Kayaks and books and pelicans and sand, lots of sand

Today there was a man in a boat
Two on another with nets
My ink and I sat on the beach
With pelicans and tiny crabs
I wanted to swim the quarter mile out
I planned my words even
“Hello sir. How are the fish today?
That’s a beautiful boat.
Your family’s name is Flores?
I knew a Flores once.”

We stared at eachother
My skin betrays me even so far away.
Was it Jesus who said try the other side?

I swear I drink this water
I swear I bleed your blood,
Blue and white and a little salty.
I follow birds too
I’m awed at our land
At our sea
We are the same children
We are pulled down by the same force

For now it’s only ours
We own this cove, the fishermen and I
The trees tell me the same secrets,
They hold my own
Like the mango with my name
Was that really 4 years ago?
Oh, I was only a girl

We can stare I don’t mind.
I don’t need a word or a wave or notion
We just share the water.
Some are afraid of men in the sea
I’m jealous they are so close to her
They know her
The same way I almost know a pen

Don’t let me go
Don’t let me go
Don’t let me go
Not again.
Did you catch that fish sir?
Is your belly full, bird?
I will always thirst for this water
I will always search for this earth

May angels always bring me in.
God, I don’t think I thanked you for this
Not enough
Here I am strong and proud
Blessed
Here I dream sleepless
I breathe poetry
The world breathes lemon and eucalyptus
My heart is Bigger than
The ocean I hardly understand
My songs are always of soul

I grieved and was forgiven
I returned and was remembered.
The water only barely whispered
“Come back to me”
You are all I see

This One's Titled "Hope"

Is there no one here at all?
No one to break the perpetual fall of humanity?
There is nothing left to save.
No honest song, but a faint and distant blues.
No justice, except that which is consumed by revenge.

We ask questions without answers;
Can we bend without the break?
“Do the wicked ever lose?”
Will the deserted be found?
The hungry?
The poor?

We can glance in any single direction,
We dream powers and lengths beyond us
But we slip, at any given moment.
Nothing is ours to gain,
Everything is left to lose.

God forbid we are ever able to describe a hell
That is somehow worse than the sinking and charred waste
We’ve oh-so-carefully crafted for ourselves.
A day like this will cave the earth.

And though nothing is okay,
A day like this one;
When the sky falls into pink mountains,
When flight lifts us,
When rivers sweep us away…
That day will be redemption.

Where I used to sink, I walk on water
Where I used to mourn, I rejoice
And the blues continue faintly, but honestly at least,
With compassion written in the chorus,
Goodness, steady, keeping time.
United with the least of these,
This one’s titled “hope”

Let me sit quietly
And dwell
In thought
In turn
In spirit
Let the solace be my comfort
Let stillness wrap me like cloth
Tuck me away
Encase me
The humidity of silence
Bare against skin and bone
Holding me in perfect concentration
Of futures
And paths
And consequence

The almost holy place
Where all disturbance ceases
As sounds dissipate
And I’m left alone to my thoughts
Slithering cautiously in and out
My mind
My nerves
My veins

Leave me lay quietly to dwell

I am a number.
A first try,
A dozenth time,
A score,
By which I am remembered.

I’m told to fit a figure.
A size,
A length,
A measurable point,
Against which I am deemed average.

My mind, though, is weary of digits
That budget me,
Worth me,
Design me,
So that I am an equation
And as such can be figured, estimated, predicted.

Even my socks are numbered and matched,
To avoid a waste of counted seconds,
Precious as they are,
Precisely as they’re followed.

Dare we lose a moment
On account of a statistic,
On an investment?
We are all just numbers after all.
Falling orderly in line,
Ranked and placed accordingly,
Waiting to be counted off,
By tries,
And times,
And scores.