Poems and Songs
looking into your eyes
- a wave flushed over me
what I saw I did not know
but now I remember
the deep forest trees
the flow of the river, friends by the fire
the scent of the evergreens and my wildest dreams
what I was and what I will be
and what that means
my soul aches from the knowledge too much to bear standing by this steep fall you touch deep into my heart
as ever
thinking of the child, the mother
of the sister and brother
thinking of the lover
and the father
I reach further
in an attempt to surpass the limits of bad poetry I write these words
You will always be in my heart.
love,
kai
The Ohio river at daybreak stirs--
heavy with sleep,
sluggish from the weight of night,
hazy blue under the orange-rimmed sky.
Birds carve the dewy air with trills, warbles, cackles--
the sound of murmurs before becoming words.
Day is imminent.
Breezes ruffle through papery leaves,
accounting a relentless dream.
The Ohio river at midday lies still and polished like glass,
reflecting everything I ask of it.
The present, the past -- a parade of faces and names
appear effortlessly.
Permeated with light.
Before you can begin to heal you have to forgive yourself.
Where I began seeking after my own needs, I saw that others needed as much as I.
And I appeared as a giver.
My story written on the margins of the river --
my tracks encased in mud on the riverbank --
get softened by the lapping water.
The Ohio river at night becomes a doorway in a dark abyss.
The earth is dark.
The trees coil with sleep.
Everything I see falls within itself except for the river,
still luminous with its own sense of light.
Was this a dream--
did I, like the trees, enter into sleep--
did I hear words--
or were the crickets just singing?
Maria
MAKING
Words fragment, letter by letter,
dissipate,
fall into blood silence.
Can I paint this experience with
the material of my
DNA?
To the particulate that is
my language and
all things I have been,
add these wide waters.
Mix dark pigments of
presence beyond color.
Images surface out of time:
masters
then and now,
the same.
Movement across canvas:
slow roll and slide,
slow woven thunder,
slow love.
I am stricken from
my self and,
without frame, I am
unmade and
made anew.
ema 5/31/07
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