poetry

The Nevermothers

Childless this go ‘round

Lost last shots or

Branded barren

Couldn’t keep it

Didn’t happen

Missing out

Bellies hollow of

Children lost or never met

On the floor we wept

And wept

Motherhood just wasn’t meant

Not this time

not with flesh

The Nevermothers have always been 

a hundred mothers from before 

And will be 

a hundred mothers more

To flora, fauna, homeless vets,

To those in pain, or treasured pets,

To spirit children, and the human set

Who need the mothers they never met.

The colors of my clothes

Black black black black black

Every day for years

Armor in the city

Triple locking my doors

Bandages pulled tightly blocking the light

Committing to nothing

Exhaust air carrying port dirt

A nice person in a hard place

Until I went back to the Forest

And remembered

Then I wanted green

Swaddled myself in blue

Pulled brown around myself like a spring coat

Making the heart spongy

As a healthy forest floor

An engine churning on love

Returning the black 

To what it was meant to be

The color of pine silhouettes

The inside of a felled trunk

The oceanic depth of a cave

The home of a million stars

The Golden Garden

The gold in garden

Is stashed in all the leaves

The return on investment

Is our humanity

There’s gold in them there hills, they said

It wasn’t the hills, but the plants instead

Beware the folly of man

The billionaire’s disease

Truest wealth is health of land,

Of water, women, and seeds.

Raised by wolves

We say raised by wolves

Like it’s a bad thing.

So were the founders of Rome

And look how well those nice young boys did.

You might say, oh well it collapsed.

So does everything.

And I can almost guarantee

If society collapses, the people 

raised by wolves

will be doing just fine

A place without thunder

When I first moved

To a place without thunder

It had not yet occurred to me that 

there was anywhere in this world 

where Thor could not be heard

Where Freyr did not bring rain

What does one do

Without that crack from the heavens 

Screaming, stomping gods

Rattling your raised shoulders

With a sudden splitting of the sky

How do you feel your place

And get put there

One's head gets too big

If not bowed occasionally

From open clouds and thrown bolts

Bluster from above 

Everyone's gotten too bold 

Mankind's a bit too brave 

In this place without thunder

In this place without rain

The Eternal Bloom

Holy symmetry, sacred spiral

Perfect bloom, blessed wild

Tiny universe all unfurled

Blossoms sprinkled

Petals hurled

To the ends of this expanding world

Held forever within time

In my hands and in my mind

Nothing lost or left behind

Cradled presence, life divine