#jp dancing bear

[fluttering-slips]

Circumference of Chance

When possibility whispers, treat it gently. -Tara Betts

  I could not sleep in my bed of leaves, so I moved to the dry river bed—

last night I tossed, turned on a stone— its smooth curve bruised

my hip, as it settled under the small of my back. With my aching gratitude

I kept it warm hoping it would hatch. I whispered the only prayer I knew

over its roundness again, and again until I had nearly believed, nearly formed

my religion from this repetition. Here was my hope, here in the dust,

pocked with grit. I swear it cracked open while I attempted rest

and in its place small opportunities appeared, I keep one in my pocket

a sparrow's egg I run my finger over its circumference of chance

and sometimes someone will touch my shoulder, ask

what is that prayer always under your breath, and I

touch the stone to make sure it's still there.

jp dancing bear

[500pounds]

Be Fog, JP Dancing Bear

                  (Poem Starting with a Line by Sarah Hannah) Be fog someday, and you will have nothing but clouded thought and muffled whale talk, everything seemingly removed but close. The old philosophers were right: everything you need is within but they never mentioned the terrible ordeal of location, the lack of landmarks or that you could spend your life listening to something very near, yet never touch it. Forget insight—you are lucky for the lighthouse and the fog horn. If the sounds of grinding steel and rock never arrive then it is a good life with gulls and pelicans somewhere above, the lap of the waves feeding at your feet. When you have nothing, you have it all—without the gritty grip, the glitter show, the bending of your life to hold all those things you should never have called your own. 

[fluttering-slips]

Nocturne

“I would steal horses for you…”                                    —Sherman  Alexie

I am stolen horses for you. My body no more than a wooden dingy and dropped lines. Still I breathe out planets and stars for you; all the dust in a god’s eye. My hair is the streaks of comets and meteors. My bones fill with crickets

and frog music. As the world turns its shoulder to the sun I bend into the boat of this journey. I am in a night created for you.

JP Dancing Bear

[fluttering-slips]

Her Constellations

I read with fingers the constellations, spray of brown stars across her shoulders. With eagerness I consume her myths, tales locked within each starry figure. 

Eleven sparrows sing of deliverance fleeing a mad king’s desire for wings; their small bodies huddle in the brush, brace for the rush of winter snow.

A wide sea of fish stretch from the stem of her spine to the moonlight of her cheek: angels, clowns, butterflies.

Always there are seeds and flowers; her body a garden of petals, perfumes nourished by blue rivers running deep beneath the night of her skin.

JP Dancing Bear