ten lights of letting go






Tell me why the spirits
play in the skin of the dead leaves,
clacking as they twirl themselves
into the baby sky.

The wind is an old man,
a voiceless bellow
speaking in the movement of all things.

The poem is the journey of the eye
speaking to the heart.
How hunger stirs the hand
to lift like leaves and write.

I have begun to believe
that nothing ever really dies.

We change our clothes. We break our wings.
We fall, we sleep.
The seasons lay down over us
while we listen to our mother

who's breathing
reminds us of everything.

She is the sunrise, the moon's face,
the language of stones, the scent of rain on the earth
coming.

She is the plain sparrow who loves me. The eagle.
The constant warmth of the bear in the den.

Put away your tears for the lost things.
If you can call them back to you,

or open your ten lights of letting go
to hold the next good thing.

witch in the garage





In the middle of the night
things were simple,
a party of coyotes
dancing and woo-wooing.

The next day the witch in leggings,
black hair pointing to the damp grass,
talked about the table she set.

She stood in the meadow looking for scraps
they may have left,
listed off the menu: dead bunnies, salmon,
this and that.

All day you wonder why.
She has a baby you know. Raises chickens
and sometimes coyotes like to steal
the weakest.

Drag it to the field. Bless each feather.
Perhaps she's trading one thing for another.
Here take the trash, the what's-left-over.

But then she talks about trimming
the fir by her upstairs window, so she can see
when they come, for blood,

for the song in their bellies.






c2012 T.L.Stokes (all rights reserved)