POETRY LETTER FOR SOCIAL CARING

POETRY LETTER FOR SOCIAL CARING
For the Cleveland Five

There’s a machine that works on metaphor, action,
prayer, intent, art, words, poetry, communication.
It permeates and inflates. It girds up the health
of clay to pen open lung heart.

It works on levers, breath, promise points, little
areas we work to heal the big areas, the endurance
of holding softly to kind open mind,truths I can
muster as much as possible.

It’s a machine that trusts me and I trust it.
Advaita. This machines is me, Thee, the stuff
around me and Thee. It says “I am.”

The levers are consistency in truth and action,
keeping promises. The more promises are kept, the
more effective the oar. It stirs a reservoir of
ever renewing wellness. It rachets down
conclusions to tender secure for sure.

Promises are keeping the faith. Keeping the faith
can be doing the marginal things to make a
difference, to widen or winnow the circuit,
circumference, area, mindful resource.

Keeping the faith is having a foot in the door to
to nourish us, propping that door open to let in
the sun, the rain, whatever is needed for the
garden, the garden interior, the garden exterior.
The more calm discernment, the easier the
propping. The window. Windows passing through
bars.

Keeping the faith. How can one not forget some
sadness, gently? What genie lets one care and not
immerse in steeping ill-ly? Can the highbeam
eyebeams focus concern but not open danger vistas
on account of wanting to be healing? Ruach.

This letter is a ladder leading to a jail cell in
which someone for whom weather unladened something
rotten and I’m sorry. I cannot just skip tiles at
convenience, follow the yellow brick road with
abandon.

Thou shalt not forget; thou shalt not obsess too
much. Thou shalt not abandon. Cannonballs and
canons. Cannonballs through canons sometimes.
Cannonballs of canons. Personal cannons, cans,
ons, Can on. We can on. We can carry on. Our
cannoning of community histories. Our cannoning of
that which we wish to accrue.

Progress is carried on the rachets and the breath
and when we inflate with intent of best, when we
let the stuff wind kind for a long while, well,
that’s a good way. Progress is mindful of what has
happened, too.

I seep the silk of a ladder of attention to the
jail cell in which someone is not forgotten. The
silk is a tieline of care that kindles calm balm.
Light it like a wick. Let the candle be the
outside air, and the letter about ladder be soaked
in something that matters. Let the person
receiving this letter find his reservoir by
candlelight, softly, softly.

~ Lady