View From Bayberry Lane Poem by Liberatore Suffoletta

Here where the sound meets the shore
In a place of brackish water, pollution,
shadows, seagulls and concrete.
Everything starts with the wind
The wind offers up prayers
Age old verses echoing
in your still youthful ear
like afar snapping red flags
The wind brings cold and warmth
Life clouds giving moisture
The wind gives movement to the harbour itself
As it sends the clouds careening upon the waves
The human soul becomes aware of itself
Because the world never stops pushing
And it is in pushing back
that a soul is defined
Send awareness into the air
Scour the wind
Float with it
Become mindful of the world it carries
Absorb the winds lessons
Become a hawk soaring high over your valley
Looking at old photos see your youth dance away
Light a fire in an old brazier, toss in some salt
Smell the sweet, acrid scent of junipers,
tinged with the coolness of snow
Falling down a wishing well listening
to distant chatter of ground squirrels
on the rock-strewn slopes.
Toes wiggling on an old carpet
hand-deep into popcorn
knock in my mind
Unexpected visitor.

Life feels different this time,
I thought
There is still the excitement,
the feeling
Of entering a lost century,
also else
Not fear, yet close to fear
A sense of spring in the wind
an ancestor told me
that whirlwinds are just
One of the ten thousand forms
Spirits may take and dance
Together;
Inside is a seed
Of brilliant awareness
They appear suddenly, like
A thought about you
Then just-
Just pass by.