Opening Pandora's Box

Justice for Women

is Justice for Mother Earth,

and too great for mere words,

but our XX

Chromosome power

has been fallowing

for generations.

 

We are the lips to

Pandora’s riotous box.

We are stretching up

and primed

to spear her light

 

scribing it into our

collective mythology

for healing,

our dazzling souls

unleashed, flung

wide open with the lightning

of our XX convictions.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2021

Of Sharp Edges

Blades sing to me in a language of angles.  Anvil pruners, simple edge

90 degrees to a flat plate, ratchet-cut tends to crush.  Today they taste roses.

Noon calls for hedge pruners with the graceful scalloped blades.

I press the sharpening stone like a small gravity,

circling my arm, wrist locked.  My hand is a moon in orbit

in a low angle to squeeze weaponry onto twin lips of steel.

Later I take up a small honest sickle to battle blackberries.

I have honed it well – I test the razor with a finger

and am cut so easily I hardly feel it.  My blood sanctifies my efforts.

My pocketknife that I found grumps with resentment.  I have left it dull

too long.  It reminds me that I can’t change circumstances,

but I can alter the angle of my life to them,

sharpen my blades, prune out the unnecessary.

My favorite sharpness:  A massive antique scythe.

It is made to move through, to level.

It sings a primal music, Sheshh!  Sheshh!

with each swing. On the backstroke I bow to its power and purpose,

making way, never sorry for doing so.  It has mown miles,

the ripe barley, the gold sheen on the wheat.

What needs to be edited or excised in your life?

Pick up some smooth-voiced shears or artful Japanese saw.

Note the angle of how it speaks.  Polish the edge well and begin.

J. Pratt-Walter 5/26/2020

In the Belly of Forever

The unspeakably large

Universe

    wears the imprint of

all the passion

my slight being can hold.

The Bang went, and I,

still unmade,

went along, and there,

in the belly of Forever,

you too.

We are

pinpoints on end,

inconsequential atoms

when alone.

The electrons of these words

are too lazy and soft

to be taken seriously,

but the Universe is dilute

compared to the white Gravity

of my Love.

J. Pratt-Walter

12/31/2014, reworked 11/2017