77 Years

 Random poem selection this year appears to have Hippie, Summer of Love theme...

Hunger

There was miner's lettuce and plantain
    and dandelion growing
In parks and lawns
    and cracks in the sidewalks
And chamomile and fennel, nasturtium even
Peeking through someone's picket fence

Wild mother earth offered her bounty
But I wandered absent-minded and
    careless of food
Like a dreaming child

Wandering down Haight Street
Approached for some spare change
But I was fasting
Since I had no spare change anyway

Approached
Reproached
But I laughed
When he said he was hungry

Wild Mother Earth laughed
As hungrily as a dreaming child
The street opened up
The cornucopia flowed, untended

University of the Street

Words stop the reality
My teacher panhandles me
    wordless
The ancient plea
    apparent

I am on a plain of grasses
A nomad makes hand-sign to me
    for a drink of water
Water belongs to the Earth
    to which I pretend guardianship

So I give it to him
Waters flow into his palms
which grow vibrant with wetness
I pass by quickly
    to go onto other business

If he survives
My teacher may put in a good word for me
With the Saints and administrators
If he dies before me
We will yet share the administration
    the responsibility, the guardianship
Of the land 

The Ancestors

The ancestors are with us tonight.
They sit laughing on the mountains.
They swing through silent forests on midnight wings.
They come in the form of bears.
Long-dead, extinct, alive in our totem heart of hearts.
They whisper when we need counsel,
Wondering at our fears.
The ancestors are after all, here.

They are with us tonight.
They bring old forms of poetry.
Writing it in wings of birds, leaves of trees beckoning
They show us how to call up memory.
they help us to forget what we cannot contain,
Knowing full well all memory will never die
In the subtle heart of the glorious beast.

We must remember, lest we forget:
We are the ancestors reborn.
The ancestors are here tonight.
Lest we forget, we are here.
The ancestors are alive and well.

-Jehanah-


WALK RIGHT IN - ROOFTOP SINGERS