Three Poems (Christine Gay Dutton)
Christine Gay Dutton
Cartwheels & Cake
Complications bring pressure, and it lands in your center of unknowing, and you remember that life was never uncomplicated, and you set forth to make a cake, a slurry of slovenly love becomes whole and even and a desire for neat and tidy caretaking is a decadent frosting that might split, but manages to hold, for the moment, momentous.
Might you hope for a time when things went well, like the birth of a song, a cartwheel down the driveway and one of those easy splits showing you as supple, strong, no weight lying across your shoulder, the only you made of cotton, a cirrus cloud passing by delicately and leaving no trails, only opportunity, fresh as huckleberries and the green grass of loving.
Deliver a message between the crumbs, the sweetness, and the rise, knowing that it is both learned and embraced, cleanup is complete, and you can move into your own space of knowing you can bake what is precious, and that which you can find anywhere, everywhere, scattered about, waiting for you to gather what has settled around you.
Heart Trending
It is truly never-ending
in your living through
the seasons within reason
Sprouts signal the reality
of your being and doing only what
is right for you in the now
That first movement beyond
seeding all that you germinate
will bring forth a landscape
Of well-tended heart space
beyond the bleeding hearts and
the weeds that will leave you needing
To the cockscomb flower and the
dragon flower, the glory flower,
the resting flower, the meadow
firmly rooted and connected
Fill the vas with a cleansing
stream of your deepest
need and tend moment to
moment, recognizing moments
When you feel that you have
lifted your heart towards
the sky and open your gift
that gives to you easily
Human Ephemera
Walking through the detritus
is not only toiling, it's tilling,
and a discovery becomes you.
Reach below despondent leaves
and notice the crinkle between
fingertips and toes, the nape
of your neck, and on your knees.
Notice that you've also crinkled and
all is not orderly, your existential
nothingness is beyond being
and less bewildering than the
easy reckoning of the content of soil.
Each grain holds meaning and
grain against grain creates an
illusion of chaos, a characterization
of compunction, but all is well.
Minerals mount the messaging,
exclaiming that all is gained
and you are now gleaming.
Copyright Credit: Christine Gay Dutton, “Cartwheels & Cake," "Heart Trending" and "Human Ephemera" from Survival & Beyond, Issue 2 / Fall 2024 (Safe Passage, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Safe Passage. Reprinted with the permission of the author.