MAP

Where the land slants generously
to the stream between hills--
it's the same slope my body wears
when you are watching,
head to breasts to the valley
by the thighs.

The blackbird that is my dreams
sings to the air until
she IS the air, it seems,
singing--
Lilt and lift, hill
and rift
and pattern-shift

and then I am in it,
I am the Pattern,
I am the Beholder of Patterns.
I'm the deep sky
and the map of reasons why, and
the earth holding us up
and all space embracing us
light as doves, lovingly
above in beauteous skies,

seen through the telescope
of your eyes.


J. Pratt-Walter
12/2/2012

Overlook, Washington Pass

This is one of a series of poems I wrote while on a trip through the WA state North Cascades loop.
It turned into a small but significant shift in my internal feelings around family and marriage; good, I think, even though this poem does not reveal that yet.

Where rocks lapse into a canyon,
you can lean out and hear
the voice of the sky and
gravity's somber notes--
The glacial smoothness of boulder
is a kind of relief until
you cross the hazard fence
to fall completely into a dark marriage
of you against stone.

Even my feet pressing on hard mountain
feel a bit of the letting go, the What if? of
unmetered descent.
But when I contemplated tumbling,
the rocks, the mountain,
all said No.  Not for you.
Not this time.


J. Pratt-Walter
10/2012

The Old Farm

The Old Farm

The memory is in the string
of the bean, and time fades back
to the old farm, back
where we separated the pear flesh
from its skin,
halved, quartered, cored.

The magic is in the
the height of summer;
you can smell it right off the chattering wheat.

The memory is in the squawk
of the turning windmill, drawing
a thick heavy water that is married
to iron and minerals
in the dark pool that is the stock tank.

Mother is shelling peas while us kids
strip the bean from its string,
wash and snap, fill the jars, clear the rim
with a solemn finger,
load into the frightful pressure cooker
where the petcock breathes
the reeking boiled-bean air,
but that's summer too--
pounding heat, matching headache.

The magic is in the clouds 
who call a tall gray meeting--
sheet lightning will soon make a hysteria
with thunder, mating the new rain into being.
Our frayed overalls and ragged dresses
will be unfevered for a time,
then back to wheat and rustle and the rhythm
of a steam tractor.

The old horses will never again
trod nor plow a furrow--
they stamp and shake off the flies,
never tallying the miles, not seeing their end
in a tractor's combustion.

Cicadas rattle the afternoon away
to exclamations of the cranky windmill.
Mother is still working the shellin' peas,
sweating as the heat hammers away
all our energy and patience.

Us kids dream we are fish
stroking the cool dark water,
inhaling refreshment and renewal
into our gills,
but among summer wheat fields
there are no lakes.
There is only our thirst, dry
as dust and grit, burnt
as god's condemnation.


J. Pratt-Walter
5/8/2013

Last day of National poetry Month! Spring Night Ballet

 It is the last day of National Poetry Month!
spring night ballet

the lilacs are heavy in the air
a fragrance tangible
as syrup alight with wonder
of touch of skin of night air best breathed
by two
oh you yes
us as two pulses and one body
the machinations of the mundane
pushed far behind us
we will be wild we will dare
to be whole as the lilac in may
roots clenching the moist earth
branches alight with sun warm leaves
feeding on their own passion for life
us as chlorophyll igniting the green green
rejoicing cells
whose membranes allow in
all the love all the sky
our spring night ballet
entranced in lilac wishes

J. Pratt-Walter
(c) 2013

Water is the Way

 Today's poem, a haiku:

Water is the way--
it takes the easiest path
and is never lost.

JPW, 4/2013

Relativity

Yesterday's poem, for National Poetry Month:

Relativity

E=mc2 is missing
the variable of Love:
E=mc2 is the All before anything was.
     L

Love=E=mc2=Love
is the binding and the balance
of the universe:
Love x mc2 x E= Truth.
Infinity.  El Shaddai
Magnetic North, we are many compasses
to one fixed Truth--

Even electrons love their proton grip,
even cells love their water,
even water loves
all its molecules,
holding on, each to another
as they roll out of god's overfilled bucket.

J. Pratt-Walter
(c) 4/2013

The Old Farmhouse

The Old Farmhouse

I remember slipping my feet into mom's tan heels,
scuffing and tapping the girliness
into me through my feet,
in the old farmhouse
that spoke "this is country"
through the living land,

where the barn loomed its
raw holy magic,
more than a cathedral,
until it was torn apart
for its boards.

And the country, it was dismembered
for pavement and all the ludicrous mansions,
and the tan heels and girlhood were destroyed
by my growing up skeptical and never
loved enough.

J. Pratt-Walter
4/15/2013