To honor a dear friend who passed from this earth recently, a wife and mother, teacher and artist, an inspiration to many of the indelible link between justice and compassion.

I remember this thin wiry girl
hair braided back from the fire in her eyes
looking out with an unrelenting question
on the stubborn visage of injustice
demanding equal time in the sun
nourishment for the wild flowers
beside the rusted tracks of a long gone train.
She was a force to be reckoned with
more comfort to the hard luck hill jacks
than the elite through which she passed
her presence a singular virtue
discouraged at times but not deterred
walking in fire with the grace
of a street wise angel
seeing through the masks and misery
with a flaming promise to somehow
make art of us all.

I left part of me on the island,
a shard of soul
wedded to the immovable,
standing against the gray fog
crawling up the channel,
buried in cool mist.
More rock than flesh,
more gull cry than voice
I hear it far away,
feel it in my wandering feet,
reminding me of what must be given
in love’s subtle measure.

The sea is a flowing gown
diaphanous and filled with light;
behind her subtle movements
a touch of all that was intended
in a moment of extraordinary birth.
Beneath the surface,
within a seed clothed by the fruit
the eminence of all this life will be
when the old hunger dissolves
and the full tide of her presence
floods our souls with the peace
of one desire.

The old ones knew direction

charting their course

from an inner map

rich with silence.

Awake to the night

traveling with the moon

they found distant islands

beyond the grasp of certainty.

I ask for their guidance

as I set out on the morning

feeling their comfort

with the unformed unknown.