You Are Needed

The world lay sprawled before her, there,

and there, careless as a yawn,

but she could not look ahead.

The past kept strolling by,

catching her up like wires bound

 to fenceposts of strife.

“You

are needed,

a voice, your hands

two eyes, even the nose you despise”

sang the sand under

her feet, called the frogs, cried

the old ones nearly empty

with dementia.

She was sure the Earth had fallen away

from the hem of her feet, but

she did not realize

it flowed back together behind her in unity,

holding her up all along.

And that moment, her voice—

ah, but her true voice, 

her tomorrow eyes 

there, and there... 


And the world,

it made ready

to listen and to be seen.

J. Pratt-Walter, 10/2/2016

Onward

I saw you look, then

look away.  Sure, my pelvis

kept tilting me down the sidewalk,

but the orchestra in my center went

silent.

Dear face:  Keep pointing forward.

Do not confine me in

that frozen place

again.

You looked, turned away…

Still,

I accept that glance as something.  

Brow down,

I measure the sidewalk

with my onwardness,

unseen wounds stepping my feet along.

J. Pratt-Walter, 7/8/2016

Black Cat

I walk in shadows

like midnight's missing cat –

oh, to see the sun again, some

unmade day, to draw near you,

hungry for light. . .

but this thin lost animal

is silent as rests between the notes

of your songs,

an eclipse without a passage

to hope.

J. Pratt-Walter
6/2016

Drum

If you don’t want

to march to another’s

drum,

don’t hand them

your drumsticks.

J. Pratt-Walter

4/2016

Winking in the Heart

So this Holy book

 arrived in her being like a ballad

waiting to be written,

where fresh sun painted over winter’s

brown hut.

Seasons were her Bible,

her faith a quiet star

in the center of wherever

she landed.

It was not a faith to go to war for –

no, it was born to go to Love for,

it lives as a silent cipher

created to extract peace

out of fear and war,

winking in the Heart of all hearts.

J. Pratt-Walter

2/29/2016

Unspoken

Sometimes it’s all the
unspoken things
that hit you the hardest –
those shy hopes, those reveries
 and sharp wants,
all the mirrors you want to face but can’t.
Maybe that’s why I sometimes write
in second person –
it becomes like someone who understands
just how it can be, you know?
Second person never feels lonely,
even when togetherness
is a singular impossibility.
It’s the unspoken kenning of your heart
for its blood,
though who really knows another?
You haven’t heard, but
electrons have painted and carved you
into my mind and being, always present,
unbidden and unspoken.

J. Pratt-Walter
1/24/2016