WE WANT SAFE HARBORS

“Listen. A world of corn fields rise up in me,

their agitated songs long to be freed”

~David Allen Sullivan, Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz, CA, 2020-2022

and foods that trace sweet knowledge back to our 

mothers and fathers, back to a line of fervent

ancestors whose intelligence found ways to say 

be safe, heal, before the preservation of great

harms cost them their calm rivers. 

  If you listen to

the dust rising at your feet, it is their moon-blush 

stepping up, their nervousness drawing you on so

sensibly, 

        and because these times are harder still. 

Nature is 

full of firm forces testing my will 

my bonewalls on both sides, testing the line leading

back through them to my origins. How tall can I 

stand alone, for how long?

It's always the things which 

I cannot see or touch, things I do not know, that

surprise me. This is the poet's skimmed cream, worth 

so much more. 

        There is a field of corn rising up

in each of us, charged by light by softness, earth's full

nourishment; sunshine's golden eyes cross-examine

the care with which we nurture it in all the good 

and vacant months. Though, some periods are 

not so good, some hurtful. 

What do I learn, when I take a fall 

from a vehicle steered by handlebars and break

a bone that took years to construct? I was going much

too fast, faster than life designed for me, confused 

throttle with the brake, then hit a curb at the same

time when my mind's science said my body couldn't 

match its speed, of course! 

        In the air, so fast in this 

free and formidable air, I flew defenseless,

vulnerable, until I heard the crack and earth stopped me. 

Pride lifted me back on my feet, but my dignity

fell to its disease. I cried with regret and pain, 

cried silently for a poultice.

          We want those safe 

harbors, dignity's currency to help restore 

what is lost. We want to go traveling again, 

soar above the corn fields and public parks, over 

tall buildings stretching across many square miles to 

the water's edge and high mark. Every square foot 

of space is a song waiting to be freed from the 

feeble throat of the city.