wild and precious.

One of my favorite poets asks, in a beautiful poem "what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

The question flabbergasts me. I think about it often and seriously and I make great and courageous leaps into the unknown as a way to honor opportunity.
But more and more it seems that the better question is "what is it your one wild and precious life plans to do with you?"
There is never going to be perfect. I have had blissful moments and self aware ones. I have witnessed splendor and beauty and compassion.
But there was never enough money. Or if there was, there was not enough time.
Or if there was, there were not enough people. Or if there were, then the weather was poor. Or if it wasn't, then there were mosquitoes.

So, I set off on adventures to find paradise. And I found it. And then love left.
Our hands are only so big, they cannot hold all things.

My one wild and precious life is a stern head mistress....and also Santa Claus.

mishigamaa

She carries the bones of my grandmother, my Synara, my Chaska, my Persephone.
She carries my childhood and my brother's children. She carries my pain, my marriage license, my bad credit.
She is white and cold and green and hot. She is nothing but silence and death in February and nothing but noise and life in July.
She is nobody's paradise but a few wily, stoic reformed Protestants.
For miles of sandy beach she is unfulfilled promise, for acres of invisible forest she is fulfilled greed.
She will freeze us, she will bite us, she will dazzle us, she will bake us until we surrender or run.
I have flown above her enough to know she likes to keep her veil close and her skirts patchwork.
I have run away enough to know she won't change. I have returned enough to know I won't remain unchanged.
When I look out from the balcony of my tropical city flat and see men in orange working underneath trees who are shedding leaves, my heart feels Thanksgiving because of her.
I have come to know now that wherever I go and however long I stay, when people ask me what tribe I am from, it will forever be her name I repeat....my beautiful mantra
Michigan
Michigan
Michigan
Michigan