Before and After Sandy Hook

Before

Everything here shines.
Light winks off the polished tile floors
and loafs in cushioned walls
and pours around the arcing library
dancing on the picture books.

Windows are everywhere!
A world surrounded by sunshine,
a transparent place.
Even when Oregon gray fills the sky
light fills these halls.


After

Today
   windows are the enemy
Today
    light invites death
Today
    sunshine leaves us
unprotected.

With every step the outside world
   threatens attack.
Every shining tile
   is a dead child.

Bullets shatter glass.
Transparent worlds give
   no shelter.
Light brings
   no comfort.
The hallway has
   no end.

I will double-lock my door,
draw the shades and my little ones close.

For the next eight hours,
their lives, their thirty lives,
depend on me to shield them
inside a glass box.

Summer Communion

Accept its gifts as wafers on the tongue:

the grounded freedom of bare feet on stone
the kiss of sun on my hand's back
the secret breeze at the nape of your neck
the taste of ripe berries ready to fall
the shadow of roses on a wicker chair.

a single fuschia flower petal
spins suspended on a spider's strands
as bowing hydrangea blooms
dip their heads in dappled water

and somewhere over my right shoulder
a songbird has outlasted the crows

A Place Where Birds Come

May this be a place where birds come
where songbirds come
trilling resistance to hoarse despair

where determined dandelions press
through the broken back of concrete
and moss moves to meet them
while berries bob and hang
heavy with ripeness and ready to drop
 
where spiders find the needed stillness
to weave their winking strands
and monarchs ride the breeze
etching their shadows on lifting leaves.

Come into this place of birds and bees.
Notice the texture of living things.
Drink the sky and eat
huge helpings of sun-glazed air.


-CJM summer to fall, 2017

Summer Homework

Summer is here.
I shall spend my days
Studying clouds
Honoring blossoms
Auditing trees
Breathing
Sleeping
Feeling my toes.

I shall pause
And hear
And touch
And know.

Forest Time

This place of moss and mist
where dark loam feeds and liquid air drips
and giants kiss eternity -
this place stops time.

Inside this world of earth-born movement
even the air gestates.
Life exhales and slakes,
creeps and burrows,
leaps and scurries,
climbs and flutters,
nourishes, suckles,
spinning a spiraling web
of reincarnation and revelation.

As I breathe these whispers, wise and evergreen,
I come to believe heaven is covered in moss.

Crayfish Time

Photo by Peyman Zehtab

Crayfish time lingers and bides
In its underwater world
Crawling and drifting through ancient molecules,
Wary and defensive, its weapons poised.
Inside this tiny crustacean’s armor
Beats the heart of a dinosaur,
Primal survival lurking beneath
The cool, calm surface.
A callous cannibal. A secret, solitary scavenger.
Death’s cousin.

I swoop in to snatch it up
In a heady delusion of mortal power.

Hummingbird Time

Hummingbird time zips and hovers with
Millisecond shutter speeds
Darting between atoms and moments
While my now stands still.
Rest is movement,
A blink is loss,
And energy the magic that drives the world.

I pass patient hours
Hoping for its fleeting kiss of beauty.