Holding Actions
Nov. 2020
I’ve seen where the mountain
slid sheer off the cliff-edge
potent roots of a big pine tree
dangling in the wind
How
does that giant old tree
balance her weight
when the bottom falls out?
Holding in the dangle
festooned with a white wind
the gems and salt of earth so far below
swaying somehow over that abyss
How does she hold on?
How do we hold on?
I’m overwhelmed today, again
with love and gratitude for us
For the people who bore it
bored by it,
bored through it
tunneled through darkness and terror
plague, fascism, and threats of worse
still somehow we held.
Holding actions: guard rails
and the thinnest worn-out wishes
of democracy
as the lies and fear tore through,
raging against it as it raged against us
We with our fb and insta posts, hunkered
clawing through zoom and phone lines
bouncing off satellites just to talk to another person about how this feels
desperately
throwing paper airplanes through a hurricane
Holding On In The Year From Hell
Hold
like you’re held in the magma fist of gravity
Hold
like the earth holds the lake
who’s longing to be embraced
erase fear and mistakes
just Hold
The old kind of hold was a cellar
filled with noble dust
under the house, also called a keep
you Keep the wine
the root vegetables
the faith
You keep and affirm that faith
facing the worst of winter
in this land of willow & ice
& stone cold sunshine
Here we are
a small tribe
and not unwounded
everyone included
a voluminous stability
repeating our validity
like prayer beads slid through tired hands
being true to the rosary of us
alone
Alone and coping
like
loping along
matching strides
with future’s time
reach from the twining vine
of ancestors
You
can be an ancestor too
if you just
Hold on
And through the winter
Patient in just enough-ness
You leaned out so far
knowing what you are
knowing how things are
splashing about in the know
in the not-know, so
only hold on
Grip
in the silent dust
down there in the cellar
of the great house of You
where you stand in your slippers
Stars
in your sweat-pant pockets
Roots
under your winter inside- hat
Fidelity, or some old fashioned notion like that
Hold on
like the ice of January
spoons the dream of February
Hold like that tree
grips holy stone
you barely ripple
when a cyclone rips through
You affirm your rigor
with the simple devotion of mud
Or how a sprout lifts from that mud
to the fingers of the sun
dedicated as seed to fruit
vibrations echoing in the tallest trees
Endure underground with mycelium
defeating the pessimism
that pressed in for days
that feel like years
that feels like a nightmare
feeling for the light switch
Hold on.
It’s early yet
but at the end of the hardest year
the holding is simpler now
Suddenly, in the longer light
silver-hemmed in silence
comes one shining voice
that might be a god
or something that eats god
The flash bang of Life
and a gate swings open
You ride it like a horse
holding onto something so old
nothing but the silence
of oiled hinges
passing through hope
for the open
holy world
pushing through forever
listen—
the whispered prayer
that falls through time & space
only
Hold on.
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