Cahalen Morrison

Our Lady of The Tall Trees

Our Lady of the Tall Trees, and of the Not.
Our Lady of the Desert, and of the Sea.
It has been brought to the edge,
the edge of something big, but still barely out of view.

Even craning my neck, it is just around the corner.
But the corner is still the corner, and it will not straighten out for me,
even if asked politely.
Even Our Lady of the Corner cannot change this.

Our Lady of the Tall Trees, is around the corner.
Ah! She is beautiful. A sight to behold, no doubt.
Like the Queen of the garden, in her robes of lettuce, and crown of rice.
Dinner is served.

Elam’s Kitchen
Knoxville, TN
October 15, 2009

Only As Everything

It is very troublesome being grown up.
No more muddy feet, no more awakening.
Not in the sense of itself, only in the context of ‘other’.
Everything flawed reveals itself. Everything reveals itself.
Eventually flaw falls away, into the category of ’stuff’ and ‘thing’.
Then everything is revealed again, this time only as everything.

I-75 South
N. Georgia
October 2009

How She’ll Go

Fall is bare!
I had seen Winter’s shoulder through the limbs.
Delicately draping herself on the valley floor.
Summer’s shattered light can fall undeterred
to pierce the earth, stuck upright.
This is not an outrage, she has by blessing to lie naked.
Naked is how she came, naked is how she’ll go.

West Virginia
October, 2009

Day Is At Home

For Day to break, it must have once been whole.
How glorious is a full Day, uninterrupted!

The fingers of Night have no right here.
Songbirds will sing, and birdsong will ring,
in the ears of all worldly things!

But Day is not broken! Nor will it ever be.
Day is at home in the sky. Day is at home, sleeping.

When day wakes, say ‘Good Morning.’

Chris and Suzanne’s Kitchen
Cambridge, MA
October, 2009

The Little Rivers of Sweet

There was a little left,
in the silver moat – around the bottom.
Like the last sip of root beer, and it left my hands all sticky.
A very heavy heel has landed, and it made that perfect noise.

A deeply quenching crunch – simple – but I have been floored,
bleeding my syrupy remains on the concrete that was swept years ago.
Now it has flowed into the valleys made by straw,
and an army of thirsty ants is steadily descending upon the little rivers of sweet.

I-93 Northbound
New Hampshire
November 8, 2009

Am It Senseless?

Am it senseless?
Or is it full?
Did it makes sense?
I thought nought.

The Sanctuary House
Seattle, Washington
August 17, 2010