Wait a little. Way will open. Wait too long, your hair will turn grey. (As mine now is.)

Dry weather creek busts open
Ever flowing well seeps through.
Little Vickie standing in
the middle of it all, looks
up. Lush buttressy trees weep.

(following a prompt by Maurice Manning)

Pinto beans, white northerns,
kidney beans, black beans.
Every day I pass her porch
on the way back from the mines.
I try to walk fast by,
but she runs after me with
a handful of legumes,
drops them in my bag,
saying "The End Times a
comin'" and
"keep these fer the end time."

(inspired by rebellion against a prompt by Maurice Manning)

Graduating anything is tough because it means you must know what's next.

But it's not a thing as hard as falling off a cliff. Not a thing.

My mantra used to be
"push, push, push."
I went around running
those words through my
head.

Now I just breathe easy.
Breathe easy and let
this new built in
persistence thing hum
merrily along.

I think I am a washing
machine personified.
Sometimes I break down
and need fixing.
But often I just gush.

My churning
and chugging motions
persist
until it is time to dry.

I recommend Throat Comfort Tea. My FAVORITE!

And so in that
we could share a flavor
of liquorish, across four hours.

Dear lovely parents,

Anonymous, the wonderful friend of mine, is moving in after graduation into the other spare room. I am so eager and excited that I "moved in for the first time" (decorated my room, cleaned, organized, made it homey and lived in, working at that for four hours.) His personality compliments mine and I think it helps that he is gay, somehow.

I am not falling off the cliff of graduation, I am conquering the trail on the other side. One of many...

BC,

Your decoration influenced my four hour decorating/cleaning/organizing/ (moving in really/ making home home binge.

xo

Oh, frogs,
how long have you been there
outside my shuttered window?

I know you hurt, here at the end of the line in this class, Walking for Fitness. You did not choose the rear for show. I will wait and walk with you. And since you hurt there and here, let me tell you, push hard today. Walk this pace every day. Eat the right things, my friend, because we all can eat better. Today my back pain did not come on my usual walk, even up the steep hill of Forest. I do not know you well. You will never read this. Maybe someone else will. Don't worry about normal right now. Pass out daisies to unsuspecting people. If a tour from Admissions comes by, tell them it's a free school, OK? And hand them a daisy. Weeds some might see in the grass. Left behind by accident. Left behind in the intention of elevating in us the hopeful glorious feeling that we can lift our voice and say words to help one another. Support people with differences at diversity trainings, like interpersonal rays of sun beaming on the shoulders of our neighbors. Like that time bell hooks put her hand on my shoulder and I felt Goddess. Like the time I felt god.

She leans back against the house.
Sitting on that bench.
She recognizes the guilt reflex.
She chooses gratitude.
I'm worth this beautiful view,
this free education,
this wonderful life.
Hosanna!

Glorious morning
only thing regrettable
not early enough.

I don't believe in counting down but it's hard not to notice graduation's in three weeks.

for Jeremiah
We work so hard at night
building bridges
of impossible things.

I definitely recommend time for those with the hair lack problem...

He finds the wet dish drying cloth.
Laundry room/dish wash room,
Gunky, wadded-up fabric.
She finds it clean, folded, warm.

She goes upstairs to where they live,
gets the vacuum, uses central vac.
Now the floor is pristine.

Antidepressants, mood stabilizers,
compassionate people, understanding,

Gratitude. Reality.

for Roger

Placebo effect.

The best feedback I get about my poetry from my family?
"So intriguing how you misspelled this word, and it makes better sense with it misspelled. Wow. Good work."

My title is a pun on Berea and the fact that I have two more weeks till graduation.

Reading Palms and Faces

I locked myself out of my house today. I ended up going to a friend's. I read the palms of her sister and her sister's boyfriend. I never knew the boyfriend well before then. He used to serve me coffee at the shop in town, before I switched to herbal tea and he got his masters. He put his hand forward. And I took it, and instantly said "well you either apparently have two lives." He seemed happy, and I continued, "but no, maybe they cloned you." In the science of hocus pocus, this made sense. When I said it he and his girlfriend exchanged glances. "Do you know he's a twin?" She asked.

I have a strange habit at social gatherings - sometimes when I can steer the conversation towards siblings, I psychically deduce/guess people's birth order. Once I guessed a friend had a twin who died at birth. I was right.

But if these passing geese
are pronouncing words for us?
Then should I honk back at them
with words as "harsh" and "exciting"
as poets?

Hydrofracking ban
in Vermont law today, Green
VW van, Vermont

plates coincidence?
Happy Positive Thought Day
April twenty three.

Inevitably, all college graduates are asked (and times often more than is spiritually healthy), what we are doing after graduating. It is the normal question. Good people ask it with good intentions. Thinking about this helps us direct our energies, though often this leads to worry. Actually wig manufacturers are taking over the corporate world because of this... People just pull out all their hair.

But not me. As a professional multiple time drop out, I have gone through the mill enough times to know that my life is much bigger than a career or even a place. I do often feel that my super sensitive psyche is bogged down by these questions. My strategy lately has been to reply that I will write. But then they look at me, perplexed asking "but how will you make money?" Or I say that I want to keep dieting, and their expression back shows they are worried I am withering away.

Today this is my answer: I will keep walking. I will keep writing, submitting to Friends Journal and various other presses. I will rejoice my publications, but not depend on them. I will get a job. (I already have one job for the summer babysitting a toddler!) I will pick jobs that don't rob my soul, that maybe even that feed it, and I will pitch the rich humus of subject matter into words. I will smile as a daily exercise. I will live and work to make the world a better place. Someday I will have a garden of my own. One plant at a time.

And if I don't, here's to asking me why I am not living my life to the fullest. Everyone needs to be challenged.

All humans carry
our gut
in the same place.

Oh. So my name means water in Swahili*?
Water that effervescent element that I float in,
that I tough through despite chlorine
because of how much I love it?
Water, that I have bobbed down the Holston and Toe River in
hitting my butt on the high, but smooth rock surfaces in,
that I have always been the first one in, in
and the last one out in,
that I swim out past the breakers in,
that I swam with the dolphins and sang at the pelicans in,
that touched me all over in, all over, all over in, in
Oh Maji. Oh Maji, me.

Oh Maji, loose and violent Maji, that hurts people, Maji.
Is that me?
Oh Maji, Maji too high, Maji too low,
Maji Maji everywhere but not a drop to drink.

Is that me?

But yes.

As much as they try to contain me,
as much as they try to tame me,
I pour out, or refuse.
I am wild.
Yes.
Maji is me.

I am Maji.

Oh Maji, Oh Maji, Oh, Maji, Maji me!

Maji

• Africa deserves a poem of its own.

me in the greenhouse: "I like this place. It makes me think of all the things I should be doing right now, which is to be right here."