tomorrow

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

 

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

Doorway

 

    Peace can slip into your doorway

        when you stop holding on to your war.

          

            J. Pratt-Walter, © 2023

            

          

To Find Meaning

Sometimes it is enough to search outward

into the light for purpose, meaning and truth.

Sometimes we must stand still in the loving darkness

when the light comes searching for us.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2022

little gray kitten

i know how the lost hurt kitten of your heart feels.

you have carried her softness so carefully, but she broke out

of a secret flaw inside, a fault line that

fractured your tiny kitten-bones to needles –

how they bent and wept!

 

come to me, and my womanhood

will gather in and bless what you cannot

seek or speak.

 

come, i will be a sustaining flower

for the fainting bee of your lost hopes.

i won’t ask why; i’ll simply do what must be done,

gather you into the medicine of my arms,

stitch the jaws of your injury closed, kiss your cold paws,

stroke that gray kitten back into her wholeness

bones and all.

 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2022

 

At the Closing

I pick up the worn shovel, handle frosty

and slick.  I feed it to the ground by the mimosa tree

and press hard with my weight on one foot.

The soil yields beautifully.

 

I know very soon, this sacred ground

will receive her of the dark gold hair, the bleached

muzzle, the eyes once alive as obsidian light,

that dog-breath smile.

 

The old girl is shaking this morning

and cannot rise.  I help lift her back end.

Her feet splay out on the floor.  Her eyes are worried,

even afraid.  I caress her bent head

leaning into my leg.  “I know, girl, I know.

Soon.  Will it be today?”  I don’t want to

answer that question yet,

 

but here I am, excavating the ground

between the vegetable garden and my favorite tree,

envisioning motherly soil holding her wasting

frame close, the swirls of her hair trimmed by fallen

 pine needles, her bones and blood that loved us so much

that she will forgive me and forgive me

for bringing that love to a peaceful

close. 

J. Pratt-Walter, © 2022 

All the Unmapped Stars

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