So Inclined, by Jennifer Angelina Pedro

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Jennifer

So Inclined

Jennifer Angelina Petro

Standing by the gold-flecked stream

watching leaves plucked from the trees

in droves by the wind, one cannot help,

if one is so inclined as to reflect on these things,

but notice how much like death

autumn must be.

Perhaps, when the time is ripe,

and the soul is heavy with longing,

and the great wind comes,

it will pluck my soul and spirit

right from the branches of my body

and cast them into the gold-dappled stream

flowing towards the sea.

It’s strange, isn’t it, that during autumn

the air is crisp, fresh, clarifying;

and the light slants in such a way

as to ignite the trees with joy even

as the trees relinquish themselves

to the letting go.

Harvest me autumn,

for the chlorophyl of hope has drained

from my face and limbs,

and seeped into the ground

to nourish the roots and bones

of those who already gave their all,

collect me in your harvest-hands

and turn my despair into gold.

The Center of Your Soul, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

Posted on September 17, 2016 by Jennifer

The Center of Your Soul

Jennifer Angelina Petro

You needn’t worry summer is stepping back;

You needn’t do the same; inside

Spirit has been gathering

Embers of the sun and the harvest moon

And placed them in the hearth of your soul;

As winter’s shift trundles over

The hillside and drapes itself

Over eaves and shutters, the space

Around the chimneys remains

Warm and where winter birds roost

To shake the frost from their wings;

Summer will always be there surrounded

By springtime in the center

Of who you are—there will always be warmth—

Now work—pretend you didn’t hear what I just said—

Go–collect the kindling of your desires,

Rake the dry leaves of your disappointments

And heap them together with whatever

Things you didn’t do this summer

And set them on fire; there is wood

A plenty in the forest of your worries—

It is there for a reason—you are

Not harming anyone or anything

When you illume the soul—winter silences

Autumn’s dazzling carnival, autumn

Diminishes summer’s return, and spring—

That fragrant season of dew-dappled light

Lives forever by the force of your own will

Coupled with mercy from heaven

In the center of your soul.

The Next Neighborhood Over, by Radiance Angelina Petro

Posted on August 7, 2016 by Jennifer

The Next Neighborhood Over

Radiance Angelina Petro

Trying to follow the sound

Of the cicadas is what it’s like

Trying to follow the sound

Of god.

Cicadas throw their voices

And you can think one

Is right up in that tree over there,

When, in fact, it is actually

In a tree in the next neighborhood over.

Trying to trace the sound

Of god one finds oneself

Tracing figures in the air,

Or wishes on the shore.

Listening to the sound

Of god is much easier

Than asking the source

Of that sound questions.

When the cicada stops singing

And falls unseen

From its branch high up

In the tree, the silence

Signals us that change is here—

We realize waiting for answers

Is foolish and a waste–

Autumn is coming.

So we had better be prepared.

When we notice

There is no singing in the trees,

When we realize we have forgotten

Entirely about the sound—

We know winter is here.

And if we don’t do something

Outlandish and daring

In order to try making the sound

Ourselves,

Our ears will freeze over with regret,

Our hearts will harden from lack of use.

And our dreams—the ones

We used to use as compasses

To follow the sound

Of god, will be carried away, like

The shell of a cicada,

Like the shell of a sound,

Like the shell of a god

That used to play

Hide and seek with us

From the next neighborhood over.

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Prayers of the Ghosts

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Jennifer

Prayers of the Ghosts
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

Inside of this forest of skin and bone
The autumn sun shines through the branches,
Evening breathes through the leaves,
Deer step from the center to the edges, silent as sunset,
A stream sculpts a pathway through the trees drawn by a waiting sea,
An owl spreads her wings and glides over the marsh of my fears,
A mountain, full of sleeping momma bears, stands behind me, sturdy and steady,
The moon sings through the crisp air spilling its song through the dancing ferns and whirling leaves,
Ghosts pray in the darkness, spreading ancient hopes and beckoning for light,
While dreams rest on the ground, languished on the cushioned earth and tangled in roots,
Waiting for me to answer the prayers of the ghosts, and set them free, like
Handfuls of butterflies on a newly realized morning in a newly realized spring.

This Being Transgender

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Jennifer

This Being Transgender
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

Dear Autumn,
This being transgender reminds me of what you must face;
People who haven’t thought of you for ages
Suddenly find themselves thinking of you and lamenting your arrival,
Others find you a fascinating anomaly in an otherwise endless summer
Of sameness and dreamy afternoons;
Others force themselves to stop thinking of you
With hopes of postponing an imaginary, apocalyptic winter,
Still others think about you so much they stop talking to you
And pretend you no longer exist, they fear
Your blazing changes will rub off on them,
They think your very appearance signals a heresy
That will send summer reeling—
Which it does–but not in distress does summer
Go tumbling through the leaves and out of town, it rolls on
Joyous of your presence and relieved
To finally be able to breathe fully and see spring’s children
For who they really are. And the heresy? It is there–
It signals the living fully what love stands for–
And that means comfort zones expanded,
Walls removed, and doors opened into the reality
Of the here and now, 2015.

Dear Autumn,
I see your graceful letting go,
I see you casting gold with trembling fingers,
I see your swaying vulnerability against a stark blue sky,
And I know I let go far less gracefully,
I cling to what must be tossed away,
I flail about believing
There is nothing gold about me
To even bother sharing;
I begin believing those who can longer look at me
Or who dread how I will influence their children—
I know better though, I know they only fear
How I will influence them—how I will magically
Nudge them away from the summer
Of their inner, thinly-hidden discontent
And out into the blazing colors of enlightenment,
I know better, but I cling to brittle branches
Of self-loathing.

Dear Autumn,
So many people tell me they need time to be able to just see me,
Some still believe a death has occurred, and yet, here I stand in my autumnal truth.
You and I both know nothing dies when you arrive;
Summer cartwheels over the hills and warms
Another place happy to be free to think new thoughts,
The leaves you share feed the soil and fertilize the seeds of spring,
The harvest of apples feeds many with mulled sweetness,
And if they could only see you in my soul
And be awed at the revelation of color and the arrival
Of gold and my ability to finally stand in the fifth direction
Of my journey, with all of the certainty of wonder and hope
Of voyaging further into the sky, the streams, the purple mountains,
The heart of love, and the ground of being;
If they would only look in the mirror of their deepest fears—
And see love looking back at them,
And how the faces of spring infants and angels of flamenco
Gather around the edges of their vision, then maybe they would get it—
Their reflection looks like us and them—it looks like every single tree
To ever wave in the wind and sleep bathed in moonlight,
And just rest easy knowing we are not signaling the end
Of all that is warm and held sacred,
We are heralding the beginning of freedom,
We are taking the leaves of sacredness
And casting them where they truly belong–
Into an infinite sky of infinite variety.

Can You Imagine?

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Jennifer

Can You Imagine?
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro

Who would ever tell autumn leaves

They really should have stayed green?

Sure they were born all manner of greens—

Supple, minty, luminous shades;

Can you imagine a moment knowing

You were golden inside even though outside

You had always presented otherwise?

Can you imagine the terrible joy?

Can you imagine new colors beginning

To show and spreading to the tips

Of your fingers, without being able to stop them?

Imagine you were really a fire of purple

And blazing red, imagine you ingested

Bits of the sun and now bloomed orange

And lemon and vermillion,

Imagine reminding everyone of apple cider

And hay bales, and mazes made of corn fields.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine opening enough

To include the miraculous?

Can you imagine what it is like to realize

Once you discover who you really are

That you have to let go of root and branch,

And leap into the wind, swirl onto rivers

And streams, and dance into the wild,

Blue, accepting sky without knowing

Where you will land?

Allow Me

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Jennifer

Allow Me
By
Joseph Anthony Petro

At some point
Fireflies
Fade into autumn,
Their blooms
Of light
Extinguish
Into darkness;
Flowers
Drip their silken petals
One by one,
And draw
Their leaves
Inwards against
Thieving November winds;
Frogs
With their golden eyes
Vanish
From the pond’s murky edge;
Deer step through
Mist-skirted trees,
And with a flick
Of their white tails
Disappear.

Right now, here,
Today, your life
And mine
Are dissolving
Into light,
And at some point
We will lift
From the pages
Of our lives
And simply
Be gone—written
In the stars.

Thing is,
Life is long, like
A lazy, sun-drunken
Summer afternoon,
And it’s short,
Like the afore mentioned
Wink of the firefly.
Either way
You and I
Are being called

And we are also the ones
Doing the calling.

Beauty needs us,
Faith requires of us,
Love invites us
To participate
In the hum
And wonder
Of our interwoven lives;

And we call out—
We bring to ourselves
Open roads
And closed doors,
Everything
We want and need—
Everything
We are meant and ache
To be. And of course,

By the time
You read this
I might already
Be gone; I might
Be hovering
Right now
Over your shoulder
And nudging you
To smile and get out there
And amaze the world,
Amaze yourself.

And whether or not
I am still alive
When you read this,
You and I
Have been
Drawn together
In this moment,
At this point
In time–
And we have a job to do,
A job that isn’t
So much a job
As it is a story
That only you and I
Can tell.

So, here’s the thing:
I want to show the world
Who I really am.
Will you help me
Tell this part
Of the story?
And what about you?

What is it you
Want to do and say?
Whatever it is,
Allow me
To be with you
Either
From my place
Of light beyond light,
Or from here,
In these words–
Allow me,
At this moment in time
To be here
For you.

And a Child Shall Lead Them: The Art of Facing Your Fears

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Jennifer

Fear roamed the streets in the form of a pack of starving lions. Ribs quivering, tails dragging, they stalked the shadows in search of easy prey. Their yellow eyes scanned the alley ways and doorways, searching for the hesitant ones, the ones who needed to rise from the two-step in front of their apartment and live a new life, but instead remained glued to the spot, lost in the hypnotic gaze of future worries. The starving lions sniffed out the ones just about to get up and make a change, and slunk in front of them and sat on their haunches, and stared them back down. But the people did not see starving lions; they saw the forms of those they knew ready to tell them that they were crazy, that they would never make it, and that they were not good enough. They took the forms of images of failure and destitution, and the more the people let those images stalk their minds, the more the starving lions feasted on their dreams, devouring them with gleeful fervor. One of the lions of fear glided towards a child who wanted to leap into a pile of crisp, red and orange leaves, but was too afraid of getting bit by a tick to actually jump in. He stood there hating himself for having such obsessive fears. He heard the voices of his parents in his head telling him all about the horrors of Lyme’s disease and deer ticks, yet he always wanted to play in the leaves. The sky was crystal clear and blue and the leaves glowed like a pile of treasure. The lion brushed passed the boy’s legs and licked its lips, about to gorge itself on the boy’s dreams of playing in the leaves. And then it happened. The boy looked the lion straight in the eyes. The lion blinked. No one had ever done that before. People weren’t supposed to see fears for what they really were. This boy was staring back, and, much to the shock of the lion was smiling. The boy took a step towards the lion. The lion snarled. The boy laughed and then tussled the lion’s greasy mane. The lion was incredulous, and yet it felt something surge within its ribs—something alive. The boy had had enough of not living the life he always dreamed of. “I can do a tick-check,” he thought, and turned from the lion and leapt into the leaves in a huge, splash of autumn glory. He laughed with joy and when he looked at the lion it was no longer a starving, rib-exposed ghost. It was golden. It was majestic and the form of bravery itself. It let out a roar of triumph that sent the approaching pack of starving lions scattering like mice. The boy dove back into the leaves laughing, and then popped his head up blowing a yellow leaf from his face. The leaf sailed and settled onto the lion’s head like a little crown. “Come on in!” the boy shouted. The lion smiled, flicked his tail, twitched its ears, and then roared, leaping into the pile and rolling with the boy like a puppy, happy to be truly full, truly alive, truly itself.

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