Beneath the Mt. Airy Forest

You do not have to think hard about leading anyone home.

Climb out of your own window.
Let each foot slip its way down the happy soup of last week’s rain.
Find a cave of honeysuckle and lay in her understory.
Place your reverent ear against her hearth.

Wait, now, until you can hear, how
the small underfoot creatures cohere:
eight long bobbing stilts, six marching legs, undulating bellies,
–– labyrinth walkers, hymning, all of them.

Follow the child of your ancient memory,
his small hand waving you deeper in.
Trust that this is one of those times to ask
your body what it needs, and to heed.

Does sleep call for you? Then sleep.
Does the dirt worry your clean linen shirt? Then worry.
Do you startle easily in a still forest? Then be startled.
Do your bone’s ache for kinder schools and kinder rulers,
then let them lie there and ache.

The hours will pass until you have no more sense of time
until, like the blinking return of crickets,
your instincts sing their own single readiness.
Your eyes will adjust to recognize the sun’s subtle dapples
pulling green prayers from under the mayapples.

Watch how the quivering leaves,
reaching in unison,
trust the skill of the wind.
– Troy Bronsink

 

Did Y’all See That?

(or The Secret Gift of Facilitation)
          — after facilitating at the Hive, Spring 2021

It was hidden in plain sight, her strength
like a church bell calling us in with invocation:
yes  ––  and, try harder, and sheets spread with key indicators

while the water, proceeding discreetly, in single file, into
that miniature place outside the tear duct, filling like a public fountain
welling into a drop, mascara mixed with saline, swirled
safely behind the miniature dam she’d erected.

How long ago? Who knows? Likely sandbags at first
and then with each question, higher
and higher the bricks and mortar rose.

If we could only have zoomed in a bit
we’d have seen all the life teaming in that tidal pool
small enough to fit at the end of a pin,
a heavenly hosts missed for the magnanimity
of her efforts at blending in, and me
settling for the balcony, peering down like a child from a plane
window, missing the trees for the forest.

Well, the pregnant moment passed,
as is the case with all ripe containers.

Eventually, though, the levee did break.
The conversation shifted, and the sensitive feelers
had grown confident in speaking again.
That’s when I saw her subtly source a tissue
and with whispering sleight of hand

dab the inside corner of her eye.
Once.
Precise.

“Did y’all see that?”
I wanted to shout, but didn’t.
Somehow ripened, myself, in a cloud of revelation.
You might not call it an initiation

–– for this baptism had passed most of us by.
But I’m going to swing back to her, later,
with a christening gift.
Or maybe just a card saying:

Thank you, for the holy water.
– Troy Bronsink