On this morning's walk
in the mountains
by the river.
A robin
turning to look
A gray squirrel
chattering
A black butterfly
circling
Again and again the messages from the river,
the Rio Hondo, the spirit in form and time.
Nature creates, lets go or gathers, moves even as slow as a nano-second, as quick as an earthquake, a volcano, moving even in stillness, in breath, until breathing no more and we are returned to the earth, growing back into the earth, falling like the leaves of the cottonwood in autumn, back to the earth, composting.
Water is life, she said,
to the river.
Breath is life,
to the wind,
to the beating heart.
I have been in a struggle with the death cult surrounding me.
I have been in a struggle with the death cult of my society, as I’ve looked for freedom from the promised consequences of having a voice, the voice given to me.
I have been in a struggle with the death cult of the narcissist, the religious, the presidential, the capitalist, the man who since my birth tried to stop my breath, my voice, my movement as a manifestation of spirit in form and time.
(This struggle is that of the woman
raped by a gang of soldiers who told the story
that before she was attacked
the gang’s leader promised her,
“Now we are going to make you hate yourself.”)
The river flows though damned by profit.
The sun rises and falls, the moon waxes and wanes.
There has not yet been a price put on them.
I want to join with those
who follow the tides of imagination.
All my life someone has told me how to be, how to think, how to feel.
All my life someone has told me I am too sensitive, too self-centered, too naïve and ignorant.
All my life someone has told me there is something fundamentally lacking in me and that lack was that I was not my father, my oldest brother, my second brother, the priest, the businessman, the male intellectual, the male artist.
All my life the eyes with which I saw and the ears with which I heard were considered disparate without clarity or intelligence.
All my life I’ve received strained and patronizing smiles, the brush-off, the irritated looks and gestures of men.
All my life I was given smaller and smaller boxes to fit myself into, as a girl, a young woman, a middle-aged woman, an older woman.
All my life someone has told me to hush the rage I feel at injustice, to surround and dowse it with virgin virtue.
Until I knew that voice
(their voice)
had become something
I could toss like a frisbee
flying over the grass and into a ditch.