Cardinal Dynamics

You center an offering    
with labored hands    
an experienced knowing    
beyond assignment    

Relics bear tribal DNA    
our scattered history    
Trail of Tears to this –    
this final resting place    
of simple cabin hewn by ax    
hacked out of a wilderness    
from our family’s land    
a sweat lodge, potter's    
clay and fashioned kiln    
the sound of water falling    
ample wildlife foraging    
in a vegetable garden    
   
Here deep contentedness    
I’ve never met lives    
nothing else exists    
beyond this place    
no other desire    
inhabits your dreams    
except traditional ways    
that survive the decades    
   
The land, our fathers and mothers    
these wordless gazes between us    
hold so much depth in silence    

Tracing the M on my palm    
you look up, pause, then ask    
Where have you been –    
then say you are no poet    
fear you cannot recite    
the song of my Spirit    

Yet you hold the knife    
a sacred composition    
within a finger’s octave    
of the fluted melody    
that led me poetically    
into this primal space    
   
I remain silent, allow    
only my heart to speak    
   
You carve a thin line across    
the open plane of my palm    
mingle its offering with your own    
as though matter-of-fact    
a sacred rite you’ve known    
like the back of your hand    
since you were just a child    
   
We grow sticky with warmth    
surrender to a steady pulse    
the metronome of Mother Earth      
discover the cardinal dynamics    
of Love sustaining the Universe    
   
“Aho”    
   
~    
   
image from 'The Cherokee Word for Water'