i’m trying to stay here

trying to keep one root in the dirt

spread wide listening

for an echo of the ones i loved

 

i’m trying to stay here on earth

which untethers me

with tragedy on tragedy

it’s so bleak these days

in spite of all the beauty

 

and i’m trying to find the sunlight

i’m trying to find the laughter

i’m looking for the sweet moments

i’m letting my soul get humble

i’m letting my vision surrender

to the edges of my people

 

because we are really so small and fragile

we are really in all the universe

so brief

and i am trying to feel forever

not as illusion or delusion

but as faith

 

i am focusing on the babies

the scale of their worries

their fortifications

 

i’m trying to keep them from wasting any time

defending their truths

and helping them love the time

of being an earthling who is carried

because it will shift

at some point i took on the weight

i am holding the world in the balance

of my prayers and my practices

i am guilty in my exhaustion

but i can’t move either

somedays

i can’t move either

 

my spells feel the shattering weight

of each headline

my memories pull me down

away from the shore

is it time to become the ocean

is it time to become the hurricane

the weapon made of earth’s frustration

can i become her warrior

 

i’m trying to find my place here

i think i’m a heart cell

i think i’m a portal

i think i’m a whisper for mercy

a seed

maybe a seed feels a lifetime

as it falls from the palm to the soil

i am part of a system

that is falling apart

and i keep thinking: this is the bottom

then falling

apart from the people who know

i can’t grow there

i can’t breathe with fences

i can’t flee my senses

i am trying to find solid ground

i am trying to stay here

 

i am trying to stay here on earth

which untethers me

unable to tell me apart

from the others

the ones who break my heart

the ones who break earth’s heart

 

i am trying to stay here

of earth

to be the small glimmer

to be the slender thread

singing songs of warning

to the ones i’ll never see

 

i am trying to stay here on earth

bare feet on the grass

the breath that carries forth the past

the dream that remembers what’s coming

i am the lost child

i am the grandmother humming

i am rooting myself in the earth

i am finding myself made of dirt

i am breathing the fire of time

i am breathing again

i am breathing again

i am fine