In This Isolation

       Today as the sun lifts there are

not enough Alleluia words.

Outside the door, lilacs wrap me

in a shawl of sweetness.

The horse meets me with a nicker

of gladness.  I open the gate and

she trots through clover alight with dew

that flies from her hoofs in tiny beacons.

The pink azalea shakes her sex-scented skirts.

Solomon’s Seal offers its inverted wine flutes

 beneath an atlas of new leaves.

A late owl croons goodbye to night

and the blue heron croaks back,

waving her wing-wands through the sky.

How the fern heads unroll is a symmetry

almost too perfect to bear.

All is precious in this moment. 

You are precious. We are precious.

We need not regret separation.

Isolation in this Alleluia-morning is a gift.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2020

To Mother Earth, Alleluia

Dear Mother Earth

Someday our souls will slip from life

like water off a swan

and I say Alleluia.

They say this is your day,

Earth Day

but I know each moment,

they all belong to you

and I say Alleluia.

Oh Earth, I feel the sharp song

of our connection. I feel

the spear of your heartache

and hurt, I feel green everything,

green-blue, green-gold, green-black.

Everything is alive all in

a tumble of miracles

and I say Alleluia.

And now, Holy Earth,

I see it:  our ways must cease.

We must surrender, closing eyes

and giving breath over to you,

always only you

and I say Alleluia.

J. Pratt-Walter, (c) 4/22/2020

50^th Anniversary of Earth Day

Holding Water with Open Fingers NaPoWriMo #15

To the Maker:

Send us your mercy.

We desperately seek that place

where awareness lives.  We

need each other beneath your blanket of sky.


We need you, Plant and Animal People,

we need you, living Air and Water,

 we need you, Soil that cups our feet.

we need you, Fire of justice.

Roll healing down like sun after thunder,

like rain in the dry-blind desert.


We try to hold love to ourselves like a

possession.  But it’s grasping moonlight,

it’s trying to hold water with open fingers.

Let us feel the rainwater as it dances upon us.

Let us drink, share and savor the taste,

knowing we taste the tip of heaven.

J. Pratt-Walter 4/14/2020

Water Has No Secrets NaPoWriMo #13

Water has no secrets.

Fish, stones, the wide winds –

it shares with them equally.


I have this feeling near water

like I can say anything

and it won’t judge.


As I touched ripples across water’s skin,

it tasted me and found me

still a little green

like a banana picked too early.


Water has a way of knowing too much.

Not only can it keep no secrets –


it told all mine to the fish and stones

and the licking winds


so now the creek, the river

and the entire Pacific Ocean

know how impossibly long and durably

I have loved you.


JPW , NaPoWriMo  4/13/2020

An Unordinary Easter NaPoWriMo #12

I walk alone beside the stream heavy with dread that

I can’t shut down: angry at, afraid of

the toxic political maelstrom infecting our nation


but what use is my worry to the creek?

Down there in the shallows

sea-run cutthroat trout are spawning,

spangling in sun spikes through shade,

careless of the state of the world.


Along the way, alders dangle their catkins

and whisper pink into their first leaf-buds.

Maples hang their chartreuse bloom to the winds,

unconcerned of the shocking events:

Corporations before people.  Death to the uncounted poor

and the brown.  Children caged.

The business of money above the needs of life.


Where the stream opens into a small glen resting

between two hills, the water slows as it snakes along.

Eagles line its curves, picking off the spawn-weary fish

who give themselves up in the old way


but what use is my despair in the habits of

eagles and fish?  I want to tell them that what I seek

cannot be found among the roads of humans.

That I find solace in how my senses note

 such ordinary things as bud-break, of fish scales

silvering under the sun, of maple pollen

erasing the clarity of my windshield, of how it feels

to grasp dinner in your talons.

How it is to easily give up your life when

laying or fertilizing eggs defines your purpose.


From the bank I release a tiny boat,

a half of a walnut shell.  If I could place my fears

in its hold, I would, but what are fears to a seed remembering

its wooden nature?  Let it run on

past the fish and trees, let it bob untouched

by eagles.  It is Easter


but what use is a day of resurrection

when the planet and its beings are the sacrifice?


J. Pratt-Walter
4/12/2020

Hope 2 NaPoWriMo #11

See how the winds

have shaped her hands to

hold hope?

So tenuous, it trembles

like a hummingbird’s heart.


She gently carries hope

to a nest in the midst

of the maelstrom and tilts it

into the bowl of tiny feathers and mosses.


Hope is so hard to cup.

She might need your help

when it seeps through the cracks

of her fingers.  Place your hands

like this around hers.  Together

it can be done.


When it hatches, when the nest

is no more, watch the wind pick up hope

and lay it softly into the welcome

of upraised palms.

J. Pratt-Walter © 2020

Letting Go

        My fingers are roping on

to all they can grasp

but the Universe says “Let go.”

My eyes are tying themselves

to things not to be seen

but the Universe says “Let go.”

My heart is fainting with

a planet’s desperation and disease

but the Universe says “Let go.” 

The Universe is squeezing itself

deep into my spirit

and tells me with love

“I am holding you.  We are all in this

together.  You are never

alone, even when letting go.”

J. Pratt-Walter (c) 2020

NaPoWriMo #10

A Wet Unity NaPoWriMo #9

This everyday miracle

unites us all.  The river skips onward

but trades its wet song

with every cell in every life.

The whole sea is found

in a single drop:  Hydrogen, oxygen,

sodium chloride,

niched in every corner

we name “life.”  My tides,

your waves fall and rise

in this unity of forever

simmering here in the sea

of our blood.

J. Pratt-Walter  © 2020

East Wind NaPoWriMo #7

        When I go, I want it to be

while the east wind is lowing

through the crack in the bedroom window.

At first, you think that sounds mournful.

 But really, such raw beauty

is quite companionable.

We’ll get along fine,

the east wind and me.  I love the expanse

of his unfathomable music.  He loves

the way I hear.

Listen for me among the fiddling branches

when the east wind roves free,

playing storms on wild November nights.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2020

Breath

I have called forth

breath from my breath,



but what can we do

when lungs resist, turn silent,



when the air itself

declines my invitation?


J. Pratt-Walter, (c) 2020

Hope NaPoWriMo #5

See how the winds

have shaped her hands to

hold hope?

So tenuous, it trembles

like a hummingbird’s heart.



She gently carries hope

to a nest in the midst

of the maelstrom and tilts it

into the bowl of tiny feathers and mosses.



Hope is so hard to cup.

She might need your help

when it seeps through the cracks

of her fingers.  Place your hands

like this around hers.  Together

it can be done.



When it hatches, when the nest

is no more, watch the wind pick up hope

and lay it softly into the welcome

of upraised palms.

J. Pratt-Walter, 4/5/2020

Message to the World NaPoWriMo #4

In the swing of my arms I know

I belong here.  My spirit is alive right here.

My childhood home, the old downtown:

Camas, Washington; Fern Prairie,

Ireland District, our woods –

we can never leave

each other.

Music and art bloom in us like

so many tulips, constellations of fireflies,

a dazzle of autumn leaves.  We construct home

with our arts.

I feel my lungs threshing oxygen

from the precious air.

My heart rocks the cage of my chest –

I look homeward and see forever.

Let us dare to keep on like this.

Friends, this is my real life! It is sacred.

No matter what,

I send my message to the world.

J. Pratt-Walter, 4/4/2020

Traveling Apart NaPoWriMo #3

 Even if we must pace our way apart

we are still neighbors and friends.

You nourish my being

and I, yours

with our small ways of knowing.

Let our stories make us friends

when caring hands cannot touch.

Carry my words, seekers and loners

and may the light of home

wherever that is

always find you safe.

J. Pratt-Walter

From This Day Forward NaPoWriMo #2

The air is heavy as war. While I make coffee,

the whole Earth holds its breath.


My eye that sees the future

is shaking.  We are in a prolonged

earthquake, but what topples is our lives.


The water is hot, the coffee beans

are perfectly ground.

We are balanced on the deadly cusp

of a pandemic. Today is the fulcrum

of our futures. My eye knows.


From this day forward

everything has changed, everything

will be different.  The air

is darkly gravid.  The French press

is ready.  The kitten is playing with her

string toy on the kitchen floor.


The Earth cannot breathe.


From this day forward

everything changes…



J. Pratt-Walter, 4/2/2020

Soliloquy NaPoWriMo #1

They say our air mustn’t cross paths

on the way to our lungs.


But I have companions in this isolation –

Sometimes when I look down

I see my mother’s legs

complete with knee-knobs, and my hands

wear her fingers shaped by arthritis.


My dad is visiting

when I glance into a mirror.

There his face shadows

my own:  his nose, the shape

of his smile walking over my mouth.



And how your eyes mapped every inch

of my skin -- all over me, tiny miracles

from you are here, so alive!

That’s when I realize we need not touch

to be touched.


J. Pratt-Walter, 4/1/2020