Awakenings

Sometimes being melancholy can alter the senses and words are transferred to a different light.
I suppose that is why I have chosen to write down these words that have come to me. They're not entrenched but they have awakened in me some thoughts closer to home than I care to admit.

Here it is:

Up from the dust like an apache hunter
Down from the mountain a Moses wild
Mother earth rocks the cradle
Heaven awakes the child

And these words from long ago:

One full moon a billion stars
A Loon's lost cry of startled grace
Two Owls crossing the bars
Where wilderness shows its lace.

Freedom breathing in my soul
Arches of cotton woods there to bring
My wanderlust of the distanct knoll
Under firm root of nature's wing.

Now the shadows climb my door
Shaping a stooped frame on sunlit grass
Waters reflecting an eagle's soar
Such years, good years, too good to pass.

Now we rest in God's green hills
Content with life we have learned to love
Gazing thoughtfully at heavens sill
So far, so far, up up above.

I had a calling at the Washington Women's Correction Center in Purdy, Washington
The women there often had the blues and holidays were hard on them. Their confined life weighed them down and I often thought about how they must feel. There are a myriad of thoughts there but I have chosen to write some prose, and the way I saw it.

Forty dollars and a cardboard box;
Standing at the prison door;
This time it is open to the outside,
Out into freedom once more.

Been in a prison marking the days;
Locked up and dreaming my way out
Angry and bitter in all other ways;
God help me I have to shout.

Many laws and regulations are written;
Rules and discipline for all of us fools;
Time here is like frost when your bitten;
The thaw is painful and part of the tools.

Each day passes and each night is long,
The fences are up and the razors are sharp.
I've got the blues and all is so wrong;
Far too early to be playing the harp.

Dancing on slow time hating each hour;
I'm swearing and cursing mankind;
I'm in the hole and the taste is so sour;
I swear I'm going out of my mind.

Sorting through a grimy bucket of mud
Just to get a sorry kernel of grain;
I don't want anymore of this crud;
I realize there was nothing to gain.

Forty dollars and a cardboard box,
Standing at the prison door,
This time it's open to the outside;
Out into freedom once more.

Digby