“Mater Dolorosa”

Thank you, the healing power
of belief before me up a hill toward
deer and antelope. Help me play
this prayer a cross-country fire
spreading with wind up and over cliffs
in Colorado, the mountains out of a
Disney ride cutting through.
It’s impossible to think: why we listen
to wisdom on all matters convenient,
turn away from obvious measures of
benefit because we won’t let go.

Let children vote if they can read,
want to, know the issues. Let go.

Better than a drunk man, surly, jaded,
ticked off heading to the polls because
he is of the “right” age.

“Here’s to good friends, tonight is
kinda’ special” and other beer slogans
contributing to killing my friends and almost
helped get me.

Join me in a an anti-alcohol campaign:
“drink flammable liquids and get burned.”
Will that work? Some scoff but forget:
life is making an effort, ask Mrs. Chick from
Dickens’ Dombey and Son, a book about
Dombey’s daughter, hooray for irony
and women’s lib.

Grandma ran for senate in 1936 and seven,
represented California at the republican
convention, got creamed in the primary
but God bless her for trying.

Louise Ward Watkins, a last name you
see on blacks and whites, we mixed in
the middle of the Civil War fight, and
well—

The seed that carried me must have come
out all right.

Praise God, Rise and Shine get the day
but first pray, turn it all over to something
bigger. Results cannot be controlled, just
effort, good luck!!

If life gets you down, write it and sing it
out loud, nothing floors you, this is the
dream of the foremothers that peace
would reign in the land like castles of
sand, always needing attention.

At ease soldiers, take this song and
transcend its message, whistle
something without words, get through
the day to day, and find with me heaven
as a peace of mind of knowing we did
our best…

My best comes without alcohol, trudges
the road of “happy destiny” as the A.A.’s say,
climbs a hill in heat or rain with bags
on my back seeking healing, I’m off
to Sierra Madre’s Mater Dolorosa.

Find your retreat house now, mine
on the other side of fog, rolling down—

I sweat, I tear, I believe say a prayer;
healing is mine before I see the deer.

Do re mi fa so la ti do, before I see the deer.