Let it Run Down

If a river must run in order to be
Let it run peacefully down to the sea
Let it make eddies and wrap around rocks
Let its banks hang with currants a-vine
May it meet grasses in clumps too in kind

I will just stand on the banks as a witness
With bucks, eagles, herons and muskrats there too
We will allow our worst to move on
Staring in silence at the pattern of stream
Grateful and honest above drifting thought
On the banks of the river, innocent as fawn

-Kelly Voelker

Auto Finish

Yesterday opened a chute
Gravity was waiting there
Ready to receive
What the Center will transmute
Somewhere a silent sun
Masked by the light of One
We call the Sunshine

The chute opened at night
When all waves became troughs
The moon was irrelevant
Pulling its way but the Center
Pulled harder and I trusted it

I gave away my idea of what I should be
Leaving only what I AM
All the moral debts paid towards
Countless bad investments
All the blame for making these decisions
All the blame for not seeing the risk
All the blame for not finishing
A race which I cancelled

I was not meant to produce
I was meant to create
What has value only to
Others who create beauty
Out of deep contemplation
Out of casual accidents of beauty
Born from the act of merely starting

What I was meant to produce
Finishes itself because I introduce
The Source of Creation to those
Who doubt it comes through
Each of us as we are turned
Uniquely inside out.

-Kelly Voelker

Born an Empath

Born an Empath

Sensitive

To killing bugs

To killing animals

To destruction

To loud noise

To criticism

During the decades

Where I appeared

Less sensitive

I used people as gloves

As a bridge between

The Empath and

The world as it is now

While working

Gloves were necessary

I was more confident with gloves

They were a necessary

Extension of me

A bridge between

The Empath and

The world as it is now

In Mid-Life

More solitary

Poetry and computers

Communicate for me

Plants also are a bridge

Between the Empath and

The world as it is now

The last of my

Family and friends

Are my fortress

Shielding the Empath from

The world as it is now

From this fortress

I will paint the future

Into Being

What I feel day by day

Now by Now

-Kelly Voelker

Nudist Spies

When cold snaps trigger brittle chills
Mammals fur plumps bigger, thicker
People layer wool and down
Layers over ears are wound

Trees behavior opposite
Shedding leaves from highest bonnets
Undressing right before our eyes
Leaves then dressing ground well over
Plants and insects taking cover
Dying, sleeping, frozen still

The trees remain as
Stoic flow charts from
Earth's main frame hidden under
Keeping tabs reducing clutter
Winds and snows and weeping staffs
As snows and ices melt in morn
Sun returns a bright adornment
O're the grey and brown adjustment

When all else flees, sleeps or dies
The trees become nudist spies.

Living in a Greenhouse

We live in an experimental bubble
A grayness tones down
Even the brightest experiences
So that we never really win
We never really finish
We never really overcome
Without something else
Toning down the victory

I'd like to imagine
Living in a greenhouse
Instead of a bubble
Where the sun is warmer
Even on cloudy days
We can capture growth
Beyond where we are now

Outside this bubble
Is a compassion so deep
It's warm pulse shakes apart
Our defenses and reasoning
It melts away any explanations
Leaving only hot thick tears
Leading to laughter or sobbing
Both so completely emptying
Our minds and hearts
That only gratitude remains

For no one here and now
Can feel or know it
Only after a great fever and suffering
Can I know it
Poetry, nature and right composition
Show us the Beauty that doesn't usually cheat
To help us win this game.

-Kelly Voelker