My Name Is Not Mavis

Wonder

I let go of hope long ago
When the immediacy of survival
Pressed its lips hard
Against my temple.
Despair may have forever
Altered my heartbeat
But not even the wildest beasts
Of failure can rip from me the
Belief of my wonder
That I keep deep between
The bones of my hips.

Wake Up Wake Up

We never recognize ourselves
In the gloaming of our minds;
The blurry stranger off
In the distance, waving like
A lost madman. Treat him or her kindly
As you would your favorite neighbor.
The one who waters your geraniums
When you have to go out of town
To tend to your mother’s slow death.
The one who says hello in passing
On the mornings you are low.
And the one who has his own box
Of charms, tricks, and troubles
Under his bed that he guards at night.
Just as I guard my wandering, fierce heart.
Wishing I could love again easily.
Wishing I could be as insistent as the morning
Raven outside my window.
The one that perches on the church roof
And say, Wake Up Wake Up, you will never
Get it right but the sky is orange with
The sun about to break the blue night
Into a million pieces.
Wake Up, Wake Up, you and your neighbor,
And invite the stranger also. You will never
Get it right, but Wake Up Wake Up.

Field of Wonder

I have set up my tent in a field
Of wonder and secured
The flimsy lines with heavy rocks
And feverish prayers
That my home will hold.
But, I remind myself, when the
Pressure drops and weather looms,
When the worst hits and I lose it all,
Again. I can lay on my back
And watch the storm.
Writing my stories of epic fates,
While the wind howls through the
Loose atoms of my vulnerable being.

Live and Learn

Vulnerability sits on the very highest
Step of the staircase.
When you approach, make sure
The hand that holds yours
Will steady you, not give you a
Sneaky push that makes you tumble
Downward in rageful frustration
That you allowed it again.

The Mountains

What welling within from knowing
That mountains grow
And oceans carefully polish
And shame the sand bit by bit.
Just as the hand of a god we cannot see
And can’t believe in caresses our fates
With promises and hopes and failings.
And just when, just when it is too much,
The welling inside and relief of knowing
That trees whisper amongst themselves
Underground as valleys sink and the sun
Continues to promise tomorrow,
Consistently rising today from
The place it left yesterday somewhere else
Overhead of someone you will
Never meet but who has a heartbeat like yours
And a hand that aches to be held.
So perhaps that is the welling;
The awe of billions of souls you share and
Will never know except for the few that
Step hard on your path on their way somewhere
Else. Like the coyotes who crisscross
The desert or the old skinny cougar that
Lurks in the grasses along the highway
And watches unseen. Just like god.
Just like the telling of our
Fortunes by the whispers in the wind
And the shifting of the planets
If you believe in all that and even if you don’t
It is merely the same as a ticking clock that
Directs all our senses with hardly any sensibility.
This is my welling as I sit and think about
The mountains outside my window growing
Well before and well beyond anything I will ever be.