Nostalgia for War and Peace

I get it. It was a simpler time

A sweeter time for rivers and old trucks

and tongue flicks

Or it was the music

Or maybe we are magnets

and memory aligns us back

to the crystal structure we were before

I’m not sure. It doesn’t make sense to me

I’m aware of my ignorance. I don’t need

everything to fit into hard little rows

It doesn’t have to be simple or straight for me

to swallow it whole and let it keep my stomach warm and new

I love winter. There I said it. I love the cold, the snow

The bundling up with sweaters and blankets

I love hot beverages and rums and scotches

I love cedar in the swamp toppled with clean white snow

And hot steam from my mouth when I breathe out

In steam visions, touching your cheek

As my feet make a trail along a doe’s path

Over the creek into the meadow under the apple tree

Pausing to breathe and breathe, happy and sad

I like feeling the relief when I step into a warm home, when I stomp my feet and take off my boots and scarf and hat and coat, the hot fluster on my cheeks. And then smelling the wood burning fire, the chimney puffing up

like my heart for you and our world

I love you. I can’t help it. It’s the music. The step. The waves. The past or the future

It doesn’t matter. But its here. It hangs on.

It doesn’t leave. It isn’t sick or destructive

not disparate or selfish. It doesn’t hurt.

Its not a spring flower, nor a brown crumpled leaf.

It’s a rustic road that runs up north along lake Michigan and never seems to end

That leads to lake superior and cools all the fear out.

You can’t own or fight it. There is no need. It’s here, in my poetry

These silent odes, from an old fat human woman

who is learning to walk soft and dream expansive peace

I don’t want to go to war. But the war is here too.

So now I dream we are holding hands, like little laughing children

Who have not learned to hate or mistrust.

I am transforming myself.

I am focusing my intentions on life. I am forever restarting with me.

I am learning to live free of ego and hate.

I am eating the fear and panic one breath at a time.

It will take times. There is times for you to learn too.

Put your ear on my heart, I am alive with you. What more could we ask for?

[AL1]