24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
in the silence of my mornings
pen in hand
i write the dust from my heart
to make my world whole and filled with love
again
after the ugliness of the unseen
has left its mark on my heart.
those early words on the tip of my pen
frees the pain
and heals the wounds too small to see.
r. l. elke
by this light held slowly
the universe opens up to the heart of all that is
in the soft hands of darkness
waiting for dancing to stop
so the fullness of this moment can be realised
for those who have forgotten that
when we slow down the songs of crickets
they sound like opera
and when we hold the light of fireflies
they show us the universe.
r. l. elke
if i keep my fingers moving
for a few minutes
i will keep my eyes from closing,
creating words instead of a jumble of letters
filling the glowing square with nonsense
or a language of my subconscious i never knew i knew.
pretty sure it’s more the former than the latter.
this is the view from the roots of tall grasses
or grains grown in rich, black prairie soils
feeding the grasshoppers and me
for eons
i’d feel my back heat up from the sunbaked earth
looking up at the sky through the wisps of barley beards
or fox tails
waving to the swallows
from below.
it’s the times I knew who my Mother was
holding me in certainty
that I would return again
to this humble position,
staring up at the heads of wheat stocks
when there was nothing left of me but dust.
r. l. elke
we would play kick the can under yard lights
on summer nights when city kids would be filling cars
to drive to hill tops to find themselves
by city lights
in the eyes of partners too shy to say no
we’d hide in lilac bushes
just past blooming
but still fragrant somehow,
waiting til shadows passed
to run to the coffee can
under the light
so we wouldn’t have to be “it”
i’d hold my breath
always
before i ran
as if this was more about life and death
and less about killing time in places where
we only piled in truck beds to help neighbors hay,
leaving passions to the city kids
who had time for such things
cuz we were too busy
holding our breaths before running for home.
r. l. elke
i am a jar of mixed beads
filled with odds and ends
hoping for the needle to find a match
when i string pieces of me together
to make images in glass
fit for ceremony
“just be still and listen”
was taught to me by my elders
to connect to the lines of spirit
between all beings
made more loving for the teachings
vibrating in those golden threads
like rhizomes between plants
like prayers in the air.
they said you can’t hear the answers
if you’re always asking for them.
so I try to sit and listen,
so still I won’t scare the voices away.
r. l. elke
if you knew what i know about loneliness
you would understand invisibility in the spaces between
privilege and righteousness
lives fully before disappearing into untethered expectations
of how we know how to live
in the pockets of longing to be recognized
for anything other than anything connected to
the toes of the boots of all those who came to take
what never belonged to them in the first place.
r.l.elke
kobade
arms linked in arms
around
arms around us all
link after link after link
forward and back
from home to home
to pieces of us in each other
like the eggs in th eggs in the eggs
of our great-grandmothers
in our great-grand daughters
concentrically linked to each other
“forward” and “back”
so that in our language
there are no separate words for
grandmother and grand daughter.
we’ve never been separated,
“forward” or “back”
only co-imagined pieces of each other
forced into spaces too small to contain us
“forward” or “back”-
even in the limits of our DNA:
the physical chain of kobade.
©r. l. elke June 26/21
kobade is an Anishinaabebowin (the language of the Anishinaabe people of Turtle Island) word meaning the connection of generations moving “forward and back” (ie – we do not have a different word for grand daughter or grandmother…they are the same)
i never have to worry about not saying yes
because too many people i’ve met
stretch the no into the yes
any way.
r. l. elke