Rough Branch: poetry

Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Feeling the walls.

I don't show you
the darkness in my mind
to blind you;

Maybe together
we can find the light.

12/02/2012
-|KXM|-

The Bitter Winter of Discontent

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror
my eyes staring down a cavern of failure;
looking back over a life of regret
instead of forward to what's next.

I'd be the first to tell you
that age cannot define you,
but the lips of a hypocrite
kiss my ear with a whisper....
"too late."

12/02/2012
-|KXM|-

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Happy Spring

Ghost moon,

a wispy sliver of silver suggestion

in the pale morning light.

Gossamer tendrils of mist

rise from the dew-covered earth.

Spring pushes up through moist soil,

thickening the air, coloring the world,

fleshing out life in all directions.

-|KXM|-

03/20/2012

Friday, January 27, 2012

There is beauty in your presence

I want to be your solace and your shelter
I want to be your partner in the dance.
I want to take your joys and push them skyward,
I want to slay your demons like the dragons of the past.

-|KXM|-
01/08/2012

...and it is you... <3

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

December morning

December morning

Bright moon, high in the pale blue sky

shining through frosted, misty air

Bright as your eyes, sparkling

like your smile lighting up the room

Dawn breaks over the river

Promises of warmth

riding the clouds of early morn

12/13/2011

-|KXM|-

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Haiku - Girl on a wire.

Girl on a wire,
no safety net below her,
walks on bloody feet.

-|KXM|-
01/28/2011

Monday, December 13, 2010

Unfolding.

For ANH.
The tight ball of newborn leaf
unfolds in its time,
fleshing out to become
what it has always been,
needing only time to complete
the revelation.

The ancient oak contained
complete in the acorn,
but needing every moment
to find its true self
each dawn.

All that will be
is here at inception,
but the acorn
cannot be rushed.

It is the journey
that is needed.

12/13/2010
-|kxm|-

Journal Entry, 29 July 2009.

A Vision of The Country of Marriage.

I want to be an old woman shelling peas with you next to our garden, it's bounty spilling over the fence, the harvest of years of our love, patience, and attention.

I want to bring in cut flowers to sit on the table where we dine together in thanksgiving for the benevolent abundance with which we are blessed.

I want to walk hand in hand through the forest, our fingers interlocking, meeting each other in custom grooves made over the course of many years.

I want to be understood, so that saying who I am isn't a constant battle of words ever missing the mark. I want to know your thoughts before you think them, but ever be delighted by welcome surprises from your engaging intellect.

I want what I have to offer to be enough, because you understand the full import of what I give.

I do not want to live out my days a solitary stranger, never to meet you, love.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Hello love.

Hello, love--

Why am I crying

when in you I find

happiness & joy?

Hello, love--

Why am I fearing

when with you I find

safety & peace?

I have no new walls

to build, love,

just old ones

to keep tearing down.

I love slow…

It is so hard to trust,

to believe,

to accept,

to allow...

The scars run deep,

the fear known to well.

Panic, in a moment,

replaces safety,

for no apparent reason

but deep…

Be patient, love,

keep a hold on me,

I will give in to you

3/6/94, redux 12/12/2010

-|kxm|-

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

draft.

draft.

fingertips touch
misty tendrils
of memories.
this emptiness is
the lack of you
between my ribs,
letting the draft
rush through
the hollow that
is me.

10/27/2010 -|KXM|-

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Requiem

Requiem.

Images of you, of us

flood through my mind

like a requiem.

Your body,

the body I once worshiped,

lays next to me

like a carcass.

My hands run over

dead flesh,

rotting meat

falling from bone.

I can feel the decay

in my heart,

the death of which

we never do speak.

8/96 -|kxm|-

Why is this place called Rough Branch?

Rough Branch is a reference to Wendell Berry's "mad farmer" poems. Berry is an agrarian populist poet, and advocate for sustainable agricultural practices. I don't agree with every position he takes, but his reverence for the beauty and balance of the natural world, for the preciousness of the life that runs through it (including our own), and of the community that sustains both the land and each other, speaks to my heart.

Over the past few years, I have sunk myself into the soil in my back yard, and into the community of neighbors that surrounds it, and it has begun to restore me. My garden is not just a plot of dirt providing vegetables for the salad bowl, it is an act of love, a place of profundity and awe. If you knew about the ecosystem that lives in but one gram of good earth, you would be humbled, literally, to the ground.

Berry's poems are passionate calls to live--deeply, profoundly, fearlessly. To step out of narrow-minded egotism, to secede "[f]rom the union of self-gratification and self-annihilation, [to] secede into care for one another, and for the good gifts of Heaven and Earth."

And so I have made my own nation small enough to walk across. I have named the small corner of the earth I steward Rough Branch. I have declared myself free of ignorant love, and I secede...

From the union of power and money,
from the union of power and secrecy,
from the union of government and art,
from the union of science and money,
from the union of ambition and ignorance,
from the union of genius and war,
from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.

There is only one of him, but he goes.
He returns to the small country he calls home,
his own nation small enough to walk across.
[...]
(From "The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag of Rough Branch, Secedes from the Union")

The Mad Farmer challenges us to reconnect, to resurrect our land, our communities, and our souls.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
[...]
(From "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front")

All quotes from Wendell Berry.

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