A week or so ago I received a poem by Joe Lamb, tree wizard, poet, and friend, in my inbox. I thought I’d share it here:
Star Thistle
Go into the intimacy
of your little eternity
with the wild patience
of a Star Thistle
reaching out from a crack
in the overpass
to release her seeds
in the grey wind
sweeping down the freeway.
Open your being
to belief in the possible
with the earnest abandon
of a young mother kneeling
at the truck stop in Nogales
to pour water
into plastic milk bottles
before she lifts her baby
onto her back,
and follows the Coyote
into the Tamarisk and Tumbleweed
that line the river flowing
from the imaginary land
in the North.
Find a memory
of how love
has hurt you,
hold it in your arms
with the precise tenderness
of an oyster enveloping
the sharp edges of pain,
surrounding it with a luster
as smooth,
as hard,
and as forgiving
as the color of the moon.
Joe Lamb