From the coniferous forest
of my parents arms
in a house without running water
I was born.
When the soul sees darkness
in a life it’s been asked to live,
fragments fall to dust
and huddle deep
down in a bed
of sediment clay
until the war is over.
Harvest them back
with black panther courage,
our own fractured and scattered
Little Ones.
We must.
At 30,
I ran through the burned redwoods of Big Sur,
where fire had turned decades
of orbiting bark poems
of drought and rain,
into coal
catacomb hearts.
I took shelter in one
charred redwood belly
gaping hollow as a truck bed
and wailed for her
for my own heart
The Little Ones,
and for God.
At 35,
I found a cave behind the house.
Her black rock mouth cracked just enough
to slide into
the womb of Mother Earth.
Lined with tiny, sparkling fox teeth.
The Little Ones.
Clear, stalagtite crystals
undisturbed.
Conscious of all love
beyond our own earthquakes
and trauma.
These are our fallen fragments
nesting in the tumbled rock wall
at the base
of the Mohonk Preserve.
She holds them
in the cracks tremors cause
for us to sing to
when we lift our oars
from the water,
knowing it's time to heal.
My voice is enough.
I am enough.
There is absolutely
nothing
wrong with who I am
and who
I will become.