Companion to immediately following offering, “Metaquiase Ho”

“Metaquiase” is a Lakota word of blessing meaning, “All my relations.”

*****

Recorded Reading (2:39): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8f64x3xyff2kma2y8jtch/Metaquiase.mp3?rlkey=3uual5qkpub9pwrtul5dx876t&dl=0

*****

Metaquiase

O brother tree, do icy winds
Cause you to feel pain?
Your feet are bound, you cannot move
To shelter from the rain

O little blades of grass, do you
My footsteps’ pressure feel?
When you spring back, must you also
Spend energy to heal?

O airborne bird, how do you get
The wind beneath your wings?
Is it difficult to perfect,
As are so many other things?

O deer, when you make pathways
Mid the thorny brush this day
Do you take on the same scars we would
Pushing through that way?

There be a shrimp whose vision in
Thirteen primary colors be —
O lizard, o anenome
What is it that you see?

What’s it like, my friends the dog,
The cougar and the bear
To a have a nose tells stories from
The sniffing of a hair?

What did you feel, venerable
Spirit of the living stone,
As water, wind and Time itself
This pebble worked to hone?

O spark’ling drop of water,
Will you gain ecstasy
Trickling, flowing, surging
All the way down to the sea?

O bumblebee, you wonder why
When I am given chance
Aught information to express
I choose to speak rather than dance

And sister octopus must wonder
Just about the same
Why I respond in sound, not color,
When I’m asked my name

Before communicate attempt
On other worlds we roam,
Appropriate perhaps it be
Contact the aliens at home

O fellowman, I know that you
A diff’rent vision see
Than I will ever understand
Gazing on same scenery

Our thoughts so very unalike
That if I speak a word
It may, for you, be just as though
A diff’rent one had heard

How may we have temerity
To go complacently
When all the world around us
Is so filled with Mystery?

*****

Homeless until removal of the stalker/targeter/vandal/arsonist following her allows her to approach any landlord ~ even for a private parking space ~ this poet presently lives under perpetual threat of towing with all possessions should her 23-year-old van stop running for any reason.

She is badly in need of a modest reserve with which to field any emergency which might occur.

Donors may visit http://www.UgiftABLE.com , using code #72D-31S. It does take several days for the poet to be notified of your patronage.

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