Living the Dream

He has gone to his woods;

a quest for truth that cannot be found

in city’s round and round

it takes a crooked walk and brush

of reaching branches that caress,

or sting, to find such authenticity

and form for such language

that only bards can access.

He has gone to the woods;

where ancients dance in delight

at his approach:  there wait is longer

than our wait for his return,

down the mountain, down the rutted trail,

down his well-worn path

carrying out his renewed strength,

like scroll, like tablet, like a cleansed warrior

crawling out from sweat,

to command such audience that knows

the sacred tick of tongue and pen.

He has gone to the woods;

to speak for us, to plead, to pray

for those of us who can not walk ourselves,

nor decipher precise psalms,

nor, perhaps, be worthy of such climb

and so we wait, like hungry children, on curbs,

on couches, at the cusp of clouded screens

for his return; a more refined man, comes,

in ways the world has no babble to explain.

He has gone to the woods.

For Richard  Doiron   http://www.spiritsinpeace.com/

Tags: A Pack of Poets, Poems by Shewolf
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I know a Kaibab where Paiutes pummeled ground

with their paints, soft soled ponies with hand of warrior

on their shoulders.  Creation’s canvas canyon

whispers rise to remembering ear as ancient echoes

from beneath hushed skirt and ponderosa’s hem,

there came a son with language scrolling river rush of words

that winged on feather-sharp slope of colored stone

drawn up like mist to rainbow make

an arch of hope on further lands

where dry lips crack and breasty mounds

slump in wait for such recompense

as slurries from a prism’d sky.

Horse-sweat climb and shadowed lace on journeys taken,

metronome drop of hooves to mark the meter

of soliloquy formed like gem deposit in mind of man

soft-handing reins so path is purchased by holy fate;

sight and sound, of revelation’s ancestral hum

that makes sense to this man’s gathering

of the holy and the harbored that is unearthed

to be spread out on buckskin plied

by patient scraping of his hunter’s trove.

Poetry is revealed through cleared sight, and by means

of sifting through the common and the clumped is separated

from its overlooked commonness

to become testaments, even treasures, when handed to us

who wait for Moses who know what path to take,

what bush to sit beside, what exact phrases we have need to know.

From spectacular rim of canyon’s drop, the Phoenix rises

with wisdom clung between its claws; not commandments, rifling

in press and push of wingspan, but poetry to feed a multitude

of dry-mouthed protégées who wish for ways to embellish

the changes in geography through soulful rearrangement of senses.

©Carol Desjarlais

Written as tribute to an amazing poet

http://allpoetry.com/kaibab

Kaibab Plateau’s meadows and forests of dense ponderosa pine and mixed conifer to the brink of the spectacular north rim of the Grand Canyon, 1,000 feet higher than the south rim.   Kaibab” as the Paiute Indians called it.

Tags: A Pack of Poets, Kaibab, Poems by Shewolf
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The Bear

it was brief
explicitly beautiful
moving the sift
grain of sand
the unassuming wind

when tired
the rest was
in clearing, vast grass
call precipitous
in somber hulls
an echo of song

and we called it brethren
we called it bear

sleeping long winters
waking to hop
of salmon flipped

I was sister
of my brother’s tribe
I was wolf

and bear was kindred
to us all

©Cannonsfire

http://allpoetry.com/Cannonsfire

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4456825

The Grace Of Thunder

Rain my soul,

sip in fermented drop, this earthen strain,
bending seed to bare in birth,
grain,
sweet pain in bridled veil of moister sailing;

wailing thought,
caught between my rocky rainbows,
solitude stilled, and  holding close, the grace of thunder.

So clear my mind
with one last petal,

dewdrop piercing ground in rounder pearl,
swilled in lips, too still for blunder,

able awed,
as will in rhythm’s evolving rapture
to captured crystal
spilling wonder.

I am under God’s umbrella,

wrapped in wet, drinking every color, tracing miracle,
deep within the sound of heaven;

such lyrical accommodations,
within my summer implications,

in fragrant high, this ultimate concern,
to grow my wish in brook-side fern,

who moves my face to dreaming stream.

©Kaibab

http://allpoetry.com/kaibab

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4457009

–these tears I cry-

mystical sustenance
beckoned spirit’s call

abstract contortionist
unraveled all mistakes

careless raindrops
committed cheek suicide

© vindicativevisage

http://allpoetry.com/vindicativevisage

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4456841

I’ve Seen The Light

I found you passed out on the floor
the note said you wanted nothing more
but I was there to wake you up
brought you to get your stomach pumped

you said you were sorry and I said “sorry’s not enough
call me next time things get so tough”

and then, what you said
I will never forget

“I’ve relied on the fact
that it gets worse before it gets better
but it’s been getting worse for as long as I can remember”

then we hugged and I cried
you were brave, your eyes were dry
and it rained so hard that night
far across the great divide
I looked out and saw the light
shining into my blood red eyes

©Beata

http://allpoetry.com/Beata

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4457241

Tags: A Pack of Poets by Shewolf
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O’ Africa (The Lion Roars) - Cannonsfire and Tomisb, Collaboration

You know brother calls to brother and blood is answered by blood.
When the moon grows white and fills the sky so all the shadows are pale,
you can feel the forever that pours into the land. How it captures
the rhythmn of the universe.The animals call out the song of a world
come home on the black seas of the night that is vibrant and strong
ready to contest the bright beats of a roaring sun. The lion roars.

The jackels run. In the tent by the fire you curl closer to my heat.
The savannah beats with the pulse of my heart and stellar winds
come across your skin singing the songs of stars. The lion roars.

You feel your blood pulse with a new aliveness. You feel
the strength of the lion beat like a drum in your skin. The fire
is you. The sound of a river races across my heart. I know you
are full of the raw birth of the heart of man that springs
out of the soil called Africa.

You are a goddess in a long boat carried on the back of crocodiles
as you ride the Nile. You are
the nomad mother carrying her child gathering the vegetation
needed to keep her family alive. You are
the bare feet creating a dance on the good earth singing songs
for a full harvest. You are
the woman in my arms curled close for the night. The lion roars.

The children, not of my belly cry in whimpering. Cubs are dragged
unwillingly from my sight. I am filled by you O Africa; your wet lips
kiss my cheek, the thrum of gentle rain against my heart. I want to share
it with your hands, plunge them deep inside me. All the splendor of gazelle
upon the beating earth. They flee as lion roars.

I am the bend of your will; curvature of your spine. A song sung in chant,
calling me back. Grasp me in your womb and the palm of your hand. Sail me
against the Limpopo’s muddied shores. Make love to me in the richness of
the beauty but tend to me within your poverty and I will still see you smile.
I will still hear you call. The lion roars.

http://allpoetry.com/poem/4338405

http://allpoetry.com/Cannonsfire

http://allpoetry.com/tomisb

Be sure to visit them and be feed by beautiful poetry.

Tags: A Pack of Poets, Tomisb by Shewolf
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“And I tell you that you should open yourselves to hearing an authentic poet, of the kind whose bodily senses were shaped in a world that is not our own and few people are able to perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to intelligence, closer to blood than to ink.” - Federico Garcia Lorca, 1934

Fringe-persons, full of feelings

that ought to be put to bed, they say,

we have a knowing of precisely how a petal feels

as it rusts at edges of a death

This is a poet’s feeling:

A feeling poet;

A poet filing away at edges of words

until they are bare to air

and exposed to anyone stroking

a fingernail along a vein of color

they can not understand is not filled

with green

We are born to die, a poet knows.

Knowing this blurs living,

thickens cusp of blossom’s edge,

allows this kind of mindful passion

to sit side-saddle and straddle

Spirit and Reality, to hold fate

in one palm and fatality in the other,

to bring them together, hold them, meld them,

rotate and rustle them until words of life

seep through cracks of fingers

held up like steeple; like prayer, like plea

for others to understand

and not misjudge our delicate grasp

on wholeheartedness

We are poetic people. We are poets

pushing through tough ground

to make sure passersby will stumble,

surely, on our inky resemblance

to a seep of blood : Poetic blood

that tells only our truths…

and the truths of a garden

where soil is stained with our weepings

of joy, of friendship, of sorrow …

one fall after another

Poets, come, let us let breezes push us

as One, so the song heard only by the Listeners

who lean to feel our dying wishes:

We are a gathering around a coffin,

witnesses at birthings, scepter-holders,

those who know the places of the secret grails.

We are disciples, such as you and I

and our communion is the last rite

of passage from here to there

 

Written for my Allpoetry favorites: http://allpoetry.com/contest/2410725

1. A good climate
2. Amaranthine Lover
3. Asfand
4. Blue Rew
5. Cannonsfire
6. Cat
7. Frogzter
8. Just Rob
9. JustBreathe
10. KayJay46
11. LadyLavender
12. Mackie
13. Malabu
14. Mallig
15. Michael P
16. MuddyKing
17. Namita
18. Nicolette
19. Night Hope -
20. PageTurner
21. Peter Greenslade
22. Peteskid
23. Providence
24. RedwingSpirit
25. Rowan
26. Soulful Woman
27. Thoreau47
28. Wolf Mancini
29. Zayra Yves
30. ardentMarch
31. born4freedom
32. captain howdy
33. dillpickle62
34. ecrivain01
35. ellipsist
36. fortyninereasons -
37. imahealer
38. kaibab
39. lilAj
40. maa
41. marc creamore
42. micol
43. penman
44. poet2angels
45. poetryality
46. soulfultia
47. ten thousand cicadas
48. tomisb
49. Michael Thomas

 

Tags: A Pack of Poets, Poems by Shewolf
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