Like the infinite air we breathe
the filaments of feeling
that bind us, entangle
one to another in a web
of unspoken vulnerability
bare beauty and at times
seething nonsense
Words that glue some together
watch others wander,
The glance one cannot leave,
the touch that commands
the stroke that calls home
The arresting content
of our togetherness, defined
by the simplicity of our needs
to love and be loved
Sincerely expressed
mysteriously carried out.
For some
The world
Is governed
By a towering
Omnipotent great father,
For others
An all encompassing
Omniscient great mother,
I like to think
It is governed
By my Existence
Reaffirming itself
Through the expression
Of my very being
Steeped in the abundance of stories told
She grew
A hum of voices lulling her spirit
Into fullness
Repeating names
Describing places of long ago
An island,
Houses perched Precariously
On cliffs
Beaten by a Vehement sea
Bountiful Traditions, ice fishing
carving, and Dancing – a life
Of millennia –
****
Like a wash of color
Deeply embedded
In the fiber of her being
Woven into her flesh
Is a longing She can’t define,
Pointing to her ancestors
She explains
That is where they lived
Half the year, in the Winter
She herself, has never been,
Imagines, smells, thirsts
A life no longer lived
Yet beats on, in her existence
Courses through her body
Evokes memories
Which are not hers – But Are –
****
With the persistence of a Survivor
She tells you
Of this world lost
To the arbitrary western mind
how she wants to return,
like one robbed of her Belonging
Her inheritance
****
King Island, Alaska Photograph Dave Cohoe
Like an Ancient edifice
Sinking into surrounding water
Every year an inch, a foot
The encroaching liquid surges
The Foundation disappears
The first floor windows dissolve
The 2d floor disintegrates
Engulfed by time Rising
Dismantled in this sea of Constant Change
The Story too disperses
Maintained by the Living who Care
Remember
Are connected somehow to this Structure
Survivors dwindling
Soon the waters will swallow up
The remains
Who will apply themselves
To the memory of what will be nothing
more than an immovable surface?
And Why?
Times passes, Memories live on
In a Handful who Recall
Repeat, Remind
Who listens?
D-Day June 6 1944