The River of Life

To Utter Words of Thanks
My lies to myself
Left stains on the walls here
Where I have my roots deep in my mother earth
Where I plant my words
And harvest them in poetry
As the years pass into decades
In this place I call home
The harvests surprise even me
Wisdom leaves its signs
Like stretch marks on a mother’s girth
Ring the wind chimes and ceremonial bells out back
Attract other life
Hear my calls to Great Mystery
The wailing-wall inside
Now becomes the place
To utter words of thanks

Mars
I
Mars seen through clear greenish blue eyes
A hot reddish white dot in the sky
On a planet circling the sun, earth’s sister in space
II
We were swimming in a river at flood stage
Heading downstream for a bridge and huge terrifying
Rapids were in the way
Somehow got over to the tip of an island and hung on
Saw other people swimming
Asking “How do we get to land safely?”
Afraid we would die
And then I woke up, realized I’d been dreaming
A sigh of relief
III
It was a good vacation
Relaxing as vacations should be
Good weather, pounding ocean waves, good company
And now we’re home
Catching up to where we should be
IV
Someday there will be air tight settlements on Mars
Wondering how many more cycles
Before walking on the green, green grass of Earth

Everything
I
Solitary miners dredging and digging, panning
for gold, afraid someone will steal their secret place
Their wives and husbands reticent, hiding other
secrets in ugly places off rivers of blood
Who to believe in a world of liars and thieves?
Yellow teeth and smoke filled lungs, implants and
crystallized drugs
There are times to trust and times to disagree,
there are still good honest people near me
So many of us will sell our souls at the right price,
sometimes too cheap, if offered right
II
Who am I to judge anything?
If I could live my life like a monk, one foot in this
corruption stained world, the other outside of it
spiritually clean, my anchor to God
If I could trust God in all things, no matter what,
I would be free, even if He pulled out all my teeth, took
all my money, left me to write poetry, live in a house
full of beautiful art, gave me enough food to eat, a good
woman to love, loyalty, peace, why would I fear anything
knowing in the end both feet would be spiritually clean
Then all is well, I need not worry, my life
stands like a tree raising its many arms to the sun,
meditating on the meaning of its life catching every
bit of light it can, accepting everything that happens
equally, unable to change anything outside itself
being part of everything