East Wind NaPoWriMo #7

        When I go, I want it to be

while the east wind is lowing

through the crack in the bedroom window.

At first, you think that sounds mournful.

 But really, such raw beauty

is quite companionable.

We’ll get along fine,

the east wind and me.  I love the expanse

of his unfathomable music.  He loves

the way I hear.

Listen for me among the fiddling branches

when the east wind roves free,

playing storms on wild November nights.

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

Hope NaPoWriMo #5

See how the winds

have shaped her hands to

hold hope?

So tenuous, it trembles

like a hummingbird’s heart.



She gently carries hope

to a nest in the midst

of the maelstrom and tilts it

into the bowl of tiny feathers and mosses.



Hope is so hard to cup.

She might need your help

when it seeps through the cracks

of her fingers.  Place your hands

like this around hers.  Together

it can be done.



When it hatches, when the nest

is no more, watch the wind pick up hope

and lay it softly into the welcome

of upraised palms.

J. Pratt-Walter, 4/5/2020

Message to the World NaPoWriMo #4

In the swing of my arms I know

I belong here.  My spirit is alive right here.

My childhood home, the old downtown:

Camas, Washington; Fern Prairie,

Ireland District, our woods –

we can never leave

each other.

Music and art bloom in us like

so many tulips, constellations of fireflies,

a dazzle of autumn leaves.  We construct home

with our arts.

I feel my lungs threshing oxygen

from the precious air.

My heart rocks the cage of my chest –

I look homeward and see forever.

Let us dare to keep on like this.

Friends, this is my real life! It is sacred.

No matter what,

I send my message to the world.

J. Pratt-Walter, 4/4/2020

Traveling Apart NaPoWriMo #3

 Even if we must pace our way apart

we are still neighbors and friends.

You nourish my being

and I, yours

with our small ways of knowing.

Let our stories make us friends

when caring hands cannot touch.

Carry my words, seekers and loners

and may the light of home

wherever that is

always find you safe.

J. Pratt-Walter

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