Windmills

Some days, most days,

the windmills are just windmills,

their giant sails turning to grind wheat

to flour to make our daily bread,

nourishing the bodies of mankind and industry;

 

but then, there are those days

when the windmills, enchanted, raise

their giant arms for combat, to face down

the hard-fought battle of an old man’s dreams

set free by age and rage and Rosinante

carries us forward, enchanted ourselves,

against a madness of men accepting life’s as it is,

bleak and unbearable, men’s murderous ways to man,

and dreaming now our impossible dreams, tilting

at those windmills, shattering the mirror of reality

that would blind us to what should be, to who we are,

but knights-errant seeking truth, righting wrongs,

a gauntlet tossed and the challenge

bravely taken, a banner unfurled.

Yellow

I like yellow flowers,

spring’s daffodils trumpeting

and the upturned bell of a tulip,

dandelions even, a yellow paintbrush

and butter cups, newly arrived,

yellow reflecting back the sun

on a cloudy day, the gift of light, of life

and hope for an old world seeking peace,

seeking enlightenment and finding answers

in a yellow flower reflecting back ourselves.

In a Corner of the Imagination

Mouse sits on her front porch beneath the oak tree,

reading, waiting for us, her teacups and cakes close by,

and a fresh pot of tea ready to share when we drop in

to catch up on The Glen’s news or to hear a story told,

a tale of the woodland creatures living there,

lives we imagine, lives we’d like to live

tucked safely into this corner of our imaginations,

a reality to return to when the world grows cold

and angry, madness abounding, and feeling alone,

needing time away, we return to The Glen, a spot of tea

and cake and a story, a tale told by Mouse or Rabbit,

The Glen come to life while the world turns ever onward.

A Return to Eden

When does consciousness begin, this knowing

who and what we are, the why even of self-awareness?

 

With egg and sperm and cells dividing, becoming us,

our limbs and organs, heart and brain forming in a womb,

connected, a new life’s beginning, growing

into ourselves, shaped and molded, scolded,

and there in that warm sea floating, discovering fingers

and toes, a face with nose and mouth and eyes that couldn’t see,

inhabiting a place, a space of muffled noise and light?

 

Or at our birth, expelled on a tidal wave into light, blinded,

our lungs flooded with air and breath, the screams we made,

first sounds, carried into a cold world, disconnected,

on our own to figure things out, inside a body, a physical form

we cannot control, dependent on others, cuddling us,

coddling us, cudgeling our brains, searching.

 

Or is this familiarity, this knowing, this recognition

already there, a consciousness long before conception,

the who, the what, the why of being, and born, rememb’ing it,

or giving in, giving up what we knew before this new experience,

this inherent awareness, forgetting it all, perhaps, in becoming

what they would have us become, or do, or be, losing ourselves?

 

And what happens when that consciousness, innate, doesn’t match

the reality given us, trying to survive, to please someone, to exist

in that which we are not, expectations we cannot meet, not our own,

but thrust upon us in behaviors and colors and attitudes,

platitudes, our very being called out, gender itself, why we cannot

cry, cannot feel openly what we feel, feminine or masculine but by body

shape and size, or is it, rather, by a consciousness, a knowing who and what

we were long before we were born, our dreams and visions, consciously

aware that we are here now, have existence, as well an understanding

of somewhere else, beyond time and place, before the egg and sperm

and cells dividing, before life begins, a golden sunlight without form

forming us for no other reason than to become us, a body to house us,

to live in, purposeful, perchance to advance this world, this humanity,

this life into which we have arrived, naked and blind and screaming,

to share the who and the what, the why, with skills and gifts and talents

beyond others’ expectations, conceiving, achieving perfection,

bringing together this inherent consciousness with the world

of now, a return to Eden from which we came, before creation.