ALTAR: The Last Poem of 2023

Can you see that my entire body

is an altar?  My eyes are lit candles,

my lungs breathe out hope’s incense. 

My heart is a shaman’s drum pulsing

out life’s daily rhythm, tempered

with a searing chalice of honesty

lettered in my blood.

 

It is New Year’s Eve, yet the graceful snake

of each minute, every butterfly second

circles on time’s perpetual altar cloth

as each pregnant moment births its own

new year and another chance to do

what is right and true in what will become

the Auld Lang Syne of your times.

 

So what gifts will you set on your cloth?

Will your hands and feet be an offering

and landmark of accountability and compassion?

In the tilting lever of our days, be an altar.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 12/31/2023

Toward Goodness: A Reading for Solstice

 How can I hold fear,

how can sadness dim the day

when I step into the beauty of this

gleaming new dawn?

The fulcrum of the Earth tilts

toward goodness and I will

ride along, drinking deep the hours,

worshipping as if this were my

last chance.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

GIVING THANKS

The old dog is snoring like an oboe.  We have so much

comfort, so much gratitude.  But a large piece of wind

plays me the anguish of people like long-distance calls,

 

extinguished in a midnight vigil where no moon rises,

where daylight is an infinity away.  Maybe hope rests,

tingling, in a different neighborhood, one of unknown

 

zip code. It’s harsh, isn’t it, to keep war’s terrible face

in mind as we share a magnificent meal of plenty

and grace as all the suffering in the world clamors below

 

every forkful in our home.  The sleeping dog

moans.  If I were a person of shallow religion I might quote

unfounded platitudes here about “working in mysterious

 

ways” or “everything happens for a reason”

as videos are blurred so all of us screen-watchers

drift past the horrors like a susurration of so many starlings.

 

Can we grasp the entire picture? This is how we have to do it

in America, with mouths full of unblinking compassion.

With holes in our collective stockings of serving ourselves first.

With hearts the size of suffering nations holding onto every

beat toward peace.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

 

ALL FOR LOVE

They say to never give your

whole heart, but I’ve

 

a heart for every age

I’ve been and I’ve given

 

every single one of them

to love, all for love,

 

and I would give

them all again.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

Understory

 In an old forest, the tree canopy and trunks

get all the glory, the mainmast and sails in a

great ship of brown and green. 

The forest floor is mycorrhizal connections,

a fungal nervous system veining soil and water.

The understory 

is an unsung margin where one ecology touches

another as an in-between, not claiming much sky

or soil but joining both.

Come pause there with me in a hymn-green

circle of moss embracing the friable ground

where smooth white quartz pebbles wait like punctuation.

Wild roses and salal leaves like ears become low sanctuary walls,

and a ring of attentive fir trees holds us in from the beyond.

If I take your hand and lead you in, know that you

are quietly treasured.  My eyes were lit to tell you this.

 

There a stump waits as a seat where we balance

the goodness of this afternoon against the

mixed choir of feelings we carry like so much wood.

Here we are greenly blessed.  Here the rest of the world

is silenced.  Here time has flowed off to change

into something more comforting,

and so will I, even if it is just soft eyes and a kind word

as we sit back-to-back on this margin of connection:

Yes, there is this understory reaching between us.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

Clothing Giveaway

I pulled on a sweater of an amazing woman

who died.  Hot pink, comfortably broken in.

I liked this color better on Mom, it said.  It’s not

your shade.  Aw, come on.

And her bustline?  So much more forward than yours,

like her great heart.  More.

I’ll wear it anyway, careful to be respectful.

I’m a neutral in training for hot pink.

 

As I placed the pointy elf hat on my head,

a pink chuckle. Yes, wear the hat.  The world needs

more hilarity.

I agree.  And it goes with my hilarious new glasses.

Hmmph.

 

Child, I guarantee you’ll have more gumption with us, the sweater said

begrudgingly. I guess you’ll do.

But Christ, don’t even THINK about wearing

the wild shamrock socks!

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

With You

 If we rebirth, do we also

redeath? Let’s consider that

and what meaning it could bring--

 

and what is either but a mirror and passage

to the other, a sly animated

palindrome on acts of life and time?

 

No matter what, I want

to be born anew with you.

I want to die again and again

with always always you.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

Summer Night on the Porch

We sit on the porch and watch the sun harvest the last

of the light, you here because I pulled you outside to quietly

ponder the feel of time stroking our arms.

 

I would gladly trade a year of my life just to sit

on this porch with you, breathing in the mimosa flowers,

the old white dog shedding her hair all over our feet.

 

I would lean back in grandpa’s wooden chair not minding

the hardness because you are near, and hear the first cricket of summer

begin his luminous song.

 

We could sit here remembering the weight of all our years,

then, a meteor!  And our hands would reach out to each other,

fingers linking as if they had minds of their own.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, ⓒ 2023

Toward Goodness: A Poem for Solstice

How can I feel fear,

how can sadness dim the day

when I step into the beauty of this

gleaming new dawn?

The fulcrum of the Earth tilts

toward goodness and I will

ride along, I will open, worshipping as if

this is our last day.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

The Harp of Summer

In the meadow the orchard grass

stands tall as July, tickling the belly

of a glad old rescue horse.

 

I lift my face to the light, eyes closed,

but I can still see.  The red color of life

illuminates my eyelids, my own circulation

sharing what it feels like to speak

with the noonday sun.

I will drink this good glowing light.  I will

inhale it to survive the unspoken hardships.

 

The great harp of summer, the insects and birds,

resounds with silver glissandi.  The velvet grass

bends to the wind like I lean to your speech,

faint and a little garbled.  You had a

stroke; you still haven’t accepted that

six years later.

 

But the whispering leaves still unwrinkle their glory.

The green apples are hopeful syllables clustering

on the old Gravenstein.  Some have already fallen.

But we are still here together. The sun plays upon us

evenly.  Pushing your chair, we come out into

that grand orchestra of life.

I can hear gratitude somewhere inside me.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

 

  

Amphibian

I want to love like an

amphibian      drinking you   

through my pores like gleaning oxygen

from water

precious and divine

 

I want to love with my

entire being      my mind tasting

the rare wit of your life story

my gut recognizing your bright

wise everything-goodness

 

I want to love like the making

of spring      receiving the miracle

of your truest self right into the grace

of my secret salamander skin

 

Look, it is raining love

right now

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

Garden of Beltane

 

Early morning, the fertile daylight blooms

       as song sparrows praise the sun, these hours

       teeming with the Making-Magic of Earth.

 

Again cottonwood buds fill the air

with wild perfume. Their scent is a breath

of honey-sweet potential and no matter my age,

my heart skips and sings.

 

Amid Spring’s swelling promise, the substance

of my soul fills with unspeakable longing.

       Beloved Mother Earth, so many Springs

have smiled on my face, asking, angling, softening.

 

Beltane’s garden sprouts in the shimmering soil,

opening me again into possibility’s womb, a young Medusa

singing among her awakened serpents, Aphrodite

lifting her gown of flowers with a smile, Artemis

stroking the newborn fawn she will later hunt.

 

J. Pratt-Walter © 2023

I Have Never Been a Sailor

I have never been a Sailor

but I feel the sea roiling below me

on a broken-cloud morning.

We have so much to teach

each other, the tides and I—

 

an ocean knows how to never be still,

how to be furiously strong and wild

yet dance so delicately with the moon.

How to hold something up when

it is flotsam. How to claim what sinks.

 

Sea, can you hear me?  I am

singing all the harmonies to the

drum of your pulse.  I can show you

how to wear bones and how to move

through air wearing gravity out loud.

 

I can light fires while you can only extinguish.

See?  I am igniting my curiosity right here

on your sandy shoulder.  Watch me bend down

and silently kneel before your mysteries,

folding my legs like sorrow feels.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

crucible

listen      the desecrated earth cries out

she heaves in catastrophic tongues

of storms

drought

floods

fires

disease

listen    these are the last moments to act

this is the alarm clock and crucible of endings

this is when the children must teach the adults

there is no option of both survival and failure to act

so pick one, people

choose wisely     not just for yourself

but for all the look-ahead lives to come

 

J. Pratt-Walter NaPoMo 4/1/2023

 

Save These Things Forever

Save the smallest wild things, the overlooked

ordinary things—earthworms, baby birds, moss, deep soil.

Hold safe the green-brown smell of the woods

in spring and fall.  Save all the sequoias.

Keep safe the salamanders in the tiny stream that leaks from

the hillside by my childhood home, save their eggs,

silent as pebbles.

Enfold with safety the magic lanterns of fireflies

and the Aurora Borealis and how my feet sound

sweeping through dry leaves in autumn.

Keep forever the voices of those beloved to me—

save all the unspoken love that overflows the

bucket of my heart.

Save always the sharp awe that envelops me when

in the presence of the still and untamed beings that have been

my true saviors for all my days.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

tomorrow

tomorrow

i will read the newspaper

thousands dead, the earth shivering

there is no way to save them

 

but for a few.  tomorrow and

the next few days tens of thousands

perish beneath the failure of humans

to care enough to build properly

and the ones still living

 

will need a target for blame

all the dead people lips periwinkle blue

hands gone cold as frozen meat

all the grieving ones the suffering

animals the weary survivors

 

and then, a newborn

pulled from rubble and bent rebar

still wearing her umbilical cord

and we know one tiny miracle

is salvation for the watchers

 

who hear her dusty voice on the news,

the cry heard everywhere we can listen.

 

j. pratt-walter  © 2/22/23

 

By the Forest

Behind the beaver dam, the flatness

of backed water and mud pulls your step up

 short.  Tadpoles ripple like soundwaves.

Once plow horses plodded across this former stream

on a hand-milled lumber bridge

right here. The bones of the mill and the fanged wheel

of its blade have turned to their own graves nearby.

 

God is watching us through the eyes

of heron and newt.

The pileated woodpecker plies

her staccato wooden drum in kinship with us

on a dead fir snag. A sapphire dragonfly

touches down on my arm like a wish,

or perhaps a tiny redemption dressed in blue.

 

The horse spirits look back, rolling the cauldrons

of their cinnamon eyes in surprise -- the place

where dad showed us the very last furrow

they plowed is now a forest

full grown,

and I, even older.

Jennifer Pratt-Walter, © 2016, 2023

Doorway

 

    Peace can slip into your doorway

        when you stop holding on to your war.

          

            J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

            

          

To Find Meaning

Sometimes it is enough to search outward

into the light for purpose, meaning and truth.

Sometimes we must stand still in the loving darkness

when the light comes searching for us.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2022