself.

I just exhale her away into the rock, the ridges, the river,
As easy as a breath into the winds of early summer.

And there she lies down, gently,
And becomes these other things;

Things that are not fear, or self-doubt, or a
Racing heart at night wondering if I am,
Perhaps, doing it all wrong.

No, she is now like the fawn that knows only
The scent of fresh grass and the ever-rising prairie sun.

She is like the fluttering of the aspen leaves on the
Highest edges of the cliffs,
Loose and wild,
Careless in the wind, since when they fall, they decompose,
Simply to begin again.

There is a space between my ribs through which she leaves
And the tears on my cheeks then wait to cease as she settles within

The rock, the ridges, the river,

And when I am beat down, hurt, scared,

I look up to the hills and tell myself,

Send your spirit

There.

The light that filters through the leaves at dusk
Is brighter than before.

Yet, at my back,
The shadows still creep along the
Shorelines of my heart.

Child, look up and out
As if reclined
On a blue hammock
Suspended between two tall oaks
And focus on the sky.

Look not at what sprawls behind,
Mangled and torn.

You are not an effigy of the trauma you have born
But an elegy for the storm.

See how the darkest waters part along the fault lines
Of your heart.
Your goodness floods the spaces in-between the wraith-like faces
You have worn and you are now born,
Illuminated and strong,
Steady as an oak against the northern winds.

Your ghosts will not haunt
Again.

Who has the power to play our souls like strings?
What is this memory that rattles the glass like rain?
Fragile sheets that
Precariously encase my veins.
***** me too hard and I WILL break.
Such a waste,
Blood careening down my face,
Or it poetry?

Or is it just my heart floundering at your feet
Like some kind of suffocating fish?
**** these poignant recollections and all these bits
And pieces that somehow
Seep into the deepest recesses of my spirit.

My mother kissed me every night and said I love you twice,
Right up until
The years she died
Inside,
Slowly,
Like some masterpiece gradually erased upon a board.

How I wanted to keep a little piece of what she was before!

I clutch onto a buried scrap of guilt
Drenched in the dark waters of

“I could have done more.”

Every time it is my children who lift me off the floor;
Their bright eyes
Burned into my mind
Like lanterns on the shore of a foreign sea.

My ship will never leave them.

They have that power over me.

Like you and I.

Here we are again because
I can’t walk towards that other sky
With the sunlight glinting off the rocks
And the horizon caught  
Between us.

I see those little pieces
Of my heart left behind with every mile,
And like a child
I climb up into your arms and make you carry me,
While the blood red sun is setting.

How is it that your strength can put me back together?

I guess,
In the end,
I gladly give it;
The power to make me feel
Something.
Give me the substance that overpowers the numbness.
I'll hold it inside me and go down fighting.

How many long years did I spend with you,
Lakota Oyate?
Though Wasicu skinned, wearing the paleness of imperial greed,
The reverberant beating of ceremonial drums
Caused my heart to bleed
Rivers of blood,
Tears that I shed,
Soaking the sagebrush and sorrow-laden plains
Inside the hollows of my bones.

Tiyospaye, you are always.

Pilamaya, always and forever.

Mitakuye Oyasin.

Lakota Oyate, you raised me,
A rootless, tender-hearted girl,
Kicking up the dust on some
Empty reservation road.

Lost, but found
In your kindness.

Tiwahe, when I had none.

I filled my plate at your tables, Wojapi and thickened breads,
The laughter of the wild-hearted children
Ringing through the stars like the songs of rainbow-chested prairie birds.

Little takojas, how you grasped my hands and claimed me.
How clearly I can hear them calling, “auntie, auntie, come play!”

And so, the people of the river, below the plains of Standing Rock,
I love you, thechihila,
Forever.

My little children will forever walk in kindness and humility
Because of the values you raised in them;
Because you drew them in as if they were your own blood,
Because you sewed vibrant ribbons on their shirts
As if they belonged in their humanness,
In their innocence,
To your great nation.

Lakota Oyate, I can never repay you for the way your heartbeat

Saved me.

Prayed for me.

Pilamaya Wopila,
Always and forever.

Widespread rain descended
In the corner of my dreams;
A monsoon of drenching relief;
A tide to wash the slate clean.

I am a woman now;
Not a girl.
And all of the wounds I’ve won
Unfurl across my body
And my soul
Like shiny medals of valor
Or one, fragile, papyrus scroll.

And thus garbed, and so adorned,
I will wade through the cooling waters of
This cleansing storm.

Widespread rain descended
Filling my outstretched arms;
Quenching the memory of the battle;
Bringing the strength to end the war.

I am worthy now.
I am enough.
And in my hand, I crush the dust
Of guilt, of shame,
Releasing these bitter grains
To the absolution that comes with  
The drumming of
The rain.

One day these hills will be all we have left.
The thickened pines and needle laden tracks
That rise to summits formed of smooth and serrated granite;
One day I will raise my eyes to these peaks
And see in them the only
Faces of familiarity I can find.
Life is like that.
Everything changes.
The ones we love the most leave
Empty hollows like abandoned
Caverns above the falls,
And darkness spreads where light’s erased
In the the narrow crevices of time.  

One day I will be an old soul, alone in a wicker chair,
Looking to the reddened sky behind the peaks;
Faces I have loved streaming by
And lifting to the wind
That shakes the leaves all the way to the spires of
The ever-constant hills.
They have watched generations rise and fall,
And how I love you like a fire
Burning in the fragile spaces
Between the roughened cliffs
That encroach upon us all.

The darkness filtered in across the Wind River Range
Drifting through the ancient spaces of Arapaho plains,
And I, still a child of sixteen,
Huddled in a sleeping bag,
Staring up at a vast black sky,
Patterned with the scattered dancing
Of a million stars.
And the wind, it felt like freedom
And the mountains they were beating
With some kind of barely audible drum.
But I could feel it in my bones,
Like the faintest whisper;
“This is home.”

And so I let the darkness
Fall all around me.
And later, in the depths of an Arapaho ceremony,
I felt my skin cascade
Away
My ribs break
And suddenly, from my naked heart,
I just knew how to pray.

That opening, it never closed,
So that, even now,
The dust of sacred things
Clings tightly to my soul.
And in the blindness of the crowds
I desperately chase it,
Through the veils of common day
I find new ways to trace it.

That light.

It is there, you know. Can you see it?

When just born, we can.
I see it in my children’s eyes,
The lingering of a love
Stronger than all the love of man,
So devoid of fear, unfaltering, pure,
So beautiful that when I hold them
My hearts breaks apart in tears.

And I don’t want to lose it.

That light.

All my life, I’ve sought the broken, held the strays,
Caressed the wounded spaces,
Tried so hard to mend the pieces,
Trailing blood along the way.
And the blood it bleeds from a place of honesty;
Yet, selfishly, washes away the layers of protection
People create
Exposing them to me
Feeding my soul the light that I so desperately seek.

And now, you.
You, burning with the same light that I’ve always known,
And I, like a child again, facing the Arapaho moon,
I can feel these sacred things move
Between us
Like remembrances of some other home.

I am a tiger and a fawn.
The she-wolf that screams to the moon at dusk
And the meadowlark that whistles to the sun at dawn.
I am darkness and I am light
Flipping my tangled hair to the cascading stars at night
Lifting my hands in prayer, releasing the morning birds to flight.
And I will protect them,
These birds of freedom.
I will carve their songs
Deeply into my heart
And set aside a space
Where the cruelty of this world
Cannot, ever, tear them apart.
So laugh my little children,
And sing your songs of glory,
You are safe
You are heard
And you are worthy.

Our souls are little embers glowing in the darkness of the universe,
Beyond and within where the atoms glide,
Pixelating space,
Like a painting by Seurat;
Your limbs are mine
Your edges undefined;
We are only energy bleeding into the entropy of time;
Little fires, our soul’s cinders, waiting
Like August flowers
For the sun to die.
And I will freeze from the outside, in.
My skin will slide into the earth
Preserved through the energy transferred;
In every cold death,
Birth.

My consciousness, so divided by entropy, will one day rest across the universe like dispersed dust;
My voice reborn in the ocean tides, falling from the sky in a sea bird’s call,
Or resounding through the jagged rocks
On the coast of Rossnowlagh.
And as with me,
So with us all.

I wonder, when you hear the cadence of my voice on the edges of the ocean’s squall,
Will your astral fingers like dancing flames trace the outlines of my face?
Through the entropy of space, will you recall?

Will you recall when we were two bodies, whole?

I handle my children as if they might disappear.

Sometimes when I am holding them,
My face pressed to their hair,
My hands around their little fists
Like so many eagles
Cloak their nests
In feathered wings,

I feel their edges start to blur
As if pulled by a strong hand
Through a silver curtain.

“You can’t have them!”
I yell at the space above their heads.
“They’re mine!”

And yet I feel the weight of being gifted
So many treasures that
I don’t deserve,
That I try to earn.

I handle my children as if someone might come back for them.
Speaking to me sternly, they will explain
“These are too precious, too rare,
For you.”
But I would not let them go.

I would come after them.
Charging like a lioness
I. Would. Come to Them.
Through every burning flame
And every mangled wreck
And sterile hospital bed,
I. Would. Run to Them.

Dragging both legs
And seeping blood
And holding the heart
Inside my chest,
With my own two hands
I. Would. Crawl to Them.

I would die for them.

I handle my children as if they might disappear.  
Clutching their tiny bodies and all their edges,
Holding them in, keeping them whole.

I remember my father listening to Brahms in the living room,
Eyes closed,
Fingers tapping notes on his knees,
That ratty recliner a front row seat;
An island in an ocean of music and a soul
Carried by the ethereal harmony of a
Symphony felt in the bones.

Even when he could no longer raise his arms
And his legs like stones
Rested still at the end of the bed;
When the poison of cancer destroyed all the strength he had,
I watched him still find something sweet
In the music.

They played it on some old radio
And his eyes would close as if
Those symphonies of hope
Could sustain his heart beat
Just a little while
Longer.

I am his daughter, and I know this
Because I also listen for it.

In the gentle whispering of the Cottonwood leaves
Or the light strain of the Meadowlark on a summer evening,

There are also strings;

The faint echo of a violin.

It rolls in like a river from a valley far away and plays the notes of hope.

I can hear the opening sonata quote something like,

Don’t give in

To the darkness.

A symphony plays in the winds that cascade across the jagged rocks of the mountains.

A symphony plays in the sky.

A symphony rolls in on the waves of the northern seas,

Across the reddened canyons;

The notes they bleed like rain upon the
Parched and desiccated world.

And sometimes, it plays in your heart.
You orchestrate the notes with your hands when you run them through my hair,
And suddenly, from somewhere far away,
I can hear the whispered strings of my own violin,

Singing.



Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all
-Emily Dickinson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL9qp0FNEzU

I won’t chisel a spirit to make
It resemble some other formation,
Like the sculptors of the faces
On the rocks.
I love the mountains more
When their jagged edges and
Sun-kissed outcrops
Create patterns all their own;
Granite spires, volcanically
Windblown,
Unabashedly wild,
No artist’s signature
Laying claim to the beautiful
Potential of the stone;
Only the forces of the
Universe
Determine our growth.
Like Crazy Horse,
I want to be brave,
Paint streaks of lightning on
My face;
Look to the mountains and scream,
I love you
Just like that,
Untamed.