Hopping frog, hop here and be seen,
  I'll not pelt you with stick or stone:
Your cap is laced and your coat is green;
  Good bye, we'll let each other alone.

Plodding toad, plod here and be looked at,
  You the finger of scorn is crooked at:
But though you're lumpish, you're harmless too;
  You won't hurt me, and I won't hurt you.

I am too soft, lumpish
of myself alone -
single -
Unpartnered, softness droops
it sags
it melts
without hardness rubbing it smooth.


I.
I need your carpentry -
the plane of your hard muscles,
the hammer of your broad hands,
the sandpaper of your chin
on my skin
to smooth me straight
to sharpen my angles
to repair my dents
to build me into my true shape.

II.
Take my lumpish metal into your forge
heat me until I burn through
mold my metal
into my true shape
Then plunge me into
your cooling waters
to steam me strong, unlumped
flowed, beauteous


Take my softness into the chalice of your Being
mix it with your hardness,
your directness,
in perfect measure.
Put me into the mold of your heart
and, with your love,
make an art of me.


c. Roberta Compton Rainwater 2015

Lilies of the Valley line a possibility path
They're pushing and poking their way through
Each crack of pavement endues the math
Of lumpish lubberly feet, leaving too few
How I wholeheartedly wish them all well
And pray the clownish tip-toe around
For bright lil' bells by their own can't tell
Who might impose their sacrosanct ground
So step lightly dear wandering and happy neighbor
For Spring be for Lillies of the Valley, hard labor

She is an everlasting nightmare
How come people are getting so dumber?
So done being tested to the very limit
Those lumpish morons are bluffed with her plaster saint tone she made it
She is never the sweetest enchanting fairy gold angel like you think
The whole majesty is befouled and full of myth
She should be killed or i will spit

There was a little girl
Playing in the sun,
She had a bow upon her head
And smiled at everyone!

Then some heartless people
Untied that little bow,
And began to stuff her head
With some WORDS
that you may know.

They, unfortunately,
Common words.
Words you may have seen.
One began with letter 'N'
And others just as mean.

They fully stuffed her head
And when they were done,
Tied her little bow again
So it would not come undone.

In the end her head was lumpish.
Had very little grace.
And there was a mean ol' scowl
On her once-lovely face.


S~S

Hands awaken! Speak out! Answer to sacred shouts,
subterranean whispering, to stars above rooftops—
thread sunlit branches with the chattering of a thousand leaves.

If flux and urgency of confusion or death
should drawn you into the self-box--
remember when one constructed prison fell away.
However you helped this forward,
do more of the same.

Be rain-hands, laughing, steeped in earth fragrances.
Be fingers in blossom, loves innumerable, rough-cut and bedazzled—unafraid to be splayed wide open.

Be pocketed hands, released to the welcoming wind—
multiplying there in mid-air, they ride the four directions.

Be hands of smoke and of fire, descending and ascending
like ragged bird-song—effulgent, charged with surprise
and now even with mock surprise.

Start at the beginning, exactly where you are.
Not satiate with loll-lolling recede wave’s tide,
not retreated back and back,
until grown utterly intellectual and lumpish!

Now, Human Being—you come awake also!
Sweep furnishings from your table.
Upend the table lawlessly.

Bring the muscular, fleshy, feminine to the masculine and muscular.
Likewise, bring the masculine to feminine. Bring friend to enemy,
estranged neighbor to confidante.

In a dance of pressing hands,
let subtle conversation play.

Ring all the tiny bells.
Stir the King and Queen of Remembrance.

In over-arching restraint, hold back one iota, so pure notes sound—
bring sunburst, sphere and harmony.

Make your entire body a listening board
forming therein—tender shapes around which love
seed unfolds its infinite spaces and then…

Spring awake! All to better dreaming
where your faith is undashed, not with this dying.

O, hear me now! Hands, every which one of you,
with every human—never again sleep,
never abandon!

1.
We all die daily,
our breath shuddering
from the body,
the body shriveling
into matter, which
languishes, empty
and inert,
envying the
labyrinth of the soul.

What bright spirit
lures us back
into the light, stirs
us to awaken out
of our dark night?
What burden can
we still bear as
ghosts of ourselves,
erstwhile egos
chanting nada,
nada, nada as we
furtively avoid
the mirror of
Narcissus?

2.
We all die open-
eyed, gaping
at the void,
or a vast
field of stars
swirling and
sparkling above
the blackened
upper
atmosphere,
illuminating
the full breadth
of Being:
The Great
I Am of
everything that is.

Beside us, the cosmic
jester and curator
of the world
adds another
plastic frame to
a crudely rendered
self-portrait. Which
self paints the self?
Which self becomes
object and subject
simultaneously,
having its cake
and eating it, too,
but failing to notice
the crumbs
on the floor
and the icing
on its lips?

3.
So many questions
that challenge
the mastery of our
language, that
stretch the boundaries
of our mind like
an inky rubber band
dangerously
near to breaking
from overuse.
No answers
can verify
themselves
to us.
They demand
judgment, an
accounting that
only the dead
can deliver from
the far side of
the grave, beyond
the end of history,
beyond the erasure
of time.

4.
Daily we all die
only to rise again,
our lumpish
flesh electroshocked
into animation,
our soul newly
dependent on poetry
to dial in its
upper frequencies
before they
fade away
into static.
The tuner picks up
an AM station
out of Juarez.
The Mariachi
music reminds
us that this
energy may sputter
and flag like
a somnambulist,
but it never dies.