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

Float and Fly

The only difference between floating

and flying is what you move through--

sensed from my perspective, a journey begun

so far back, far as life,

maybe farther than time’s wings.

 

In my circle of days, a brain steps sideways

spark by spark, slowly dissolving its own abilities

into a forecast of Dementia soup.

 

I pray some wholeness of Self will recall

how to float on that lake, lost as a nightless moon,

until flight releases me forward, face up

so I can see what comes next.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2022

 

The Tally of the Days

What does 60 years get you

but the thrumming tides of a heart

almost too full of thanks

to keep beating?

Sometimes these todays,

sometimes the click of years gone by

seem like a cryptic wound where

pain lives, hidden deep in your roots  –

you feel at once the burdens,

the joys and levity of life like flowers before

the rational mind ever notices.

Looking back, I welcome them

equally.

Be careful where you walk –

Love has spilled over when and where-

ever our shadows met and touched,

even almost 60 years later.

J. Pratt-Walter, © 4/8/2019

NaPoWriMo day #8