Friends,
We only have a few days of poetry left this month. It’s been a really special May, and my gratitude just continues to grow for this community.
Chii migwetch.
Don’t forget, we have a pop-up zoom poetry reading TONIGHT from 7-8pm ET for anyone who would like to join!
You can come and read one poem, or you can simply come and listen. Hope to see you there!
Today’s word, I think, is incredibly evocative, and I really enjoyed writing my poem from a tender place. I hope it’s medicine to you.
Return, my love, to the heart of things, where you were first breathed into existence, when you were fanned into flame, where you were unfurled from the Holy Spiral that created you. And once you get there, throw the compass in the water and watch it sink to the bottom of the ocean—only you know your own depths like this, so bring your tender body to your own sacred surrender. Let yourself go, my love, and watch as your feet grow roots that find their home in the flourishing soil that formed you, your ancestors reaching up to you just as you reach to them, the entire Universe willowing in delight that you have finally come home.
There used to be a lever that I would whack
with hurried abandon
when I reached the end of the line
eager for my thoughts not to be interrupted
by the mechanics.
What luxury to find the key
to smoother composition
and a pinkie that could find
Return.
But oh, the joy, when words came in uninterrupted freedom across the page and far beyond in streams of unhinged wanderings.
Then one day the confines of grammar loosed themselves as well
and prose turned into verse.
Return became a way to enter
the deeper mysteries of the source.
Return, I whisper…
please return.
But you are gone.
And yet I still find you,
in the whisper of the wind,
in the dancing rainbows in our kitchen.
I find you in the early dawn hours
in my dreams.
You are still there
hovering around me
at all times of the day.
You were never really gone…
You keep returning every day.