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Chasing the Mystery

 What I didn’t know yet swallowed me,  

and I sat in the belly of that bliss,  

a toad hibernating under an old clay pot. 

That winter was a LazyBoy recliner of wait and see.  

It would launch me like a jewelweed seed –  

explosion of what I could be now. 


What I forgot was that life feeds on life,  

bloody carcass to forest to cicada song, we all take a turn. 

What I believed was that mercy is a red blanket, 

permeable and frayed along the edges, sometimes

spread wide  as the Platte, others torn deep as the Hudson. 


What I couldn’t figure out soared over the prairie of spent days 

like a hummingbird, a hawk, a heron. 

It followed the skittering shadows of every holy shit surprise, 

then nested under long, surrendered streaks of dusk. 


What I buried was a kernel of green in my heart, 

trusting it would rise and shine for those who truly saw me, 

emerald reflection of a galvanized lineage. 


What I uncovered was that time is its own language,  

climbing and falling in guttural tones,  

to spin our stories and keep eternity fresh. 


Then I remembered, under a nebulous dome of buzz and hum, 

to make ready to be swallowed once more; 

for in chasing the mysteries of my wild true self,

be it vixen or June bug, I luck into the best ways home. 

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