The Tamarack, Naugatuck Valley Community College - March 2019
Photo: Rachel Giese Brown
You are living, always,
in the space between breaths.
Gentle, you held the moments,
sensing their fragility
like eggshells on rocks.
Now the moments hold you.
The trees return your embrace,
recognizing,
honoring,
seeing in you what you saw in them;
the foxes, the sparrows, the wild geese,
the doe who met you in silence,
dear sweet redbird,
the turtles, and the grasshopper -
this grasshopper, I mean -
and the prayer-grass and the mountains,
and the stones that wear patience like a face -
all the wonders of your world wonder at your life.
They bow their heads -
the streams and the mountains, all -
and they say:
here there was a child of ecstacy,
a wild and holy thing,
and how we loved to watch her dance.
© CASEE MARIE
Hildene
The Lincoln Family Home
Manchester, VT
I want to breathe,
deeply and vigorously,
with the wild sensation
of my own aliveness,
the staggering awareness
of being whole.
I want to learn to rest
in a moment,
to honor it,
and to fold myself
into presence.
I want to know
what it feels like to move
through the moments with ease
and grace.
I want to be of space,
open and glorious
and made of stars.
I want to touch
the tender core
of love with hands
that know truth,
compassion,
devotion.
And through it all
the exhilarating act,
to breathe.
© CASEE MARIE
Further reading…
The stars will be our homes again
when our bodies return
to celestial matter, and I
will shine the brightest
for all that I have loved.
Break softly, if you must break,
and in the end you must -
or is it the beginning?
Break gently, with the knowledge
that your unfolding holds a
certain mystic peace
and a quiet throbbing
of purpose.
Such things can be said
of mornings,
and of hearts.
© Casee Marie
Take this feeling from me
and instead
give
me
abandon;
give me the earth-body
made of clay
and roots,
stone heart
and willowed spirit.
Cast me to the wild
at once a seedling
and a wizened oak
give me moss flesh
and dew-drop eyes
and leave me
to grow.
Return to find me
years
centuries
millenia
from now.
I will encompass all
as the quaking,
benevolent creature
of my fearsome heart’s desire.