before i go i want
to gaze at the garnet bodies
of wild strawberries so humble
in the dirt
i want to bend my knees
onto the sweet sweet ground
i want to feel round redness
between my fingers
soft as oxygen
i want to eat their simple humility
and find it
delicious
j. pratt-walter. ⓒ 2024
It was the usual morning news gone cold
at the reading of it. In the glen the heron
still marches on bent-pencil legs as below,
cut-throat trout watches, dangerously near,
arching her mouth open and closed
with her story on the state of things.
The usual news is heard so often our ears
and eyes have gone cold to all the terror:
Why guns and bombs get made.
How guns and bombs unmake.
J. Pratt-Walter 3/29/2024
Photo by me, Long Beach Peninsula
This is what we were created for, Crones!
Children grown, society and workplace duties
all behind us. Sterling wisdom—awake!
Our world needs us to stand tall as Sequoia, to remember
and strive for justice, to fight for critical change.
To heal.
Let us claim our wisdom, turn loose our Kraken-powers
against the assault of Mother Earth. We all know
what is wrong.
Everything we do matters.
Everything.
Raise our collective voices! Come Crones and Spinsters,
come Grandmothers and Hags!
This is our moment,
this is our planet: caring together with purpose.
The shoulders of time are calling us to stand upon their
height--
This is what we were made for, Sisters!
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2024
Photo by JPW, Pride Parade
May you sleep the sleep of my old dog,
soft, yielding and unquestioning.
May peace sift through your body
like a whisper, riding on
the white fur
of a dog's love.
May you receive the adoration
you need, the saintly love of
canines,
unceasing: forward, backward and right now,
ready to guide you through the
Mystery
and all the joy and grief dogs already understand
in every snuffle in their body.
J. Pratt-Walter, 2/16/2024
FIRST POEM
this is how
love makes invisible marks
on the vivid heart
beyond the heart,
how our hallelujah blood
hallows, --o joy—everything!
two of us evolving to a single
legs-arms-necks-lips knotwork
passion of starved skin,
these hands
an untimid touch
these breasts was pink ever so pink?
i am drawn and colored
everywhere by your love-
artistry
eyes become sighs and
breathe yes,
our story still plays inside me
nothing but you, eyes like
springtime
even your homely feet wear
my love stamped into their
soles
from the ancestors to me to you,
glorious day of days! is any day!
holding dearly you
inside it
j. pratt-walter, 2/13/2024
make
the heart
everything
passion
pink-colored
artistry
sighs
yes
nothing
but you
love
glorious
dearly
you
j. pratt-walter 2/14/24
This is the sacrament of being together
in our shared time. This is it. This is real.
Nothing extraneous, no barriers.
Nothing craved and nothing
missing.
Just water, sky and land
and how the world lifts birds
to flight. Just soil and rain reviving
a parched earthworm and tending
all the dropped seeds, all the daylight
words
I hold for you right here in my workaday hands,
no worries or blame to intrude,
only the remarkable grace of two
beings leaning
into each other like this. We smile and take
a slow breath, knowing that we
recognize
a sacrament when we’re in it.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2024
how? in the glitter-snow and
iron-ice no warmly
but world-tilt
sun-milk
below arrowhead
stars,
a small simmer
.
how? earthworm snout
starts her plow,
tilling the yarn
of earth with her gut.
sky drip behind the
untils,
until a code robin sings and
.
now o patient seed labor open
. . .thy husk
now in the hunger of animals
eggs unroll into flower
buds
fallingly into almost near-
. . .spring
j. pratt-walter, © 2024
