My life
Is a butcher’s block
of the dullest
paring knives.
I am so strange
not because
I tossed
a box of donuts
out the car window
for the possums’ and raccoons’
tea party.
No,
it’s because I shouted
after them,
“You’re welcome!”
Sigh.
And as long as I know
the lighting bugs
will join in,
then all is well.
Or it might be.
I remember being trained,
once upon a time,
to reflect on the sweet day
ahead of me and behind, too,
and to my left
and to my right
and all around
and around.
I was called upon to
turn my hands
to the work at hand.
Warning:
Step soft over thresholds
Such as these.
I remember once
the dogs were out
all night
chasing a blood moon.
The look in their
eager faces
when I let them in
told me,
“Nothing, master.”
Yet…
red-smudged muzzles
told me
They had found something
almost as good.
I hope you find that
these words
are not lies
any more than a metaphor
is a lie.
I dreamt of a
wounded stone.
It had a cut,
deep and gaping
and bloodless
across its smooth, hard flesh.
My job was to close
and heal the cut.
How was I to heal
A wounded stone?
I put some salve on it
and pushed the margins together
in dreamtime
till the glue held.
The stone healed,
but it scarred.
Every day we live,
we are sailing toward
that undiscovered country.
When we land,
let us explore
that whirring of
hummingbird truth,
that wind chime with
one hand pushing,
that half of a ‘whippoorwill’ call
in the deep woods
filling my cupped hand
with querulous tunes:
all mysteries
in the heart
of the night—
moon-staked.
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“hummingbird truth”
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When you experience a hummingbird, it’s sight and sound and feel, you know it is true. It’s desire path is only truth.