THE BIG TREE IN THE BACK FIELD
There you stood gracing the hill
A life lived longer than a lifetime of mine
Soggy boggy soil squelch underfoot
As I trod and plod the castle field off Harvey’s line
Your limbs contort as if offended
By battles waged both lost and won
McKenna, O’Neill, great clans defended
Chiefdoms beholden to a first born son
Steward of land, replete in your surrounds
Birds, deer, frogs, foxes alight on you
All thriving natural life abounds
While mycelia unseen delight on you
I clamber up and over the gate that shakes
Turn my body to you and a northern sun
Raise my arms to shield my eyes
As earths bright star stirs all that wakes
One day with the sun you started to die
A death bereft of reason why
My father said they then knocked you down
Cut you into logs for the winter fire.
WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
Your face stares back at me child.
Dreams swirl in the ether between you and I
of a life free of tyranny and fire.
From behind this fence you must get away
but where will you go?
Anywhere, somewhere, far from this fray.
Out of this displaced maze and the world’s gaze
to a home safe and peaceful
because bombs and missiles are neither.
In a moment the bones of truth laid bare
so thoroughly blatantly there.
A fence separates but never divides you and I
together under the heat of a blue middle east sky.
And I ask myself, for God’s sake why?
The hot wind blows fine white dust into every line
into our mouths, our eyes, each life entwined.
What good is a camera in this place when you cry?
Where are you now?
Still stranded, stateless, speechless, spent
in a foreign place in a white hot tent?
While men in suits on the TV are just talking heads
and children stare back
at least the ones who aren’t dead.
People are not animals despite what the man on the news cycle said.
Was that you on the screen, your head concealed by a blanket
under a sign that read ‘Port of Entry’
while men in suits kept sentry?
Lights extinguish, leaflets fall from dangerous skies with leaders lies.
Then bombs boom, missiles fly and now children die.
War is not you or I.
It is dark men in dark suits.
Can we make them go away
with their bigotry, guns and boots?
And I wonder where are you now?
Where is everyone now?
I’m sorry I only have questions.
IT WILL WHAT IT WANTS
Weightless yet heavy me
looking skyward while whiling.
Warm tears roll to grass,
Earth at my back supporting,
blue sky above beckoning.
Perfect white clouds drifting
blot out the sun momentarily.
Hot cold and in an instant gone
love like clouds across a heart.
Can’t make it stay,
it will what it wants.
Let it go, go
Make room for more.
“I’ll see you when I see you”,
last words echoing.
WHILE THE RICH MAN SKIS
Hushed silence, the Sioux, Lakota warriors speak.
Soft voice shares ancient wisdom
in a world of ignorance that doesn’t heed.
Rich man! Prick your ears, there’s much to learn in a world of greed,
Hear! Your elders come to teach.
Storm clouds, steady snows, o’er the sacred Yellowstone.
Through frozen ground hot fire heats, stamping feet
drum beats, thunder roars, eagles soar, battle has begun.
‘Neath Big Sky buffalo die, the black snake sneaks
while the rich man skis.
TRAIN
A train runs west to east
sun streaming through a window, through her,
pooling dappling on a table laden to nourish and care.
Outside a river Liffey, forever flows
Inside two lives, tributaries
till this point separate
become one.
A train runs east to west
strangers no more
cold night becomes warm
two souls together hopeful but scared
Night becomes day
Awake alone
What is it for?
A train leaves the station
brings one back home while
a bicycle carries another, hearts alone.
On a beach the tide turns on a golden strand
where earlier two people shared a day
now washed ashore like ground up sand
in a mound of shimmering moments.
THROW OUT YOUR BRANCHES
Happy Earth Day! While you post a picture of your car
for future generations, see.
You have no clue or you do
but real action would mean less things, real work
for your already deflated soul
and everyone you know.
Another day in our demise
we refuse to see or don’t want to believe.
Insanity everywhere surrounds me
of people lost in manmade design
Telling me to ‘lighten up’
while they increase the load.
Take, take, buy, buy, just one more,
never a thought from where it comes.
Supermarket black magic
of bright plastic illusions hiding the source.
This shelf won’t replenish at party’s end
but still you act like it’s all on sale with no recourse
Life up for grabs to the highest bidder.
Snakes for bags, lions for trophies, pangolins, elephants.
For what? For nothing. The ego hacks.
Somewhere along the way
we forgot what we once knew.
How do we justify the lives we take and never put back?
Your head in the sand.
Very soon now you won’t breathe.
Your legacy, children starving in the dust
of a dying planet and their innocent trust
because you foolishly believed
to survive you could just eat money.
I seek nature to escape your humankind.
What’s kind about you and your technological time bomb
you entrust will save us all?
Toward the trees, mountains, rivers and animals I go
to say sorry for me, you, we. To live in harmony
if just for the while that’s left.
Destroy the thing that destroys, instead think every day earth day.
Ignite this culture of all for nothing and all for you.
Rise like the last tree after the burn,
take root, stand tall reaching for the sun.
Throw out your branches and grow.