55: Grand

My Grandmother

of smoke and feather

would tell me that the surest way to

establish a permanence

in life is to declare war on it. I was to bathe in the outside

washing tub, an old horse trough. A war, said my Grandmother,

can never lose its

energy because of the many human lives

defined in the purpose to fight it. People would

have to redefine themselves.

What would they become without their cause to war?

If they

are for a cause, that cause

will exist, if solely for them. This is law. To change a cause,

you cannot fight it.

It will fight back, gain strength, maneuver - so that you may remain defined.

To be defined in a purpose, just or unjust, is a gift of love,

and hard to understand.

To truly change an energy manifested in life, we can

only welcome it,

care for it:

an intimate love, or a suffering in our quick;

hold it until we are guided in our movement, to help it become

something new - it must be love that washes, in the eroding river of life.

Old people and their talk.

I was so fast she would never get me in that tub.

Willing to game with a child,

she chased - me round and round. Quick for old bones, finally

she stopped. Must have been tired.

I came full circle, so far ahead, so fast; I ran

right into her, her wide open hands -

and I was cleaned.