Rain
by Carmen H Gray
This morning’s misty rain
Reminded me
That in these last two new days of the year
So much has been gently cleansed
The kind of purification that you might not even notice
Like walking down that same hallway
In that once familiar building
That housed so many hopes and fears and tears
But this time
It was a singular experience
In the extraordinary world
Today’s rain on the bamboo
Greeted me like an old friend
On my porch
Unlike the day before
Sun in Midwinter
The diseases, the chemotherapy, the fluctuating hormones of the middle years, the exigent need to be female, when born with male parts (or vice versa), the perfect cup of Persian tea sitting in front of me-they are all chemicals and energy transforming. The child in my class who needs extra reminders because all norepinephrine molecules are not created equally. Or the one who is howling in distress because an excess of cortisol due to previous trauma has been re-triggered. The flicker of passion that reverberates between two beings. The animals that bond and the ones that repel one another.
We are but chemistry, made up of cell particles that have existed for millions of years. We are the stuff of stars, they say. The oxygen atoms created from burning stars. The trace heavy elements residing within us, despite their tiny contribution, are a result of the profound energy of exploding stars.
When you begin to understand this, everything is clearer. That look of consternation on a co-worker’s face. The person honking their horn at you in traffic. Your teenager scowling at you. The highs, too. The states of calm that you have within your power to create to lower stress hormones and inflammatory proteins. The release of oxytocin when a mother breastfeeds or when you stare deeply into another person’s eyes.
We are but chemistry. It’s really simple. And yet we forget. We are the stuff of stars; being born, brilliantly shining in the middle ages like our sun or dying and thus creating heavy metals needed in minuscule amounts to create life yet again.
by Carmen H Gray
the waves lapped at the shore
industrial waste in a place
where freshwater meets saltwater
the bright sky viewing a town that feels like a story I’ve written
like time stopped here, somewhere in the 1970’s of my childhood
and it may as well be a repeat of those chaotic times these days
except here I am, a woman now
with a daughter who can celebrate
a date that has past
and here we are
souls brined
hearts preserved
bodies intact
and this is better than any man made holy day to me
Flow
by Carmen H Gray
i sometimes feel I drift between two worlds
one is
where time is not a binding entity
where cataclysmic waves are waiting to be traveled fearlessly
and the sky is fully present
broadened chances that aren’t hampered by clouds
heavy with water molecules
the other is some projected world
stifled by the densely packed
minute hands and man made dimensions of too much talking
but i choose the former
with streams and rocks and ants
who know better
parallel lines
by Carmen H Gray
I saw those lines
running across your
soft arms
arms that had formed inside my womb
arms I bathed
arms that glistened in the summer sun
arms that were cut and poked and prodded, too
I gently placed aloe on those lines
and whispered prayers to each of them
”let the pain leave” I said
and only beauty reside here
Hope paralleled
within a tiny freckle found
Between those lines
“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!”-from The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Speechless
by Carmen H Gray
why didn’t you say anything?
what froze your tongue?
was it fear, sucking your mouth
stuck, in the murky muck
struck, like backs of our
ancestral sisters
we have struggled
to return to ourselves
to remunerate our homecoming
tumbling from centuries
of tongues tied through the ages
Rose Colored Glasses
By Carmen H Gray
The truck with the tools
And the hole in the eaves
My view of the sunrise obscured by the trees
The cigarette butts
The plants dying of thirst
A Wold War II veteran nursed
In this unassuming place
And no, I never saw the ugliness
In you or you or you
I only saw what light you brought
Even in an afterthought
Even after the storms have passed
And sunlight shines its golden cast
I still see possibility in my line of sight
Sometimes I slip and take them off
Those rose-colored glasses you tossed
But if life is the way you think it is
It’s all for nought
We are absurd
Are we succored, our thoughts?
By the gentle palette?
For we can paint our world
Anyway we want
