I will be an ancient one, weathered and worn.
I’ll scratch a hoe around my tomato plants,
while the summer sun warms my bones.

I am an embryo, cradled in liquid
security and mother love,
a growing mass of pure potential.

I was twenty-five. I looked for love
and found a smooth-talking liar
who left me drowning in his wake.

I will be nineteen. Save the world.
End pollution. Bring the downtrodden to their feet.
Drop government to its knees. Peace on earth; goodwill to all.

I am fifty, still searching for what’s missing.  Hungry,
starving, craving to suck from life’s
marrow all that it might give me.

I will be seven. I’ll lie on my back in the damp grass
and lose myself in the wonder of the stars.

I was sixteen, holed-up in my room, lived in my books.

I was eighty-five when I traveled to the sea for the final time.

I am twelve, a tomboy dribbling a basketball around the driveway.

I will be thirty-three.  I was sixty-one.  I am forty-six.

I am dead.  I am born.  I am young.  I am old. I will be born again.

I am birth, death, and all between.

I am.

Yes, I am.

IN GOD’S NAME  (2009)

In the name of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit,
we launch crusades to kill,
plunder, and rape.
In the name of Allah,
in the name of Yahweh,
we explode, hijack,terrorize and
drive people from their homes.
In the names of Mohammed, Thor, Jesus,
Zeus, Jupiter, and the Sungod,
we kill the infidels, burn the witches,
torture the heretics, shun the sinners,
condemn the atheists, the Pagans, the Protestants, the Jews,
the Catholics, the Hindus, the any-who-are-different-from -us,
and who are therefore not saved, not favored by the Almighty.
All the while we claim to be created in God’s image,
and profess that
God is love.

SACRED TRUST (Lyrical Iowa, 1992)

My spirit has always been kin
to the fragile, the broken, the suffering.
I have known the gossamer touch of a butterfly
as it lit upon my hair.
A black cat, once kicked about the street by ruffian boys,
has curled up on my lap and purred.
I have been playfully nuzzled by a dappled pony
that had lived in terror of the whip.
And I have been blessed with the love
of a sad and lonely boy
who had known only pain and despair.
I hold sacred the trust
of the fragile, the broken, the suffering.