ELEMENTAL

I asked the wind where it would go

Receiving no answer, I asked again

When with a sigh, she replied “where I will!

I see no end to all this earth & must explore,

Must texture sand & tousle hair & so much more!”

I asked the rain the same, tho it seemed obvious

Its direction was always down

Except for when it was not

The rain eyed me drolly, with no response

Except to settle overhead more comfortably

I didn’t even ask fire, could not get close enough to

Hear anything anyway.

And earth just sat below, tho if it had moved

I doubt I’d have had chance to enquire.

Yet I do not find the situation at all stable

I find all elements in play, at play

Zeroed in on some mission not my privy.

I am elemental: not sure of where I go,

Except I stir things up,

I drip always downward unless I spin about

Fiery, to consume & not obey

Buried in my own name & dreams to once again arise.

I thought of heading to the pool this morning

Before the sun roared up over the horizon

The second-string sun, the faker put up overhead

When our own ascended in 2006.

This one made of white madness

Mixing all my plants outside,

The ivy grown into the wandering jew,

Who arrays her tendrils like a bride

Her wedding gown,

A bit psycho,

The orchid carefully courting the pencil cactus

With an errant root on overtime teasing outward,

The kroton spilling out urgently, of a sudden

After years of quiet thinking small thoughts;

The spider babies thickly rooting themselves in air

The jade dropping branches into its own soil…

Like people, everyone shoving into others’ spaces

Without so much as an “excuse me” or a “hello!”

I too am overgrown – a target of the powers that cannot be        

My thoughts recorded for some crazy product process

I say new & my phone trembles with selections

Beginning to awaken & shake myself from this

Long Sleep,

Finding clarity

After years living in the Great Cloud of Unknowing.

It’s the Fourth of July

The blood speaks again in fireworks of its own

The great release at hand

Even as the world spins its wobble toward

Separation

The second earth near, gravity doubled for some

Another atmosphere beckoning others,

A place where clouds remain fertile while  being unseeded

Where rain falls in place & not randomly on the patio

Alone, putting out the cookfire…

A world where nothing is controlled, but knowing place,

The one I’m headed to, as soon as I organize everything

I’ve got, will have, ever had.

I am constantly putting old information into new covers,

Relabeling myself, folding one more into what is

Already crowding space.

I expand with information, bettering how I feel

About myself

With forgiveness wrought by joy.

Everyone else has made mistakes –

Why not me?

Everyone else has spots from growing, not rot;

How can I not?

I’ve been waiting for that perfect me to arrive,

The one without that extra flesh hiding that bisecting scar,

The one where they stole my womb away, my fertile womb,

My desiring womb, my id devoured for a kid surgeon

To practice his ineptitude, nicking a ureter,

Using the cash sale – cha ching! – to join the country club

To advance his arts with brotherly second opinions.

What would I say to him now? He is at least as old as me

And not nearly so perfect, with a long history of rendering

While I’ve practiced surrendering…

I would have to turn away & find somewhere else to focus

For if I opened my mouth to sear him, like some rogue dragon

Forming fire in my larynx,

Even then would I know we were both falsely accused

Both right to be wrong

Both fallible & culpable

Both warned & prescient.

My life is what it was from my choices & other’s pronouncements.

All chained together proclaiming FREEDOM!

I pipe up for myself: FORGIVENESS!