Christine Salkin Davis (Focail do a Chara)

From time to time to timelessness,
emergent light of broken beings,
light and dark, the shadow's rest
of death and life, and in-between.
These shadows form the third dimensions,
flashes like lightning fill the sky
of bright-filled glimpses from the tension,
shame and sadness passing by.
Sorrow hides like ghosts in shadows,
ready at random times to pounce,
outer signs of inward struggles
call you to their two-step dance.
Ask your questions to the darkness.
Find your answers in the silence.

© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

I am the darkness,
velvet-black and nightly peace.
I am the pause between
your gods of commerce and body,
vast expanse of star-filled
pinpricks of light.
I am the canvas for your dreams and imaginings,
the backdrop for your psychedelic nocturnal narratives.
and the hiding place for your fears.

I am the darkness,
one step before the threshold of dawn, one step after the drama of the day.
I am your liminal space.
I am your resting place.

I am the light,
emergent dawn and doorway to day,
yawning opening of peripheral possibility,
vast expanse.
Yang to yin and burning embers of despair.

Awaken to what is
and what might be.

© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

What an atrocity this is, again
it hurts the heart to read the headlines
willful disregard and disarray
dehumanization and death
nightmare scenario for thousands of children locked in cages, for bodies shot, beaten, harassed, hungry, thirsty, dirty, sick, sold out
borderland barter
bodies sacrificed to appease the gods of fear and greed
it's your own right hand you are cutting off
the heart bleeds
transgressive deaths

© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

When the losses stack up
and you can't bear to count
all the ways these things are
not at all what you want;

when the roadway ahead
rises high toward the sky
and the road is so rough
you've a struggle to try;

when your deck's been a shuffle
and you're dizzy from that
and your head doesn't know
one day next from the past;

just stay calm in the moment,
may you waltz to this verse,
may the music of thunder
make things better, not worse.

May the rains come down gently,
may the clouds blow away,
may your landings be soft,
may you rise to the day.

©Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

The birds fly in the distance,
let them go,
along with your worries, goals, needs, and lists.

Let go the people who are hard to love,
may they return purified.
May you.

Release your grasp on jobs, relationships, fears, to-do's, your body,
and the way you want things to be.

Let your hands relax open and empty and feel the tingling sensation in your fingertips.
This is life flowing through.
Breathe into it.

May the life and love and light fill you;
may your open hands stay light;
may they lightly fill with that which is good.

© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

In my last morning of solitude, I
listen to the birds sing, they rustle the
trees as they jump from branch to branch, and my
heart sings in gratitude for my chance to be

here, now, sun shining, wind caressing me.
Drops from the recent rain reverberate
as the breeze drops them through the rustling leaves.
A hummingbird in the trees searches, too late,

for flowers on which to feast, and I hate
our lack of hospitality. The sky
is blue, the leaves a hint of gold in wait
for fall, they sparkle in the sun; I sigh

for joy. Raindrops glisten on the spider's
web like diamonds, the air, cleansed by rain, pure.

© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

The Yoshino cherry trees stand tall and full,
a few yellow leaves sprinkled like gray hairs
in their lush foliage.
When did they grow so old?
When did I?
The air grows chill.
Darkness approaches soon.

© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

The hour of a hummingbird queue,
approaching dusk and feeding deer.
The after rain air is cool
and the first gold leaves appear
on the Yoshino cherry trees.
Approaching the threshold,
same sun, same bird songs,
but change is in the air.
The crickets hum, and the hummingbirds
buzz as they zoom past,
places to go, I guess.

Water drops hang upside down on the leaves
and a doe approaches, white tail flicking and nose twitching.
Darkness settles on the forest floor
but the woods are alive in sound.

Final hours of stillness before the dawn.


© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019

You can feel the season changing,
dark of the moon into a new day morn.
The first golden leaf appears, and another.

Three plants survived the summer storms.
One proudly raises her lush leaves and blossoms to the sky.
One has the wild look of a boxer after winning a tough fight.
The last is beaten down in defeat, prostrated, but a lone red flower stretches up from the dragging debris.
She is my favorite, reaching for one more shot at the sun, default to life.

The bird flies,
blue peeks through the clouds,
sounds still,
and the breeze rustles the trees.

© Christine Salkin Davis, 2019