Graveyard
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Fireflies rose from the darkness
among the crowded graves
and lifted, like little lanterns,
into the sky.
Graveyard
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Fireflies rose from the darkness
among the crowded graves
and lifted, like little lanterns,
into the sky.
Easter Silence
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
I wonder if when
Jesus sat up in the tomb
On the third day, he was
Pulled suddenly alive
By a catching breath—
A breath surprising even
Unto himself?
Did he sit for little
Eternities listening to
Silence—or had
Silence scattered at the sound
Of the waiting angels
Opening their wings?
Whatever happened
To the sand his feet touched
As he stood? Is the dust
Still in the mouth
Of the cave?
Did the little rocks and pebbles
That trailed behind the hem
Of his robe dragging over
The ground, one day become
Mountains?
For all I know, the tomb
Was always empty—ever not
Gestating a dead man.
Perhaps neither it nor he ever
Existed—which seems most likely given
Today. This Easter silence
Finds us isolating in different parts
Of one, great cave—
Behind make-shift masks
Afraid to ever breathe
Again.
The Occasional Heart
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Some things are better left broken—
Seeds and cicada husks, the robin’s egg,
The chrysalis, the occasional heart.
Some things cannot be healed—
Not simply because they aren’t illnesses–
But because experiences cannot be
Undone. And besides,
Some wounds
Are delicious—the taste of blood
Metallic and sacred, free of pity—
Fortifying the bones.
Wounds happen,
No rhyme, no reason, no
Providence. They are moments
In the absurdity and the ridiculous wonder
Of living, of breaking open,
Of blossoming into the air,
Of wings settling and elongating,
Of the gift of spiraling inwards and
Outwards during sleep, during death, and unfolding—
Sifting through the branches of your life–
A most spectacular storm,
A most radiant calm.
Sit with grief. Allow it to breathe.
It isn’t something
To be cured. It isn’t
A sickness.
It is you, the self-same you–
Just as joy is your name.
Consider yourself
Whole—
Nothing
Missing, nothing worthy
Of stealing for, killing for, dying for.
Live. Your soul–ever
Untarnished, uncorruptible—
Is more you than you. Live.
As for the rest of it—yes—
The mind, body, the spirit—
These, like wings, can all
Be broken. Rest as you move.
Everything gradually
Falls apart and wishes itself
Into the ground and sky.
Nothing can stop the holy breaking
Open. Live. Leap
Into the vastness
Of possibility. Live.
Bury the dead, nourish the living,
And roar—
Dancing
Into your life.
Naming the Way
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Go outside late October.
Lock your eyes on one falling leaf.
Try to find the moment
As close to the beginning
Of it’s letting go from the branch
As you can. Really follow that leaf—
That one in a million leaf.
Train your eyes on it. Focus.
Notice the way the wind carries it,
Breathes it. Watch how it turns
Gently over and around, catching little
Fleeting currents, and then
Smoothing out into a kind
Of easy drifting. Its descent held
In the palms of the wind. See
How golden. See how tenderly
It is placed in the stream.
Give that leaf a name—your
Name, and then,
Go back inside
To pray.
Souls Alive
A Little Story about The Purpose of Life, Chickens, Dragons, and Dark Chocolate
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Chapter One: The Ending
My parents were dead before I was born, and so was I. Hate to break it to you, but it’s the same for you too, dear reader. It’s the same for all of us. Thing is, it’s a fact that’s hard to remember. Once we infuse ourselves into a body, we’re already so delighted over the sparkling journey, that our so-called-past-becomes a distant, nearly fully unconscious memory. I say, “so-called past,” because, as the chickens tell us—there is no true beginning or end. The debate as to which who came first, is like arguing over which is better—dark chocolate Oreos or dark chocolate nonpareils—silly.
At any rate, let’s get back to me. As I mentioned a paragraph ago, my parents were dead before I was born, and so was I. Hate to break it to you, but it’s the same for—-oh, sorry, said that already. I’m trying to focus, please be patient with me. It’s not easy to be a ghost and keep your focus. Think of it—everything is radiantly timeless and sugary like cotton candy, and so it’s hard to remain focused on whatever is in front of you—not to mention the fact that you can pass your hands through everything you touch and that’s pretty cool, but nevertheless annoying.
I should probably define what a ghost actually is. It’s not what most people think. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (which remains my favorite website after all these centuries) in the original Old English, the word, “ghost,” was, “gast,” which meant, among other things, “breath; angel, demon; person, human being.” The fact that the word has devolved over the centuries to simply mean the spirit of a dead person, is a travesty. Most words today are devolutions of much richer, more wondrous meanings, and, as time goes by (which is really a very profane expression, since time doesn’t “go-by,” but more on that later—which is another word related to time that also baffles me), the human mind became less able to hold all these various meanings in one mind (which is, as you guessed it–the idea of “one mind”–a silly idea as well) and thus the intricate complexities of all words distill down to definitions that any old human intellect can tackle.
It’s entirely possible you might be thinking that I’m attempting to avoid relating the actual story I started out to tell—the one about my parents and I being dead before we were born—and you wouldn’t be completely wrong. You see, it is a challenging story for me to both recall and to tell. It brings to surface, like an underground lake suddenly seeping across the land, many painful experiences that must, of necessity, be brought to light. Not the least of which involves a hungry (but vastly misunderstood) dragon, the challenging descriptions of incarnating, and the hot-button-topic-of gender identity—sure to rankle the feathers of many small-minded fundamentalists.
All that said, let’s jump into the vegetarian meat of the story: My parents were dead before I was born, and so was I. Now, as I eluded to earlier—any word that is used in reference to time— “before,” “earlier, “after,” and so on, are really misnomers, and highly inaccurate and misleading. For the sake of you, dear reader, we will stick to the conventional, human terms for time. This is not to say you are incapable of grasping such concepts, it is more to say—your heart can, your soul can, your spirit can—but your mind—well, your mind will get all tangled in philosophical debating and you wouldn’t be able to enjoy the yarn I am spinning—or, at very least, about to spin. The broader, more cosmic definitions of “time” are going to be left for another, non-existent day.
Take a breath, dear reader, cause here we go.
Chapter Two: The Beginning
In the Rooms of Our Days
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Snow falls, soundless,
Layering on branches, like cells
On the body, creating silence
And drapery, touching everything.
The winter wishes for nothing else
Than to build up smooth mounds
Over the ruins of sleeping seeds
And the bones of animals that passed away alone,
Giving them the kind of protection required
For secret awakenings to warmth and light—
That we all need, that we all long for
As we stay awake all winter, walking back and forth
In the rooms of our days, unable to sleep,
Unable to close our eyes and trust the spring,
Unable to remember that once
We slept in darkness, that once
We emerged from the darkness,
That once, again and again, we blossomed
Into the hands of another, that we rose up
To a welcoming sky, and that we will all, once
Again, and again, return to sleep
Beneath scrolls of silent snow.
I Don’t Know How I Know This
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
Inside the uplift of death—that moment–
When the white doors open
You will fly out of yourself long enough
To fly back into yourself in one terrible
And freeing inhaling exhale.
Daffodils lose their vibrant trumpets
To the sunlight, irises curl in on themselves
And alliums drop their radiating, purple petals to the ground.
Cherry blossoms scatter their thousand, million pink pieces
Of exquisite beauty into a spring wind that rouses
The mind to start moving on those plans laid out in winter,
And you cannot help but stare, and weep with such joy the moment
Uplifts and white doors open, and you fly into yourself
Long enough to fly back out yourself in one orgasmic,
Eternal—breath-catching inhaling exhale.
And when the sidewalks become dusted
In deep pink—so much so you cannot see the gray ground—
White doors open and you fly out of yourself long enough
To never return to the state of unnoticing.
Every moment we build up and break down,
We dissolve, we sag closer to the earth,
Our muscles loosen, our jaws slacken,
And we become like fragile, spring birds long enough
To breathe into ourselves, long enough
To exhale one last time into the air—
Just strong enough to blow open the white doors
And get swept up into the uplift where all the trumpeting
Daffodils wait, where all the irises unfurl
Their sex to the sky, where all the alliums burst
Purple bulbs from their tall, slender stalks, like
Slow motion fireworks—
There you will stay long enough
To bloom the fragrance
Of a life well lived into the ever spring
Of God.
Of All Things Let Go
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
It’s possible to imagine snow
As time silently shrouding
Everything. It’s possible
To think of snow
As the gradual smoothing
Of all the rough edges;
Sometimes you can
See Lady Winter draping shawls
Over the shoulders of the trees,
And, of course, you can see
Snow as burden, as the laying down
Of funeral blankets on flowers,
It is the great quieter of color
And the crumbler of fruit,
It is the world gone still and
More trudging, yes, and sometimes,
Go out and stand, allow
The cold kisses to touch your face;
Lift your arms and let them
Be blessed with that so uncommon
Feeling of being alive, and watch–
The snow falls from the unseeable sky,
Look– the crystal stars form
On your sleeves, each one
Bestowed with infinity—that alone is enough
To fill one with swooning wonder,
Notice too, how your breath
Issues its swirling ghosts
Of all things let go,
How winter absorbs them
Into herself as the prayers
That they are, and treasures them
Until one day, when she turns
Her great skirts and drifts away
Over the houses and hillsides
Leaving all that was let go
For spring to tend and encourage
With warm hands, their rebirth
Into the sun.
Be There
By
Jennifer Angelina Petro
You may have seen
Those videos where
The camera focuses in
On one person and then
Pans out past the tree tops,
The buildings, the clouds,
And further backwards
Through space, until
The swirling earth
Grows smaller, and smaller,
And smaller,
As the satellite camera
Continues to draw back
Revealing solar systems,
Galaxies, and then more—
The ever-growing universe.
This amazement of technology
Is meant to show us
Our seeming insignificance
In the grand scheme of things—
How little we are, how tiny our earth is,
How, while we find our rightful
Place among the galaxies,
We are still hugely small, invisible
In the clusters of stars.
I would argue however,
That you matter; that you,
Standing there on the little space
You take—matter.
And when winter comes,
And the ground grows cold,
And the trees weep their true
Colors into the streets and rivers,
That if you were to bend down,
And gently place your hand
On the hardening ground
And whisper witnessing words—
Reminding the earth of the life
Dreaming within—
The seeds and sleeping animals—
That it needn’t be afraid,
That it needn’t feel it has failed us,
That it is beautiful and to be honored
For the spring and summer
It so lavishly shared with us,
You would be making a world
Of difference.
The earth gives, and gives,
And gives, and it rejoices
In doing so, and yet, when winter comes,
And the frost pushes it all down,
You can stay by its bedside of trees
And fallow fields, you can
Sing it soft songs of comfort,
You can tread lightly
Over the steeling ground,
You can remind the earth
With your every breath,
Every act of kindness,
Every prayer,
That the earth will
Resurrect, that it will
Be born again, that it will
Waken from its frightening sleep,
And once again, and again,
And again, bloom, just as
The universe continues
To bloom, just as you
Continue to bloom,
Just as you realize more, and more,
And more, how important
You really are. In the grand
Scheme—which is, of course,
Really, a great song–
Once again, it needs to be
Said over, and over, and over—
You matter, you have the powers
To comfort and heal,
You have the powers
To be comforted and healed–
Because nothing is alone,
Because everything matters,
Because we blossom
Through this universe
Full of the stuff of stars
And communities of compassion
And wonder.
So, as you stand, be the spring
And summer for the earth
As she freezes into her yearly
Death–be there, be there for her,
Be for her as the sun is
For you.
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