Wind blows
Moving dark silver blue
Clouds showing moon

I wake up in the still deep dark
And in that moment pull thoughts back in through the open window to the ground of this beginning day
The floor by the bed is wood
From my feet to planks to plywood to posts to cement to bedrock
I touch ground and stand up
In the dark life becomes clear
I'm almost 46
I have so many hopes
Behind me is turbulence
I sweep the kitchen every night
I fumble my delicate knowing
Called back in each idle moment to the archive of smoldering old wounds
To run through them again
I wake back up

Is there a song on the wind?
Recurring questions nudge me along
People ask, and I answer that l'm a musician but that's not it
Mother Night
The self-evidence of birdsong
I sing my little songs in a burning time of nature
And woman-denying authoritarian landlords
Of numbed-out spectators glazing over the genocides
Privileged and healthy (For the moment) while seas rise
This place where I live is beautiful and troubled
They say it's in a nation but I disagree
The sloping hill curves around and the river changes course

With decades of baggage
I moved a little bit away from the town of Anacortes where circling military jets roar their reminder
"There's wars. This peace you breathe is flimsy. We rule."
I bite the inside of my check and sidestep mere despair at the gnashing human world
And go downstairs in the dark

A stream finds the low place and glitters

There is no other home but here and now
Here, on the paper thin west edge of a colonized continent
Enclosed and named and sold and resold in multi-generational deep ignorance
I used to dream that my roots were strong and deep
Then I dug down just barely and found cathedrals
Here, a long guest in someone else's home
I watch the islands over the water and wonder if maybe someday my daughter's grand-daughter will be old here, healed and grateful
The flat fertile sea between these islands holds everything, like I try to
Only ten thousand years ago there were meadows here
A short two-day walk to what's now "Mainland", bison bones in the kelp
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