Permission Slip
The world is full, overflowing and spilling into space.
Emptiness
is a space inside you
when your mind is crowded,
house is crowded,
life is crowded,
and your expectations spill outside
the world inside your head and
into orbit in your aching joints,
no longer able to be contained
by the sheer gravity of your will
alone.
I grant you permission to feel,
permission to be tired,
permission to rest.
I grant you permission to see the sunlight
leaking through the basement window
Illuminating the jumble of extension cords and
odd bits of old rope
turned to gold.
I give you permission to walk out
of the full house
at night
barefoot
on the heated summer asphalt
with its ozone smell of humidity condensing,
and search for the moon.
I grant you permission
to leave the middle of the conversation
around the fire
with dear friends
and listen to the shouts of the katydids
mixed with laughter,
the rise and fall of voices,
a Specter wall of sound
as the air conditioner chimes in.
I grant you permission to
finish the dishes later,
to put away only one chair.
It will all still be there in the morning
and so will you.
Originally published in Little Spills and Other Poems I Cannot Contain, Kyra Freeman (Redhawk Publications, 2023)
Rebirth
The deep hurdy-gurdy chorus of cicadas
Pierces the weight of liquid air,
Passing through the window glass and
Shouting down the air conditioner.
The air thrums with the ease of summer evenings.
With a shiver of sunburned arms the dark begins to fall.
The thrum is eclipsed by the higher bark of cricket and katydids
When the moon takes over the sky.
I didn’t even realize how much I had missed them
And their vibrations of rebirth.
Originally published in Second Life: Poems of Re-emerging, Kyra Freeman (Redhawk Publications, 2021)
Eighth Circle of August
August assaults us all with
Unrelenting hot, wet fists and
Grotesque sunsets of fading purple bruises
Until every promise is washed in pieces down
Swollen streams.
Trembling, incredulous, we crawl for shade.
Originally published in Little Spills and Other Poems I Cannot Contain, Kyra Freeman (Redhawk Publications, 2023)
