THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

May 2, 2024

 

Katie sent this poem. Joy Harjo was Poet Laureate from 2019-2022.

 

Remember

 

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the stars’ stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother’s, and here.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

 

—Joy Harjo

*

 

Birthing Your Secret Self

 

Music can get you without being seen.

Painting can move you without a word.

Poetry works because you can’t explain.

Drawing distills your vision’s blur to lines.

With film, you swim a different river.

Live theater plucks you from time’s prison.

Puppets lift you into antic life. Dance

tugs your dreams from darkness to stand

and stamp, pivot, swoon and swirl. So,

freed from gravity, from barren facts,

your spirit sings its colors hid too long.

By art, slow days are quickened, and

all your torn hopes healed as by these

magic acts to your inner eye at last

rising tall you stand revealed.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

Not So Much

 

I used to be captured by longing.

Not so much anymore. The ghost

of it resonates, rain on an

industrial drum outside a warehouse

near an old dock, quiet on a Sunday afternoon.

 

The place the ache left remains.

Wind comes up then whistles

through big sky, open horizon.

The possibilities aren’t quite as endless

as they used to be. Blue petals

 

of a flower open anyway.

There is a break in the clouds.

I go for a walk.

Even if it is just in my mind.

More space has opened up to roam.

 

—Elizabeth Domike

*

 

“MAD”

 

It never makes Sense.

Once you’re down the rabbit hole,

You’ll never come up.

 

Oh no! I must be morbidly mad;

For can’t you see that everything that falls upon me—

the good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly was eloquently

envisioned to carry me (no, not you! Rather simply just me.)

through the event horizon to a new reality?

 

My mind, it ebbs and it flows on the shore with the

rocks. I mustn’t be late! Tick…Tock…alas it

does seem, I am in need, of a new “cuckoo” clock.

 

The stars in the sky, they seem so high.

That is of course unless you view them from my

mind’s eye. A light year’s not far, and an eon’s not

long.

 

Will you come with me to a new dimension?

 

—Brandon Lee Roy

*

 

3-26-24

5:40 a.m.

Dear Johnny

 

It’s a beautiful rainy Spring morning here. I just wanted to start sending pieces for both newsletters again. I should never be too busy for this.

 

When I read “The Open Road” & “Mindfulness  & Meditation” I feel the Love & emotions that every one has in them. The amount of wisdom I get is…stunning, to say the least. To me they are works of art from everyone’s heart. Nothing in these compilations we all participate in are simple information; they’re complex, beautiful & cultivate positive growth within each of us in some way. In some way each of us needs some piece of them to complete some part of us…for me, that’s how it feels.

 

Love You All

Love, Rocky

All of the ways I’ve seen, all the paths I’ve walked, all that life was, is & will be—can it be that I have found in it all the paths that set my heart ablaze with love and the will to be free from self doubt & self limitations?

 

Even confined within the concrete walls, the fences, the endless spools of razor wire, through the fightings, cuttings, stabbings and broken bones, the lying, backstabbing, manipulations, and the fear of the prison guards who play with our lives, minds and souls, I’ve found this path.

 

The path is not an easy one to navigate all the time. Every day has its distractions & traps to overcome, same as life outside the walls of prison. But the golden path is the path I’m on, and no one can take me off of it but me. I’ve no plans of trekking away from it any time soon.

 

The world keeps spinning, eclipses happen like a cosmic clock, my heart is like yours—limited beats full of wounds, love and joy. It rages like a thunderstorm on the sea in my chest, the engine of my soul driving along my golden daily path.

 

—Rocky Hutchinson

*

 

Here’s an old poem:

 

We Are Seven

 

—-A simple Child,

That lightly draws its breath,

And feels its life in every limb,

What should it know of death?

 

I met a little cottage Girl:

She was eight years old, she said;

Her hair was thick with many a curl

That clustered round her head.

 

She had a rustic, woodland air,

And she was wildly clad:

Her eyes were fair, and very fair;

—Her beauty made me glad.

 

“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,

How many may you be?”

“How many, Seven in all,” she said,

And wondering looked at me.

 

“And where are they? I pray you tell.”

She answered, “Seven are we;

And two of us at Conway dwell,

And two are gone to sea.

 

“Two of us in the church-yard lie,

My sister and my brother;

And, in the church-yard cottage, I

Dwell near them with my mother.”

 

“You say that two at Conway dwell,

And two are gone to sea,

Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,

Sweet Maid, how this may be.”

 

Then did the little Maid reply,

“Seven boys and girls are we;

Two of us in the church-yard lie,

Beneath the church-yard tree.”

 

“You run about, my little Maid,

Your limbs they are alive;

If two are in the church-yard laid,

Then ye are only five.”

 

“Their graves are green, they may be seen,”

The little Maid replied,

“Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,

And they are side by side.

 

“My stockings there I often knit,

My kerchief there I hem;

And there upon the ground I sit,

And sing a song to them.

 

“And often after sun-set, Sir,

When it is light and fair,

I take my little porringer,

And eat my supper there.

 

“The first that died was sister Jane;

In bed she moaning lay,

Till God released her of her pain;

And then she went away.

 

“So in the church-yard she was laid;

And, when the grass was dry,

Together round her grave we played,

My brother John and I.

 

“And when the ground was white with snow,

And I could run and slide,

My brother John was forced to go,

And he lay by her side.”

 

“How many are you, then,” said I,

“If they two are in heaven?”

Quick was the little Maid’s reply,

“O Master! we are seven.”

 

“But they are dead; those two are dead!

Their spirits are in heaven!”

’Twas throwing words away; for still

The little Maid would have her will,

And said, “Nay, we are seven!”

 

—William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770-April 23, 1850)