Regarding the Shooting in Arizona

She is keeping a candle lit for the angels
Candle tumbles and falls against the wall
of the portal
No one notices the portal is burning
& the birds in the house screech
fire, fire!

Kill the Light and you get
your own reality
& this is the catch
No realization that the seething & self made Truth
will become a disease,
Religion without God
Spirit or awe
No one but you and your Belief
that kills. & in that case
there is no God.

Isn't that what happened to Christ
Not a christian, but teacher
man of compassion and sorrow
Jesus wept.
Defy any one to argue with that
On and on, beings dead, suffering
Earth, Sky, Life
Killed for his Divine Light
and so are we all

I am remembering my father
in my childhood,
insurance salesman temp job,
placed in a most destitute neighborhood
ensured me that there would be an uprising
a revolution
Who would remember that
but me, eldest daughter


I remember.
And I am still here
on Mother Earth
and there is nothing I can do
As birds fall from the sky and fish
wash up on the shore

This poem is for the People.
for the ones whose paths I cross every day
for the ones who cast the sidelong glances
and the ones smiling and they don't know why
they smile at strangers
suffering too, & can still imagine the dream


I am keeping a candle lit for the angels
Candle tumbling and falling and hits the wall
no one notices the portal is burning
and the birds in the house screech
Fire, Fire

Nathaniel 1

Nathaniel 1

How does one continue
When fate crashes
Into shores
And out of skies
To point where one is numb
& the mind perceives some kind of joke
In the solemn and the pure
When tears have reached a point
Where they can no longer leave

What happens to a body
Wracked by living grief
& dying grief,
When the eyes can no longer hide
Themselves, the mouth can no longer
Continue to turn into every day,
When the heart is sitting
In a hole in parched ground

When going seems more than staying,
& then the black comes
What happens
When the voice of Love is drowned
And the ties are loosened
Is it that?
The deafening sound,
And the hope for semblance of peace

When things that mattered
And the people utterly
Changed and Crushed
Become a distant cry of a newborn
bird high and far
What was it that robbed
Our beloved from us
How do we pick up from where
He left off

How do we see him again & fly
Into the darkest part of an eye,
Looking and imagining
A future any better
Than this exquisite day.

First Year, for Jon

First Year, For Jon



How will we know

how long we will grow our love

How many years, how many moments

How long the sun will endure



A small sweet tree into giant

Oak, blowing in the winds of Yes

And you sent,

Stars and Moon,

Sun and familiars,

brought you into my life

my rock, whose heart was

broken and then

here



My voice of reason

Voice becoming true as

a hawk speaking

time will tell how long

but we do not speak with time

and so we will dance and rejoice here

Arms of love take us

into endless future and into today



but for all time

I do love you

with all my soul

and on this first year of that

dragonfly hawk day

I embrace all that we are and

all the Earth at our feet, the Skies

Sun who keeps revealing

the wonder

Its fiery heart.



August 22, 2010

Speed of Sound

The speed of sound
Tearing you to pieces with unknown
Timing of the earth
placed in warp full or slow
Mystery in every voice
The same sound
over again
We are
the sound of those crickets
or those dolphins, or that air or breath
that sobbing person in the night
that howling dog in a distant house in Darjeeling

and human,
but for the speed of it and the illusion
of our separate hearing
And you, my Self, are here or
nowhere
listening to the revelation
Placed in the sound and the gorgeous
Color of tender
Joy childish leaping screaming

And you are there.
You’re a tree
You knew that. You did. You do.
You are also that fly
You are the god's child and the god's bird
(And she doesn't know what she is saying)
But she does
That a few days ago
she might die
It was a thought
And she is not
Yet dying here

And dinner
Is already done
Sitting at the table
And you must eat
Or walk as ghost in the world
I do believe it and I say it
Now,
dinner is served.

I Sing

Oil, water, wine, bird,
Hands, dried in sun & work.
Knees, arms, finally react
to wood chopped, dirt turned,
dreams and songs
& each day she thinks
this will be the last
or the first

All clouds now
stretching overhead
& she watches the weather of the stars
hears her own heart beating
as the blue dress,
the blue sky,
the blue doggies,
finally stop.

Bicycle, apparitions & midnight meeting with herself
Listens to the darkest thought,
the final hour,
the dearest friends, her only child,
her lover, one and all
passing before her
and there is no comfort,
this we know, for all the losses

longs for comfort
moments lost
yet in dreams, she returns, returns
to even lives that did not occur
and weeps from the memories
all a waking
all a focus to the essential
barking of a dog

rain in her hair making crazy,
making it all
a flood, a fire, a quake,
a life, crazy with
a water dream, a water dream,
she stands in the old theatre,
water hip deep
and gives thanks
for the parallel

city, world, dream, theatre
where another choice was made
even by God,
where another path was taken
and the same Grand Ol' love came back
again and again

and her familiars,
beautiful in their ambiguity and their
passion, passing, paramount purity, reason
where all is nothing
where just one speak, in a droplet filled with
sun and eternal

today
in a note sung or not sung
in a word written or not written
in a hand taken or not accepted
in a life given or not given
in a word, a song,
Meal made, bread broken
dipped in oil and consecrated
in the tidal wave of today.
I sing a song
of all
I sing

Winter Solstice, 2009

The dark time
when no thought of redemption can be gleaned
when minutes long and hours inconceivable
and days
whoever said the days would grow shorter as age
increased
was wrong for the fallen angels who are ready to
go, and go, and go again and yet long to stay for the next
story
dogs barking bring my feet to a halt and back to
center as my mind wanders into the next song
and no memory and on my knees again

the dark time is strong like a storm raging
it covers the land and the sounds of rain in a california
town memories of snow forts and ice skates in the east
holiday the time when father loved
and after a day fell into rage then silence
etched into each ornament on my body I know the father
the tree
I know the mother and children of a soldier destroyed
I have access to a relative and time bound truth
and if Jesus saves
and if Buddha brings tidings of peace
and if Krishna plays his flute and lays flowers
at my feet
can the darkness carry me on this river
down to the end of the street and soul
to a newer, lighter, warmer time
and there was never a warmer time
than now.
I light the fire
I fan the flames
I smell the incense of love and loss
and rejoice that I can still feel
when so many have lost that art
the art of alive
the art of dying
the art of giving
of rejoicing
angel come.

Festival of Harps, October 3, 2009

20th Annual Festival of HarpsChapel of the ChimesOakland, CaliforniaOctober 3, 2009
Marianne Tomita McDonald, HarpistWendy Jeanne Burch Steel, Poet
RecordingsFirst Set, MP3 (25 minutes, 21 Meg download)Second Set, MP3 (35 minutes, 38 Meg download)