Do tell me of frozen mud and browning gold of fallen leaves and the dust of people,
Refuse clean as cords clogging the little creek not now in flood but frozen at its edges.
The little me, not nimble or hollow, do tell me about her,
Your little soul out among the penned horses, the stamp of my stumpy pen.
Tell me of singing in the morning that the whole day would reveal the ogres of night
To be but spite and reasons for better living.

More truthful seeking, less compulsions to act as the freedom to be just as baby
As the day she parted the lips of the soul with the wet sound of water falling, mist rising,
All omen and portent that every word is pregnant with meaning,
Every gesture laden with fruit and the larder full, the ship on course,
Let the voices proclaim the vices of true singing,
That we be warned of sins within by the light outside ourselves
Giving justice, peace and lies to all half measures,
Demons of certainty,
Faces crushed in totality, barbarity gross as civil war,
Hostile as brother on sister, sister on brother, hatchet, knife, bomb and apocalypse.
We have been awake too long to danger.
Ends spread like the fantasy lotuses on the pond,
The sacred everywhere, the center now a multi-facet,
The germ cell gem of her truth in stone, cool as a shadow.

We have been up before dawn, huddled cold as migrants far from home,
Habitable as a family, none the less,
Safe with the graces of each other and the callings of Grace herself,

Hospitable, no longer dangerous but appeased by kindness,
Softened as time by eventual successes,
Inheritors of America’s dream, her robust civilian conservation corps.
We sign up by the millions, vote and lay our saws into the soft virgin wood,
The new homes rising from the old, the stout beams and broad foundation,
Kicking at the tires of home.

Have you ever smelled rubber burning?
Have you inhaled deeply as you gas up the car?
Do your kids sniff glue?

We can all agree that death of brain cells can be a problem.
We can make remedy of language and speech –
Poetry even,
As planed as good boards from dead woods or drift woods or the woods themselves towering,
A pine green majesty, fecund in the springy needles of its under story.
We in the understory of the big house,
Cook our meals, buy our food, rest our feet and pray, as at the fissures of our molten weakness,
Our inherent sorrows upon arrival.

By Rolf Stavig

11/5/2022