i live in the city

I live in the city....
with its sounds
that start before dawn and
remind me that I
am not alone

this city is a living
palpating
body of life

i breathe differently here
my inspirations come
from a place of
deep
companioning with
neighbor
driver
man on the street
who pushes a
shopping cart filled
with
his possessions
a rolling home
away
from convention
and conformity
and sometimes
his choice

i wake when they wake
dumpsters
car doors
those metal brushes
from the street
cleaners
calling me up
from the
dark velvet
dreamy
place
I am floating in...

i wake even before the
sound of my neighbor's
screen door
snaps me forward into
light and
the laughter of two
graduate students on the balcony
next door
with  French press coffee and
hand thrown mugs
discussing kafke
and kierkgaard over
croissants and jam
remind me that
i too am a thinker
with
worlds to
consider

there is no
slipping back into
dreamy
escape here
the world
calls out to us as healers
to join in the
march
to
check in and
engage with humanity's
surging forward
into
global self-actualization

one cannot remain
passive here
indifferent to
the
injustices of segregation by
color
economy
property-ownership and
labels
brands
or
hood ornaments

this is a body
in which the hand and
eye must
cooperate or
perish

this  is a body...
an organism
that must
choreograph its movements
so effectively
so efficiently
that
car and pedestrian
privileged
and needy
young and
wise
man and woman
gay and
straight
can share a blood stream
an immune system...
air...
in peace

i live in the city now
i am neither hand
nor foot
i am a mental molecule
eager to
enter the
heart and
be
re-oxygenated
by Love's
demand
for compassion
humility
grace....

self-surrender
for the
good of
the whole

I live in the city
now and
the park
wild with zoo
and
beautiful in bloom
rich with
museum quality views of
history and a
painter's brush stroke
along the face of
a child's dream
color
my
life with
new purpose
and
opportunity

i have a
body that wakens
with each
stranger's smile and
weeps
at the drop of a
dime
from the fist of
a child into the
cup of the
blind

I live in the
city now
and
my heart
beats
to the
sounds of
reggae and
lullabies from the
window
across the
park
where a mother
holds her infant and
dreams the dreams
of mothers
everywhere

in cities
villages
the steppes of Mongolia
the arid caves
the wartorn reaches
the rice fields
and deforested amazon...
the rural,
the suburban,
the urban
the kingdoms
and emirates and farms
and communes...

the dream that
her child
could one day
be the master of his own heart
the leader of his village
his brother's keeper

i live in the city now
where
the body of
life
pulses
with
the need
to
care
the need to be
needed
... to
love


kate