River Poem

Dropping now onto the river path,
Trees attendant, clad in green;
Feet lightened by the layers of leaves,
Arms swinging free in woolly sleeves,
Water, birds and limbs unfreeze
Into the sound of what’s unseen.

A nook of bank the perfect seat,
A mossy trunk to lean and see;
The tumbling, changing, constant flow,
The fullness of all that letting go,
And in sudden gush was there to show
The river that was in me.

The fabric of this river dance
Is laced through the human skin;
The urge to dash against the grain,
Or find the easy route from pain,
Days of drought, flooding after rain
Is the river that flows within.

In shifting flicker on the water
The blot of white behind the trees
A moment seeing two birds flying
Shooting out from grass to sky.

The light unpeeling in your eye
Is like bells shining sound into an unlit day…

Every chime of darkness is contained;
Each tearful recoil into what is lost;
The staggering recall of broken time;
The heavy smudge of wasted hope;
The grief that, yesterday, felt so healed…

All is echoed in the river’s dance
Brought home to where the heart can roost
And take flight like birds between grass and sky
Silhouetting a dance to the tune of your cry.

Morning Shrine

Today I awoke
With two beings inside me,
Billowing apart,
Then trying to join.

A story evolves
From the tugging and sighing;

“I’m a traveller, a roamer with nowhere to rest!”
“I’m a gatherer, a mother
Waiting to suckle her brood!”

Free hippy-trail-seeker in nomad cloth.
And homeward-bound shopper; how odd to be both.

Yes, this was a lively morning –
(The radio tells stories
Of riots and death in Cairo) –
The world’s seams breaking open,
Voices cracking through middle-earth.

And my body also breaks
Into the day, saying
“My life is not my own!
This tangle of earth of sky
Is the very fabric of
Of where I am reborn!”

What is broken is foundation-stone
And all I considered waste
Is the milk and gold of my morning shrine.