Exhortation, by Nancy L. Meyer

Forget your parents’ tangled Gods.
Worship your own, the ones
living in the muck of Flax Pond,

the bovine slurp of afterbirth.
Find them in marshland’s ample arms
among newts and rivulets, seed flying

in the wind, chirps and whirrs.
Bend your ear to the ground.
Hear them when you yell

Coo-Weee off a cliff
and distant granite
returns you to yourself.

Face the black flap of vultures
ripping a strewn carcass.
Expect the avalanche

to thunder down.
When you despair,
rest your back on redwoods.

Drink in Aunt Anne’s blowsy roses
until your frozen furrows unclench
in the slow hand of spring.

Nancy L. Meyer, grandmother of 5, still rides her bike up mountains, volunteers as an End of life counselor and is committed to undoing racism.
Poetry is one of her late-life voices.

© 2019, Nancy L. Meyer