how? in the glitter-snow and
iron-ice no warmly
but world-tilt
sun-milk
below arrowhead
stars,
a small simmer
.
how? earthworm snout
starts her plow,
tilling the yarn
of earth with her gut.
sky drip behind the
untils,
until a code robin sings and
.
now o patient seed labor open
. . .thy husk
now in the hunger of animals
eggs unroll into flower
buds
fallingly into almost near-
. . .spring
j. pratt-walter, © 2024
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
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
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
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
Oh, we see the stars, all right,
their brittle cold mystery
but if you took the gentlest
of knives and pushed open
the top of my head like clay,
in there are all the warm constellations
one could dream of, a star nesting
in every fingertip, Polaris in each eye,
a Milky Way down my core.
Here are all my unmapped stars, the candles
of my small hopes, oh, and look,
there are a few of yours there too!
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2022
I was never popular
and no one called me cute
but never did I grab a gun
and then commence to shoot.
I didn’t turn to drugs and booze
nor stupefied with dope.
The only help I somehow found
was a secret bowl of hope.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2022
Look at my hands,
all the wide years penned into an
atlas of wrinkles,
blue snakes of veining, scars
where blood
spilled its iron for a cause.
Look at my palm, then
turn it over to see rough-knuckle
memories
going back and back to the time
of all the grandmothers and great
grandmothers
for as long as there have been
hands.
Through me the ancestors still
feel the living soil,
they hum to a newborn with a poem
of holding,
they cradle a beloved face at the
last breath.
Their lives are printed upon all
my cells,
they speak from inside with every
gesture,
behind every grasp, scrape,
caress.
Look at my hands, how they have
been reborn
in my children, still holding the
pencil
that writes the next story.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2021
gathering dreams in our nets and
letting them go
in the same liminal moment.
Our ship has rudder and sails
but they are useless when the
sea is stacked
so tall against us. Still, we must move on.
Love comes in with the tide
but we, the explorers, cannot
predict when
or from where it flows, not by
moon-clock,
not by the hidden language of
our bodies or stars,
but by its own curious
compulsions.
Sometimes we are lifted light as
foam on
the crest of life. Sometimes we are night’s own anchor.
Sometimes we are lost at sea, praying
like a jellyfish on the strand,
crying out for saltwater solace
in the arms of the deep.
J. Pratt-Walter, (c) 2020
