where is this place
we look for
this place we seek
Touch
as we Grapple
with meaning
Purpose
where?
where the place of belonging
the Refuge
that allows words
to stand Still
wait for their resonance
*
One Heart
*
the sound of many hearts
*
Photograph By Nick Zungoli
We are Reminded
we are but Carriers
that our children come Through us
not From us
Born of our Bodies
so hard to Fathom
their Well being
not entirely our Responsibility
No matter the Rational
championing personality, Independent Perspective
Free Will-
Deep down
in the very Fiber of our Flesh
We will Not let go
of what originated in our Bowel
Cannot but Feel bound
to their Existence
No matter the reasoning:
“They are their Own”
from the Cavernous depths
a Primeval utterance intones:
“They Are Mine”
Ancient Mesopotamian Seated Goddess
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
The dust of my beginning
Is the Breathing of my mother’s sighs
As she heaves the hills and deserts of my Belonging
The dust of my Becoming
Is what rises from my footfalls
As I search my mother’s contours
Question her substance
Look beneath the dirt of her surface
I sweat under the sun’s eye
chill in the night’s shadow
Until I find her
Gurgling between moss and stone
revealing the secret of her Determination
Through the sweetness of this liquid sound.
I embrace the Dust of my life
As I steep in the clarity of this water
My home for a Moment,
I know the dust to be my condition
The water my reward
Together they define my existence
Without them I am an Orphan
A beggar with no hands
