Care Instead

 

-------Care Instead-------

 

There was a time 

I detested 

weeding

 

A time 

before 

you opened me

 

And loved in ways 

that now

make room

 

For care

instead

of fighting.

 

-------

Challenge

 

-------Challenge-------

 

It is hard to cuss 

the thistle

 

After witnessing them flower

 

As it is 

with things

 

I find in life

 

That challenge

but help me grow.

 

-------

Open Wider

 

-------Open Wider-------

 

Before I learned 

to make friends 

with darkness

 

I kept the garden 

free of weeds.

 

Everything 

beyond 

the edge of firelight 

 

I thought as other 

because I could not see.

 

But wonder has found 

its way back 

to me

 

Encouraging my circle 

to open wider

 

And welcome in 

what I have yet 

to know.

 

-------

Flower

 

-------Flower-------

 

We do not talk 

about the old country

 

As if by erasure 

we might reckon 

with that loss.

 

It has been not yet

one hundred years

 

But our story

is almost 

gone.

 

Assimilation

is slow death.

 

A pledge 

of allegiance

to forget.

 

But we cannot 

forget.

 

For we are more 

than the race 

America gave us

 

In exchange for our language 

and songs

 

More than the dispossessed 

made immigrant

on another's land.

 

We are

more human than that.

 

Miracle

and memory 

of soil and sea

 

A people 

of a place upon this Earth

 

Come a long way

but still 

related

 

Like seeds

to the flower of home.

 

-------