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since I asked

                          ~for Joanie

 

 Yes, we know about you, and none of that matters.

We know how you keep turning over rocks,

opening doors. I have no idea how it works,

no idea if the whole world sees us as kin.

How could she not?

We know we are cut from the same cloth,

you and me, an afternoon breeze around the neck,

grateful for easy       when it finds us.

Even in black and white, we know how to marvel.          

EXACTLY Wow!

 

Yes, and we know how to transform          day to day,

give patience to steady becoming.

Our generation – once tucked up tightly in an oak gall,

encroached the safe verges with indiscretions.

We could not help it;           they pushed through our skin,

provoked by our grandmothers, and we crashed around like toddlers.

We know it was necessary to be embarrassed and appalling,

the only rungs to climb out of tepid dishwater.

Of course, it was impossible to plan or know what or how to enter.

Extemporaneous the buzzword, we made it up as we went.       

EXACTLY Wow!

 

We know about living the moment, psychotropics sat us down.

How the stumble found the treasure and to feel took more.

I would turn a silver ring like a millstone on my middle finger,

the fear into flour. When a waxing moon got involved, we knew

what happened to heartache. She said less is more. Keep walking.        

EXACTLY, Wow!

 

We know about wonder, how it flies in, reckless and stubborn,

a cyclone of swallowtails, a reliable migration.

And we know about nostalgia, those sooty cobwebs

to distort the glisten and fade sweetness on the tongue.

We know that because we know about longing,

how it confounds continuity, makes a touchstone

of happenstance and never mind.

 

When we pitched the red tent ages ago,

we knew it would billow in stories before it fell.

I have what you have, as if I needed you, I am you.

Between the threads grew enough humble, enough silly, enough strength.

And that tent, sun faded to the color of Utah sands,

abides in our bellies, kettle drums of alive.

 

We know to follow the golden thread, we learned the shortcuts.

Sometimes we didn’t take them -

the date rape at the drive-in,

getting hassled in the parking lot at Planned Parenthood,

the onerous box of family secrets,

that Amway Pyramid dream.

 

Yes, we knew and we know.

We are complicated persons.

Grandmother Spider, Sky Woman,

Sunanda, Minera,

Rhea, Freya,

Anan, Quan Yin

You don’t need to be a goddess to get it    

EXACTLY, Wow!  

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