Living the Dream

sisters refuse to align themselves ~
sharp shouldered backs turned away
from places we have gathered in for so long
that we have become part of shore

your words have moved me, I have moved with you
I am stirred like deep pond by your paddling

that shore, where words were never enough
where hearts lean on each line
it is imperative I see you there
without question, in case I find myself
too far to gather with you ~ no
reflection of each other’s faces is frightening

when wild weather whipped cracking branches
and bad calls skip across lakes
stagnating because they forgot we begin
in the same place and go back to one mother

and even if we refuse to speak
our hearts resound loudly in underbrush

don’t trade it, sisters, be besotted
with a million stars that still twinkle at night
and know you do not need to paddle the hardest
or the most furiously ~

even if it looks like no one is noticing
there are still those listening, watching,
searching through thick darkness for your hands

don’t hand us fists

some have seen enough
thick black to last us forever and been alone
more nights than not, on their crooked walks
across sky.  I need to hear hope shiver in cold places
and your warm laughter and winsome whispered secrets
rise above my chattering teeth

you make me lonelier when you go off on your own
to where bad weeds hide you and drown your voices
of hope and hello from me.  Your poems are large and hollow
and the ring of them strikes me where it hurts most

all I can do is write a poem about it

be besotted
with a million stars that still twinkle at night

and know you are not alone ~ here we are,
hanging on your every rippling phrase

Tags: Letters to My Sisters, Poems by Shewolf
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moving as if she had no bones
swaying over red clay
as if it were a lover’s body
or a child she is creating

music hums in colors
she wrings from slip
until she is sure
it is ready to mold

she rasps her bare feet
on kick wheel at speeds
that allow for shape
to make itself

knowing drying behaviors of clay
collected from caves,
she will work into darkness
with candle to add shadow
in this dance of master and mind.
 
she smells musky with Patchouli, sweat,
and wet mud in birthing forms
that ripple like muscles
at her touch

it is caressed, like skin
until her palms feel passionate
surrender to act of love

in alternate sexual experience
between clay woman and woman of clay,
some have been burned hard enough to build walls

Tags: Letters to My Sisters, Poems by Shewolf
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Be in love with thistles and weeds
that infiltrate your lovely garden
for them, we are drawn to put our hands
to flesh of God.

Be in love with ferocious fears,
for, from hidden places,
we are drawn to meet them
and find them no more
than designs of our own making.

Be in love with enemies,
for we know hate,
nor war, nor bullet nor bomb
has won us anything
but more of the same.

Be in love with rain, for sweet respite
from heat of mulling bodies
dragging feet on dry earth
wanting, waiting, rather than moving
where they see first cloud rising.

Be in love with Love, for to crave
anything else is to invite
reasons that shake serenity
by the throat until it screams
in rage, in sorrow, in anger,
and to take you there with it.

Tags: Letters to My Sisters, Poems by Shewolf
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She sighs in her sleep
swimming through dreams
that stroke her skin
in blue notes of a whale’s song

drifting through night-waves
his face drifts, dearly,
one wave ahead of her

as she surfs deep within surges
touching trembling tears of stars
strobing down the face of God

He knows her sadness;
knowing she dives, nightly,
into murky depths
where she is kissed
by her own dammed tears
hoping to forgive him

breath held is expelled
she stumbles
to dawn’s rocky shore
bared to the bone
by her silent slip into deep sorrow

I watch her and wait
for a lung-filled gasp
to signal her return

I tuck her moans
into a blanket
she wraps herself in it
one tired arm crossed over another

Tags: Letters to My Sisters, Poems by Shewolf
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Have you danced like a daughter in the tall grasses,
slipped into a cool stream, bare naked?
Were there angels present when your waters
parted and put heaven in your hands?
How many times did you wish for remuneration
and found no relief in any number of wells?

I am as virtuous as the seven veils weaving
in blue eyes, if I gave for giving’s sake
not for greed nor guts, not for more or much ~
but because it was sexual healing for us both.

I am as grand and delightsome as skin
touching skin, lip to lip, heart to heart,
belly to belly and toe to toe; hanging on
for dear life in a hug that put our hearts so close
they could taste each other.  No stranger am I
to love of a man and a woman, a woman to man,
out of love was I born and gave birth.

I am a virtue all on my own, my voice volleys it
out into the visceral humanity that flows
like polka dotted kerchiefs and tickertape talk
in the farmlands and cities, in the hades and heaven
no snake could split asunder.  I dance truth.
I rock a cradle of compassion for any who climb in.

Have you joined your sisters in the shelters?
Did you pick up a child with skinned knees?
Were you a wanderer in all the valleys;
both sunshine and shadow walker
and known first woman by your rote reaction
to young and to old?  Oh, then you are worthy woman.
The heart of the matter is you were you.
 

Tags: Letters to My Sisters, Poems by Shewolf
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