To my surprise, the far reaching hours

become saturated with incandescent hues,

water blues and wistful greens, browns a study in restraint,

views divergent from what I well know, the

city’s mosaic of lost calling out,

trucks heaving, even bikes heavy with urgency,

nightfall melding with day in sly, sooty vagueness

and whispers torn by odd gunshots, mad sirens shaking stars.

Heartbreak and hunger for life fill those streets. My old home.

 

This is another side of the city’s story and mine,

and I am not ashamed to free fall into velvety spaces,

a leisure of quietude, rippling bird lyrics,

sky curving over cathedral of firs, air soft

with itself and my breath floating upwards

from this body’s laboring, dreaming, striding:

liberation begins again, imagination and

yes, moments of bravery that speak

to upheaval unlike others over two decades.

 

Surprising to feel this gentle leaning into swirl of movement

as if I was made for it and it, me, like this unfettered light

that plays and pauses in new shadows, opens a path

of expectancy.

Awash with this beauty I become a slow-filling vessel of peace

shaped by a faith that sends out tender roots,

my legs and heart made stronger with effort, a willingness.

I close my eyes, sip rushes of fragrant wind,

healing nourishment, small salvation (of which exist a myriad),

a rudimentary way to begin. To continue.