Spring is the vase of nectar
poured toward the living earth—
wild & free, available to all.

My prayer in this life is for that growing light
to illuminate great doubt & accompany
my tender heart-bud homeward,
to reunite with all other perfect blossoms
who suffer for want of knowing beauty.

The poem hunches like that night heron
hunting by a traffic-jammed interstate at dusk,
intent on subtle perturbations of enthralling water—
art is the fish, the combustion, the fury, compassion
& the vividness of space-as-womb.

Life-sustaining is a positive freedom,
which is a burden because birth is hard
& freedom (which is love) is complicated:

Free people must choose spirit over gasoline,
recognize the divisive power in the algorithm.
Free people go about making hard decisions
that transmute momentary discomfort
for the sake of honoring the real world—
with all its confusing causes & conditions.

The moon is for mothers & their mothers
& their daughters of dark silken hair,
who nourish the world as life-giving maidens
of the south—who sit up & proclaim
that the living must practice gratitude first.

Return to ground,
earth proclaims,
& be given heaven.

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