Nature's Clockwork

 

Salmon smolts hatch and ride the

flippers of the river rolling to the sea

 

just as the red-mouth suckers

swim upward to tail-turn gravel

and spawn, leaving their DNA as ancient

as being a vertebrate, then feeding the eagles

with their dying.

 

This is the clockwork circle dance of

Nature, calling all to her intricate web

of symbiosis.  Nature tells time

 

only with the eons unfolding

her work, and here, you and I

 

together in this miracle of her art,

riding the complex hands

of Nature’s inscrutable watch.

 

J. Pratt-Walter

NaPoMo 4/12/2022

Holy Week Church Service

After the church service,

the real holiness of the altar is still alive

in the work of women picking up each Communion cup 

with tiny glass clinks, washing and putting away,

in dusting the altar now stripped

of the comforts of the world,

and with the quiet sweeping up of 

candle ash, dirt and dropped Body of Christ

crumbs from pilgrim and priest alike, the peaceful hush

of ashes to ashes, dust to dust with each

tender stroke of the broom.

J. Pratt-Walter, NaPoMo April 2022

As We All Must Do Someday

 

Maybe the long beard of night

is held forever in the obsidian eyes

of a trapped rabbit waiting

for the wolf, holding in the frantic drum

of its heart the knowledge it must stop, yield

to whatever sanctity comes with

letting everything go, as we all must do someday.

 

I don’t know if this is true, but I feel

an echo somewhere inside me that says

when faced with imminent death,

a calm cloak will wrap me in sudden extreme

peace in knowing how the course of things

comes to this last unspeakable moment

 

where questions fall away like those who

escaped fire by plummeting willingly,

like the falling doves of the Triangle Shirtwaist girls

or the brave ones stepping off the edge of the Twin Towers

as their last fierce choice,

with a peace ringing in their heart and looking straight

into the pupils of Mystery claiming them back

as we all must do someday.

J. Pratt-Walter

Like A Miracle

When I hunger for air

it is always there guiding

lungs awake like a miracle.

When I thirst, water

finds my parched mouth

wet as a miracle.

 

When I long for love

it greets me from everything

natural and in the eyes

of my animals sparkling

like a miracle.

 

When life needs living

it’s there inside me, a hearth

and homestead in my heart,

even if I overlooked the miracles

of air, water, nature and

all those loving eyes.

 

J. Pratt-Walter 

4/3/2022 

icon

let us hoist

our words up like

flowers, like flags

alive in their sky,

 

the same sky that rocks

the tenderness of you

as a holy icon

 

which you are.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, NaPoMo 4/3/2022

Night Sky 2

Continents of stars, infinite

stars…Yet I will not bow down

to them.  Instead I will stand in grandeur

like the silver maples whispering

along a favorite path

 

and arch out my limbs

to gather up their lights in the basket

of my mind.

 

The stars are as alive in their

rambles as I am beneath their

sharp glories.  We are shining

together, we are bioluminescent

in this pregnant night where

no questions curdle about if I matter

or not.

 

J. Pratt-Walter

NaPoMo 4/1/2022