How clear up here

To be free

whether winds

push or pull

To Be sure

one cannot fall...

Further

Delight lies

in the details.

The Raven and the grasshopper

see you seeing them

Alone

and altogether such...

simplicities and cycles

remain

Elemental.

Artwork by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, 'Nightjar in flight' c. 1910-1914 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Surname

Five-hundred generations since writing
and gathering, hunting and making
Families have failed
to evolve
at a decent pace.

My own stagnant genetic make-up,
imagination and desire
to do, to be, to come, to rise
higher
hovers-
inert for three generations.

An only child understood odds
and ends,
I had two children,
one son, one daughter,
two opportunities
to raise human beings
the right way.

I have left
all extended family
I have left a legacy
of language,
I have stoked creative fires,
I have drained all the juice,
I have praised
living self-lessly.

I have risen².


Painting by Paul Peel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

To Rise Above

To Rise Above

does not challenge

volume of voice;

Rather, 

to Rise

we must become

light-er.

Start by letting go

of what was never able

or willing to support your weight-

in words;

it may be all ready 

too late

to try to fly

on your own.

Up or down, to fall or float

dares us to face that timid demon;

in doing so, we learn 

a bit about freedom-

not of choice or right, 

as in 'Fight or Flight',

but to maintain and conserve

the quiet right 

to let go.

And move on,

to knowing

there is much more

than time

to exist and resist

changes 

of the heart.

Painting by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (1802) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.