Some Days

Some days all I can do

is open my mouth

and drink

the wild fitful

beauty

of all the world

seething through

the tides of my every

breath.     

J. Pratt-Walter

4/19/2019

Voice in the Seed

When we most need to create peace

is when we least want to.

Anger, hate and shame break us,

denial and despair kindle

their own dark flames,

burning down peace

and its home within our soul.

We are all wearing our motley scars,

our deep festering

emotional puncture wounds,

whether by the hands of others

or by self-infliction,

so cold and solid, an anvil in a glacier.

Someday we will write that last ending.

May it be from that private place of peace

that looks for the good

yet accepts the difficult times too.

Yes, that’s what I hope: Peace asks

that I let myself out on a silk string,

gentle as the voice in the seed

into my own end.

J. Pratt-Walter

NaPoWriMo © 4/14/2019

Alder

You are a tree

disguised as a poem.

Can you smell

the first rains of August

licking the dust off

your tired leaves?

Can you feel birds

sharing your branches

with a radical sky?

You are a poem

disguised as a tree.

There you were rooted,

a magnificent alder,

until you gave up your life

to chainsaw and mill

that these words can ramble across

your papery dead body.

J. Pratt-Walter

© 4/12/2019

Some Days

Some days

I have forgotten the password

to my life, or Lost the connection

or 404, Page not found. 

If I were a starfish

I could grow a briny new limb.

If I were grass, decapitation

uplifts the wand of growth,

but this meager pilgrim has misplaced

her map.

Today

I am untethered

and can’t see myself

in the sharp curvature of Earth.

If you find me wandering,

remind me of the deep sky in my eyes

and the pure and holy home in my heart.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 4/10/2019.

The Tally of the Days

What does 60 years get you

but the thrumming tides of a heart

almost too full of thanks

to keep beating?

Sometimes these todays,

sometimes the click of years gone by

seem like a cryptic wound where

pain lives, hidden deep in your roots  –

you feel at once the burdens,

the joys and levity of life like flowers before

the rational mind ever notices.

Looking back, I welcome them

equally.

Be careful where you walk –

Love has spilled over when and where-

ever our shadows met and touched,

even almost 60 years later.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 4/8/2019

NaPoWriMo day #8

Cloud-Fall

Every lining

has a silver cloud.

Into every rain

a life must fall.

Not all

who are lost wander.

I can write

the reading on the wall.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 4/7/2019

NaPoWriMo day 7

Mother of All

As I unwrap

the package of this day

I feel so very small.

But size

has no real meaning

when Love is Mother of all.

J. Pratt-Walter

NaPoWriMo 4/5/2019

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, day 3 of NaPoWriMo

For the children of the Newtown Massacre 

In darkness this dense,

light never finds an escape.

There is no sense or comprehension:

it is Absolute Zero of the soul.

There is no bullet more devastating

than the horror that steals

your child.

The girl who wanted

to be an angel for Christmas

has taken the stage in heaven’s pageant

before her baby teeth fell.

His wide smile just learned to

sound out words, those small feet

lived for dancing.

These tiny starfish hands

just felt the baby kick

right there in mommy’s tummy!

Where was God

among death’s obscene debris?

I want to believe but God

remains silent.

Our children are bleeding

rivers of roses

for your gun rights.

They were flower buds

now resting in the arms of the saints.

Mr. Rogers, are you welcoming

20 new neighbors?

He smiles, holy and deep, then

hangs his red cardigan

by the gate, greeting each child

wearing the blood of

another.

"It’s a beautiful day in the

neighborhood, little lambs.

Won't you be my neighbor?"

Meanwhile, back home

the time and temperature

are stuck at Absolute Zero, BANG!

again, again.

J. Pratt-Walter, (c) 2019

Symphony, day two NaPoWriMo

If I could, I would drink

the feathery words

of this sky

and pinned there,

willingly die for the right

poems.

Should the home in me call out 

to the Home of Forever in you,

listen well –

Its cello is burning

in my ears; its symphony

cannot be unwrit.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 4/2/2019

Meeting the Moment, day 1, NaPoWriMo

If ever we choose each other

for love, it will be with eyes

spread wide open, by the nature of

our being completely alive

together,

meeting this moment face-on.

Even if we are only infinitesimal

dust motes on God’s flash drive,

heart sings out to heart

as it wishes,

no boundaries, no judgement,

no limits.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 4/1/2019