When words don’t come – Poetry by Shizue Seigel

          After Rena Priest’s “The Forest for the Trees”

Split in two 
slit to ribbons… 
Have you learned to
sit on your words
lest you 
spit into the wind
get mud in your eye?

The unyielding wind
blows back
blows down
blows up 
anything that does not support
the right of the mighty
to dictate what they chose
to see or not to see.

Never mind what we think
We have been taught to stand in dutiful rows,
keep our tongues tied in graceful bows,

Breathe yourself back to another way of being
another way of seeing.
Basic laws of transpiration and inspiration:
Exhalation of water vapor through stomata
Synthesize CO2 and H2O into C6H12O6 and O2
Breath as as cycle. Breath as creation
Nothing seized or seizing
Nothing forced or manufactured
Tree sun breath life
Release the poverty within us
Like a long-held breath.
Shizue Seigel

Shizue Seigel is a third-generation Japanese American Sansei writer, visual artist, and community activist living on unceded Yelamu land in Western San Francisco. She writes from the sacred spaces she’s wandered in and out of for a lifetime. She supports writers and artists of color through Write Now! SF Bay (www.writenowsf.com).

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