TL *Humaning the Best She Can*’s Reviews > A Body Made of Weather: Collected Poems > Status Update

Quiet Relief

I could live forever in
landscapes
that speak to me of
permanence,
of how we are but temporary
creatures in this breathing
globe:
I am small in my oneness,
and in that thought, I find
relief.

No Matter the Darkness

We are—
emblazoned in star dust,
boundless in the cosmos,
interminable beyond this life.
We are—
affixing our truth and
discovering meaning in
another’s limitless scribe.
We are—
everlasting star stuff,
fires of strength and light,
the spark which illuminates
no matter the darkness.
We are.

Try Again

funny, no matter how many
times
I have felt myself slip
(heart gone, brain gone, feeling
gone),
my eyes have closed,
and despite the end, have
opened
again to see a new morning
with this new life
cupped in my hands.

Origin

That ache with no origin
is felt while the earth strains,
needing to rest but forgetting
how.

We have stolen her memory
of peace
yet forever condemn her to be
the laborer.

We think ourselves gods
deserving of
immortality but do
nothing to outlast our own
damnation.

It is unfair to have to rely on
something as fragile
as memory to contain us.

Stargazing

I can gaze upward in the night
to find all the misunderstood
creatures
who have become etched into
the sky
as the constellations that we
seek, point at, and name.

They have spent lifetimes
casting their grief down
to our sights and yet all we
know them for is their light.
Their stories burn with
heartache
while we use their burdened
past to guide us home.

Nature Walks

Picture it:
a camouflaged moth
resting on a concrete wall.
I ask if she feels safe.
Her brown and tan wings
a stark reply to the white
surroundings.
When is the last time
someone asked her that?
The moth twitches.
She is not where she should
be,
(or) she is not blending in,
which says more about
us as neighbors than it does
about her ability to hide
in the plainest of sights.

Natural Pep Talk

we stood in awe of the fireflies
as they synchronized
around us,
constellations playing between
the trees and mirroring
the sky above,
a language made by nature,
a dark canvas
penetrated solely by their light,
reminding us there is such a
thing as magic,
bringing a piece of
otherworldliness
to our
needy,
tired
fingertips.

Take a Walk

Thoreau said he came out
of
the woods larger than the
trees,
but I emerged as them—
roots threading down
through
where my ribs had been,
bark settling slow over
the soft parts I used to
guard.

I did not conquer the
quiet.
I let it grow me instead,
ring by ring, season
folding into season,
until stillness was not
something I visited,
but something I was made
of.

Metaphor for Learning

Bottomless in depth,
the churn of the surface
breaks open and departs,
glimpsing into the vast,
the dark.

Sand rolls as though
breathing,
a deep sigh of preparation
as the rain rolls in.

Perpetual allusions—
luster, somber,
strength of the storm
competes heavily
with silence, the quiet of
an empty land.