It's All Karma

Do you feel like an endangered species –

Or like a predator?

When the inevitable happens

Will you go under water

Or wait in your bunker

To make an art form of denial?

 

Each day we see the fruits of karma

 

The smiling faces gratefully aware

 

The shoulders pressed by heavy burdens

 

Some are graceful

 

Some are awkward with pain

 

But we're all in this together

 

Like the penguins and the crocodiles

 

The jellyfish and the swans

 

The honeybees and cockroaches

 

Noah is an embryo

 

In a young mother's womb

 

And we are not ready

 

For the Somali Warrior

A woman rises from her pallet

Sky still charcoal, air is chill

In her cloth too thin for warmth

She takes a calabash

And straps it to her forehead

Makes her way in the gray morning

To the high hill and beyond

To the waterhole where lions come

At dusk, now quiet

She fills the vessel

And strides carefully

Back to her house made of twigs

Her house she made herself

With strong twigs

Next she starts the fire

Rolls the meal into a flat round

And adds it to the flat pan

Never taking off the ropes of beads

Around her neck and wrists

Never growing out her black curls

More than an inch



Her man gets up now

Enticed by the smell of food

Lifts his head from the wooden pillow

Pats his elaborate headdress

Wraps his cloth around him

Stands and reaches behind her

Kisses her neck where no bead impedes him

Slaps her bottom where she has not been cut

And where she still feels something

And the woman grabs the hot bread

By the edges with her fingers

Tossing it into the center of a plate

She hands it to her husband

And looks out the door

At the rays of new morning

Dancing on the dusty earth.


* * *
Inspired by the One Billion Rising event on February 14, 2013, a day to end violence against women.

A Feather to Dream On

Such an amazing dream, it is one of those magical ones to stay with me. I was with Dawn and we were binding our books. I was using two long black crow feathers in my binding. They were very slender and fitted into it longwise. I inadvertently left one of them up in the expensive tea room of a mall. The mall was all made of gold with gold-colored carpets on the stairs. There were no escalators. All the stairs were wide enough for twenty people and very high. I was walking up the stairs in my dancing shoes – heels – and a footman was watching me so I went very fast to impress him. When I got to the tearoom at last, the counter was closed and there were cases of pastries where my feather had been. So I went over to the stand across the way and asked the young man if they had any feathers. He didn’t ask me why I wanted a feather. He just said yes, what kind. And I told him a long black crow feather. So he said yes, they had a few – that the owner had taken them straight from the bird itself when he died – that he had been a beloved pet. And he said wait and went back to talk to the owner who was a very tall man with wavy salt and pepper hair and a long serious face. Finally, he came back with a small paper bag and when I peeped in there was an amazing feather – not as long as my other one – but beautiful – black and white – something rare. I thanked the young man and he asked me for forty dollars and my name. I told him. I gave him my credit card. He seemed awed by me for some reason.

There was something so strange and magical about the dream – the book binding, the feather, the boy asking my name. Can’t explain exactly. The feather mostly. It seemed like a gift from the Spirit World. And I didn’t want to use it in the book binding because the book would have to be perfect. Absolutely perfect.