Berkeley

I like you
for what you
reveal
and what you
conceal.

Words by Courtney
Art by Sandra Moreano

Inheriting a Marriage

I inherited their marriage,

though (I’m certain) that was not

                     their intention.

She whispered to me often,

    “Do not go gentle into that altered night.

    Like fins in an algae covered net

    you too

             will be trapped.”

Decades later
with different jewels
he forgot the jaded rules
and rubbed his

palms

(already smooth)

along the hardened pew.

She laughed at him and screamed,

"That's not my name!

The mirror belongs to no one!

The winter is full of frozen water, not ice!"

They became

compassionate strangers
with four working hands
but their

voices no longer matched

the ones they heard before.

They stood like wood

rotten from the inside.

They swam like fish upstream.

              They pretended to be   the people

                     that others wanted them to be.

The Soul's Garden

Art by Sandra Moreano                                            Poetry by Courtney Hanes.

The soul's garden reveals when it is full of grief or love,

unable to hide in the shadows, 

open like a mystic's eye 

that even when closed knows how to see. 

Time always lapses with light, 

which retires and brings a new day.

It will not remember the dirty heat, 

or the chains which some bear. 

It is too in love with living 

to feel anything but divine strength. 

Drink it up 

because that is the essence in which we travel,

in which we are traveled.