Love this, especially when Jean reads it aloud...

Peace is not
Sterile gauze, a snowflake, an insipid dove
It's feisty and rich

Don't let the war boys hog it all
The spit, the spice and the glamour.

Peace is potency
Reaching and sprouting
Budding and branching

It's lifting things
A good scrap
A hot wrestle and a cool scrub
Cleansing and hope.

Peace is the empowerment of dust
Whispers of the song before origin
As out of seed
The cathedral of the body builds itself

It's spasms and metamorphoses
The vertigo
Of mind dancing
With the fecundator
To the music of need.

Peace
Is little orange bees
Spotted ladybugs on white campions
Late June with a stink of linden
Prickles and burrs

It's wild grapes in a bramble
A tough nut
Lovers churning
Throught the night, at noon, in the morning
A juicy comeuppance
For the grim supressors.

Peace
Is for the star-biters and the rooted
Don't be dainty
Go at it
Hammer and tong.

Peace is not purity
Limp, neat and dry.
It's sexy.

*

- Clifford Browder, poet
from, Manual for the Peacemaker- An Iroquois Legend to Heal Self and Society
by Jean Houston, Ph.D., with Margaret Rubin

Because, This is the Way...

Today,
Impermanence
and I
Dance
a slow grind.
She is seducing me,
opening me, as She will-
to Her will.

My body softens to the hand She places
at the small of my back-
another to my forehead-
She dips me,
down
onto this bed of moss
removes
my Clothing-

She is Breathing Me,
so deeply,
I give Her my tongue
like a reclining Lion,
She enters me,
slithers down to sit
in my center.

Impermanence devours me,
like a hungry lover-
I want to beg Her to stop
but I can not breathe on my own.
She is Breathing Me
and I am Cumming
again and again
and weeping without breath
as I slip away....

*********************************

copyright Rev. Ursula Carrie (Wilkerson)

Dear Winter: a prayer poem

Thank you,
Thank you for the Solitude.
For the Time within to Reflect
and to Review Life's Lessons.
Life is stirring within the Earth,
and deep within me,
the Dreams
of Longest Winter's Sleep
are beginning to stir.
Slowly, moving motionless toward Intent-
Now I sit in the Fullness
of this Empty-Urgent space,
gathering Courage to leap
saber-toothed into the Unknown,
to manfest this Dream,
to be In and Of,
and yet not of
this World.

Walking In Beauty,
In Love
and Gratitude.