Monday, November 13, 2017

Painted Faces

Mūla Bandha hula hips
Breath held count
Thirteen-year-old daughter
Drive to Ponchatoula

Sushi lunch chop sticks, punctured seaweed wrap
She reforms the rice and snow-crab
Into the shape of a heart on her plate
Tells dad about what is going on in her life

Release, exhalation into sun salutation
Shoulder blades cut the world back
Sternum impudent
Hastas boom sign language to the sky

Meld a nest at breast bone
In the willow-leafed shutter cage of ribs beneath
Bristling breath in an ancient language
Caminando, caminando

Costa Rican shoreline drumbeat
Swim down Atlantic current, Californian sun
Salmon pink sand grit water color to canvas
Howling lunar navigation painted light

Flared nostrils breathing goddess dance

Sand dune grass blades medicine woman baptism
Dive for the crippled starfish with broken fingers
Watch tides clock as digits grow back
In an ocean bubbling loving forgiveness

To be a person,
Painted face and one-step hair
Plank into the quiet darkness of infinity
Wish of how the world could be

Classrooms of kids stark-chained hearts
Steel-bullet resilience compassion
Classrooms of adults raised female hands
Eye contact of beaded empathy

Honey drip ink mandala painted on a flint creek trailhead
Quiet inside the pitch-black vision room
Ebullient kernels of courage in knocked-over crayon boxes
She speaks flame-flicker tongue lighting way in quiet doubt of self

In the forest fire we are all in with the cool water of reminding us to breathe 

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