The Weekly Poem – Moving

It has been a week of shifts and movement. A friend announces the birth of her first grandchild along with the arrival of a litter of kittens. Prayers go up and come back answered. A quiet space is carved in a weekend of torrential rain where the introverts cozy up with their individual activities – crochet, writing, reading, puzzle solving – comforted by knowing their pack is quietly present in our shared cave.

Rest up, folks! It’s a bumpy month out there in the world. The news is not terribly cheerful on the climate front. A lot is happening out in the world. My personal strategy is to occupy a still space. Harvest. Make. Preserve. Pray. Breathe.

Also, clean and organise our cozy cave as I squirrel away and prepare for winter. But before I launch myself onto a cleaning jag preparatory to repainting my living room and kitchen space, here is the weekly poem.

Moving

Tongues of fire licking forest floor clean
Flood water lapping spills over sandbags
Earth surface sinking, cracking, fissuring
The wind has turn its back on itself, us

Somewhere someone is dying, as we will
too, the silky caul of birth slips its veil
off the perfect newborn,  fearless, serene
As the Buddha passing through the sabre-toothed
Jaws of the gaping Lion’s Gate					
					Present
imperfect also has perfect logic
that is its magic
			Dance with angels on
That pinhead, our needle sharp future

For now, kittens’ downy pelts snuggle up
To suckle in a huddle, mother prone
Feeding their soft perfection as paws knead
Her loosened belly in a closet where
No fires burn or floods rage
				Ill winds still
The earth is her firm and steady heartbeat

Everything moves with its own logic
That is the magic in the present
We brood love and faith and hope with our young.
Empires are lost
			Lullabies are sung on

Copyright © Bee Smith, 2021. All rights reserved.

Featured image is Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash