Equinox Poem for the Light

(photo from Montague, MA)

I just keep turning,
I just keep re-turning
to the ritual
of water -

holding out my hands as its shimmer

falls

always down

from the faucet the rocky mountain top
the sky

I dreamed
last night that Sister Flying Horse
and I were walking in an airport.
I don’t know where we’ve come from
or where we are about to go.
I do know we are happy,
surrounded by smiling faces.

What I mean to tell you
is that the ancestors left
the same way they came:
through the soles
of my feet back into the soil
and their own souls’
worlds. They left me in this world,
which I have chosen:

Most humans are sick with sleepiness.
And this is not Macondo. This is Turtle Island.
The Equinox is almost here again,
and we are learning to awaken
on Earth as she sleeps for a season.

This, this here, is a Sacred celebration
called real life. Life
requires flowers,
songs, flowing movement,
beautiful choreography,

pirouettes.
So I just keep turning,

I just keep re-turning
to the ritual of shining water -

letting my spirit climb

its rushing bubbling constancy
its reflections of light
into the Autumn sky
& back again to the solid ground.

*****

Equinox Poem for the Shadow

how much i see
how little i say

how much i say
how little i see

which is it?

yes,

and this –
this is what i was afraid of
that the beauty of the world would cut me
open
that my pain & my passion would wrestle
endlessly devoted angels

devotion: theirs or mine?

yes,

and my heart sings

even in the dark
your hand there next to me
glows with a faint light

how much i see
how little i say

your spirit has left its costume of skin
into another dreamworld
where are you now?

how much i say
how little i see

close my eyes

let my heart sing