Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
The World is a Savage Place
The world is a savage place.
Have you read the news today?
Surveyed rural highways,
An elegy to wildlife speared by cars like arrows from the crossbow?
Felt life fade from the one clutched in your arms?
Seen a man sink to his knees as you whisper
“She’s gone”?
Embraced a weeping mother as you offer
“I’m sorry”?
Well I have.
I have and I have
Tried to untell tragedies
Tried to unsee carnage
Tried to unread newsprint
Tried to unspell the words sprawled out in bold caps
WAR, TERRORISM, RACISM, GUN VIOLENCE, PANDEMIC, OBITUARY
But these words stretch around the world
Spanning 360 degrees
Ending on the page before me
Next to which I scrawl the words
LIFE, LOVE, BEAUTY, GRACE
Reminding me that although tragedy is never far
That life is a gift to be lived
That love is a wellspring that never dries
That beauty unfolds fresh each day
That grace follows beauty
If you wait for it
Watch for it
Open your heart to it.
The world is a savage place
But scrawled in the spaces
Spanning 360 degrees
The world is also a place overflowing with
LIFE, LOVE, BEAUTY, GRACE.
Moon Prayer
Here in the twilight hour
The day serves up the night
On a round moon silver platter.
I am driving, carving my way
Down an unknown road that feels like home.
At this hour, the earth is lovely.
Cloaked in silver,
She falls quiet,
Because all things are sacred.
Even the dirt glows holy.
So I stop my car to gaze in spectator wonder
At this luminous rock that feeds the earth
Cool night, beaming light
This underside of life
In which I bathe in moonlight,
Dream in rainbow,
Abandon all shame.
Under night’s cover
I embrace my fear of a world that may walk away
Because I am gossamer, so fragile.
And it may be too late,
Because I am alone
In a world full of movement
Where stillness is the only place I can find myself.
Motionless, I pray under a giant moon
Who spills her silver light
Over a canvas of earth
And fills my eyes with stars.
And on this road that feels like home,
I become pure magic
An essence of passing twilight splendor.
Here in this twilight hour
Tucked between day and night.
Soft Body
They say to love your body
This soft, generous Madonna
Who feeds you life
You say that you could never be happy
Inside these curves that cradle you
That crave and purge
Your armor is a stubborn skin
But even armor breaks down
Weak-kneed in the hands of shame
You offer yourself
Limbs tied
Body forged into the shape of desire
But bodies are built for more than survival
Evolved to feed from the inside
Until finally satisfied
With more than crumbs
You say it’s impossible
To find love when
Lost inside your own skin
Lacking nothing but good enough
Empty enough
To see right through pale moon skin
A ghost half-alive
A heart that beats with time
As memory
Where I was once just like you
Lost inside a soft body
Paper thin
Pale moon skin
Folded up
Into the shape of you