Inadequate

 Two lives, fragile

as spiderwebs, light

as dawn’s birdsong

are yanked away with a bomb back

into Mystery.

Crushed pelvis, they said, hip

pulled off its moorage,

 

where the skull of an

almost-born engaged in life’s

potential met the same finish

as that pelvis…a word

better made for berries

pressed into syrup, for grapes

dreaming of wine: crushed.

 

What is lost matters

between two failing pulse-beats,

among disconnected

 

bones,

where ditches of blood

lay open to places sanguinity

should never go,

 

where no poetry is even

slightly

adequate leaking from

my lapsed pen or along

the drowning corners of my eyes.

 

J. Pratt-Walter ©2022

This is about the Ukrainian pregnant woman from a bombed hospital.

First the baby, then the mother died.  Inspired by an AP shot seen round the world.

 

 

 

How It Shakes

                  I feel

 a small injured bird fluttering

                in the heart of

                     my heart

The great ship of Earth

               plows on

unmindful of bird, flutter

               or pulse

 

She herself is hurting

an unseen broken winged

          creature, sick

             and so

alone

 

Humans are the weapons

            that infect, ignite and

wring the life out of our planet

 

My eyes burn with rivers

              and oh, my heart

Mother Earth, my heart

                         how it shakes

 

J. Pratt-Walter  © 2020

Fallen Prayer

In the morning my prayer was a small earthworm stranded

in night’s dew on an unforgiving path.

Knees bent, I tenderly placed him in wet soil, my Amen.


At midday my prayer was the tumbled willow by the stream, still

unfurling her wands and catkins in long graceful whips.

I marveled at how the weather wove her patterns into my Amen.


Near dark my prayer was an injured thrush rolling in fright

in the brush.  She scolded me as I turned her over,

seeking the injury.  Maybe both a wing

and a leg were broken.  She could not stay upright, she could not

rest.  I contemplated taking her home, putting her in a box

with water and soft grasses, feeding her the worms. 


She watched me sideways then

partly closed her pale eyelids from the bottom up.

Her pulse was a thin vibration, her breathing a tangle.

I set her gently at the base of the fallen willow, covered her

with the kind grasses and walked away.  I have not yet found

an Amen. 


J. Pratt-Walter (c) 2020