The Poetry Marathon

prompt 20 hour 20

light

it’s there

just behind the eyes

in nawayee…the centre

where our greatest gift is our light.

it’s there

in all of us

just behind the eyes

where promises to our Ancestors

filled us

before they dreamed us here.

it’s there

behind the shadow

where we knew it would be all along.

© r. l. elke

the teachings tell us we all have gifts to share with our relatives.

parts of a greater whole only complete upon our contributions.

even the hummingbird put out a forest fire,

one drop of water at a time,

holding the words taught to her by her Elders:

“I am doing what I can.”

Even in the smallest ways,

we bring what only we can –

and that is so much more than enough.

© r. l. elke

prompt 18 hour 18

thanklessgiving

picking turkey carcasses from garbage cans abandoned in alleys dirtier than the shirt stretched over his thinning frame, he prayed for something not decayed enough to poison him again on this thanklessgiving, again, alone but not alone with the others who sifted through these same cans looking for food or something to keep the gnawing from eating the lining of their stomachs

again.

why was charity reserved for the Christmas season when no one cared about any of that anymore? where was the gratitude for having when others don’t? he growled into his blackened finger nails, full of more to eat than the scraps of rotting something like food not good enough for those who thought nothing of tossing food –  thoughtlessly disregarded, like he was, too…all over a little thing or two to make him feel anything else but whatever it was he used to feel when those other feelings came back

again.

thanks was to be given freely for all having. he knew he was grateful for having what he had when he had it, whatever that was…places where he could go and be treated like a human being with a name that didn’t sound like “crack head”

again.

he put the lid on the can and walked away, remembering the days when he made turkeys out of construction paper tracings of his hand – days when he could still be anything he wanted to be in the realm of possibility beyond this thanklessgiving.

© r.l. elke

how to talk about typewriters?

telling kids I learned to type on a typewriter is a great way to boost my mood –

they never really know what that is

and I never really know how to describe it:

like a computer but not.

the mess of ink ribbons

white out

or starting over to get rid of

carbon paper smudges on “good copies”

of letters

or papers meant to be the cleanest, clearest version

of everything I knew.

not so much, really

when the daisy wheel letters stuck

to paper not quite thin enough to be onion skin.

believe me,

gratitude runs deep in me

for word processing.

I don’t know how my fore-writers did it:

all those pages with ink erasers and carbon paper.

I’d be in a straight jacket,

not writing at all.

© r. l. elke

prompt 16 hour 16

the “l” word

open arms to a closed heart

reaching out to

places hidden,

knowing there was more there

than met the eye in the mirror

that looked more like mine than yours.

holding me up

without me knowing

so I never had a chance to push you away

again

when you were only trying to help.

flowers for no reason at all

because you wanted to

bring beauty to days you just knew

needed some

for no reason at all.

you win every time,

even when I didn’t think I was playing

you win;

but I get the best prize.

© r. l. elke

prompt 15 hour 15 – air travel

Flying it is

I was used to Greyhounds

and the excitement of never knowing

who would share the next seat for

hours and hours of trips to places I was only half committed to go.

Planes mean business –

there is no half-commitment to journey by air:

you are there for good

without wings,

like Icarus after the fall

(all broken wax and wasted feathers).

Greyhounds can’t cross oceans,

even if they could swim that far

without being eaten by sharks.

Flying is safer than swimming –

all or nothing

in the endeavour to get somewhere better than here…

wherever here is.

Greyhounds never made me feel adventurous,

just resigned

to everything I was running to/from/around.

Flying it is.

© r. l. elke

prompt 14 hour 14

all my Mothers

“The land knows, you even when you are lost.”

and I was so lost

so very lost that summer –

the summer after she was gone

and we brought her home;

dad and I.

truthfully,

I was lost before then even

when the burrs would get stuck in my hair –

after fucking for love

and face

in the back field

on the dry Earth

on grasses more brittle than my self respect.

She knew me then

before I could see me.

she knew me then

held my wounded heart,

broken soul,

in both hands

holding me together

until I could remember me, too.

truthfully,

I thought I knew better later

when I thought I knew better than my mother

forgotten to me piece by piece

of my wounded heart,

broken soul

under the weight of bottles

too heavy to hold anymore

in my shaking fists.

this land refused to hold her

with this flood of forgetting the story of

who brought whom into the world in the first place.

She knew me then –

this land I loved –

when I took my mother’s ashes where we would skate together

on frozen, bumpy pond water

snapping beneath the surface

like my longing to piece it all back together:

-her fragments in the pill bottles we carried her in, to the places we left her

-the days before her despair when we could laugh and heal

-my broken treaty with the places I loved, who loved me back when my mother couldn’t

“the land knows you, even when you are lost,”
and I have been lost,

only remembering myself back to life

because She remembered me,

until I could find my way back to all my Mothers.

© r. l. elke

prompt 13 hour 13

just walking

my body is soft –

has always preferred reading to running

writing to nearly anything else

but walking calls me

frequently to many spaces where

rivers run faster than I ever could on bended knee

in worship to the body that sustains me

and the body that built a fortress of fat around me

to protect me before I could protect myself.

If I wanted to move, I could.

I was just trained to be still –

straining muscles snapping with the longing to run

with muscles so taut as to hum

against the silence of my body.

I wanted so desperately to be a dancer –

when I didn’t want to run away –

loving that movement of the body

I secretly wished away.

These days I walk.

I walk to the places that call me

to listen to rivers

running faster that I ever could –

dancing over stones

in songs of love to my still feet

still wishing to do more

than just walking.

© r. l. elke

prompt 12 hour 12

The sentence is: “I have faith in the ceremony.” from Research as Ceremony by Shawn Wilson. I am doing my Master’s degree in Indigenous Education for Reconciliation and Resurgence….so there are lots of books like this laying around my house. I was happy I happened to choose this sentence. It fits so well into my life.

ceremony

At the end of the day,

I lean into few spaces

where faith dances alone.

I lean into spaces where

doubt live in layers –

has made friends with

want

in the darkest of days

before ceremony taught me my name.

© r. l. elke

places in between

I long to be in between words

where possibility allows me to walk with all beings

illuminated in liminality beyond all imagination…

all those Wise Ones tell me to dream into those spaces

in between words

breaths

silences

where all perfection lives in the dream worlds

of all those who dreamed me here,

revealing me to my perfections, too.

if I could get there –

into those liminal spaces,

could I dream into them,

revealing your perfections to you?

© r. l. elke