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

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

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