Living the Dream

I am a mad woman with a mystifying map of my tomorrows,
but no less medusaesque meaning to be placed on it
than were the times I tripped into the same hole
in the same detour I had taken over and over
until I learned to walk another way.

I am a wild woman with willfulness to my walk,
head down, head up, but striding surely into new dawns
as if I held a handful of stars I had collected
from the sky’s garden the night before.

I am a bent-over woman, dropped to my knees
to study the feel of clay creations
that are made when someone molds my hands
to theirs and a form finds its way to being
an icon or a totem, a singing bit of mud
that harmonizes the heart’s need to continue to create.

I am a dried reed, shushing the humming green
grasses and sky-carving songs of birds bent on belief
that there will always be another day,
another way to set feelings free, while I rattle
this skeletal spine with the knowledge of being absent
but present even as I lay down my bent-blossomed blessings.

I am a root, crawling deeper in fearsome frosts,
waiting for reason to stretch out my fortunate
fine fetal attachments and break through
a warmed crust to join those unfurling ferns
on frost-filigreed soil that might not be ready for me yet.

I am a gifted woman, handing out promises
in printed paper that wraps the wasteland
with hope that even a weed can be beautiful
if a weed will wrangle the clods and clots
out of the way in order to wave my ribbons
in a breeze of blessings to a wearied world.

I am a headstrong woman, who waits out each year
with wide-open eyes, knowing that balance
comes from be willing to be bent to the brace
of a good god that planted me here for reason,
or treason, for  rhyme and time, for fringe or shawl
sureties that wild and wonderful has a place to be.

Come women who have withstood the weather,
the wrestling and the wry wrinkles of another year.
Be wild with me, be winsome, be ridiculous,
be willing to cast off the curious and dance
to a new moon, a new night, a new reason
to realize the dreams of being dear and different.

Tags: Poems by Shewolf
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I carried luggage and left the warm hearth
to go out in to the wilderness
with indentured intentions
and a heavy heart. I was willing to wait for my own,
even give away all for the chance that one might rebound
and land upon me like a piece of shroud
flung by some kind wind.

I fed the poor, gave hope to the hopeless,
drug the wounded from their battlefield,
and clothed them in the gifts I had brought.
And there was such need, and they filled
my cases with stones so full of sorrow
I could hardly heave them along with me.

I took their burdens, bought a wagon, a ton truck,
a moving van with rev’d up motor
to cart their cares that were more than they could carry.
I unwound them from their weariness,
slept in the snow banks, skin to skin,
to keep them from freezing to death.

I emptied all my righteous reserves
until I was gnawing on nothing but bones
and the leather strapping on the suitcases.
I almost missed my flight because I forgot
to watch the sky for an airplane landing
on the muddied airstrip.

When all was empty, grief came to visit; once,
twice, three times a heavier stone
attached like appendages because my cartage
has been given away, right to the last clasp.
I stood naked, grief pelting me, cold
inhabiting my bones while warmth
passed me by.  I was lost in the forest.
Feelings escaped from every breath I released.
I held out my thumb and became a hitchhiker
with high hopes that someone would rescue me.

I carried the weight of many communities
on my shoulders, in jute bags; had swallowed
their problems whole until they weighted my gut,
ate at my belly, drooped from every nerve that was left.
He had not come, sinking in sand,
making me feel any less forsaken
or burdenless.  My cases were gone
and he had no place to put even one gift
that might save me from my philanthropic
pleasure of doing for others instead of myself.
No free ride came and I was forced to bend
to the clay and fashion a totem, an idol,
a new god to hand me a new map
so I could find my way out of my man-made hell.

Tags: Journal Blog, Poems by Shewolf
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empty bowl of belief
burdened by a thousand wishful eyes.
A silent gaping wound
depended upon to sustain us
has dropped its pretence
of heaven and stunning stars.

Honed by our hunger
it could not longer bear
the weight of our longing;
eyes lifted as if searching
for some secluded answer
or enigmatic cloud
that might take the shape of a god
or a Jesus, or a heart
lost and languishing in our fantasy
that answers are outside ourselves.

In is where it is, the sky’s breath
has filled our souls and stated
all there is to be said of it.
Faith pinned like stars on the hollows
of our heart, pulsing, pressing,
twisting in the disillusionment
that star watchers have witnessed
anything other than what they wanted to see.

In here, in there; there where the knowing is
rooted in reality rather than symbols,
where the sun has never shone
and yet joy resides without it.
Deep within; drenched in the fluid
that we see as red and raw emotion, is a place
where love and doves and paradigms of prose
have never betrayed even one wet touch.

We have hung on to the night
until it has caved in on us
and we see no fancy feathers,
no holy robed harbinger
of resurrections or hell
or anything other than dusk and dawn
that saturates a tired sky, a tired soul
and slipped blackness in a forest of feelings.

Tags: Natural Nuances, Poems by Shewolf
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On the road I heard a voice; sounds
that hummed against the sinew and skin

like a deaf person, I heard it through my bones

I heard him sing psalms, chant collages
of angsty images and my soul rose to find him

through the trees, I stumbled, bruising myself
on the bark of a thousand sad words, old
and miserable in what they have seen
and not said

hem brushing against the womblike unfurling of ferns,
I left my own marks, and shushing, and simple verses
for him to find

it was love, singing on the slipped-bank river,
pooled and lapping at the green grasses
that bore the weight of his words
left waiting to be found

easy grace and verve of a thousand birds
sent soaring sonnets up through the sky
into the pockets of scribed skies
where only the best eyes could bear to look

travel and time and untold cigarette,s
on some high hill that held tomes of pomes
buried in the belief I would search

“Come,” he said, “Speak to my flesh, kiss
me into surrender of my penned pleas,
lay against the ground that is warmed
by the thought of you that has filled my mouth
with a thousand spoken tributes; to love, to love..”

Love lent itself to the world, through him.
I took ground to mouth and swallowed
his biblical ballads and sad sonnets
to make them mine, about me, about us…

writer’s writing around the corner from a beautiful belief.

Tags: A Pack of Poets, Poems by Shewolf
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I do not know why they think I should hate you
for dropping me on a doorstep
of wonderful people

nor why it is thought
I should weep doubled decades
simply because your life might have been harder
with me in it, or you in mine

it would have been, I have heard the stories
of my siblings; sad tales of torment
I never had to go through

Now you found me again, out in this lonely place;
for indeed, it was lonely, but only my fantasy of you
made it so

I have held you, in your old ages, for but a moment;
perhaps for as long as you held me then
and we both knew love for that moment

that is enough.  You had your memory of me
and now I have one of you

sweet, sad mother of mine.  How you must have suffered
and how I must love you, now, for it

Tags: A Family, Poems by Shewolf
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