Imunuri Poetry Collective Tribute poem - I try to write a poem about the entire universe…while also harvesting kiwis and it opens up a space in me to hear the laughter the Earth makes as it spins, speedily, round in dance, which reminds me of rolling down hills as a child, how, turning, our rolling traced slow circles, and this helps me understand how the tilt of the earth generates the seasons as well as the purpose for our lives….

For Mother Poet Barbara, who passed 12-27-14

I try to pick the atlas sphere like a kiwi ripening

in the cold sudden sunshine. The vine

of the milky way snakes gracefully, hop

ping and bumbling like an absent

minded pro (con)

fessor across the drape of magnolia

branch (ing). I think I hear ka (achoo)

zoos faintly. Feintly, feintingly

up on the lad(ud)der of gaia-kiwi-plucking

all-seeing, my vision zooms in on the

burgundy polka

dot ladybug irridescing.

We are these kiwis, worlds, galaxies:

of poets and poems.

We are the ladybugs tending the vines of connecting.

For years now, Imunuri poets, we’ve been up on ladders

plucking kiwi-poems from the arbor of gaia’s hair/the constellations of

the nearby universe. We have landed our pens on the passing asteroids

of ancient ideas, giving novel voice (seasonally arising now for tens of

thousands of years) to what has always been true. Hasn’t it?

We have been shout-singing praise-songs, plucking kiwis in

buckets, word-phrases in stanzas, prompting ourselves

up in the morning, into the thick vines, in gruff denim and swaddled in

sweaters of analogy, allegory, and allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the poetry of the united states (stars/kiwis) of imunuri…

If I am you and you are I, perhaps we are the kiwis, tangy swaddled in

brown hairy cocoons of temporary breath, plucked by the planetary

presences who are in carhartts and fleece. The earth grips us,

this day-being of us, this seasonal kiwi, thinking of how

to savor the kiwi-sweet-juice of us, our poem-songs a kind

of planetary nourishment, ingredients for a meal for the belly of gaia.

In which case, we have generated 148 recipes for gaian delight, we have

gingered the bananas, sautéed our metaphors in crisp, delicious

words, added the core holy spices of love and presence. We

have lit the fire (holy) with the freshness of our poetic breath.

Now we pause, having jumped, walloped, read, spun, sung, earthed,

tenderizing these verses for Earthly sauté. We have been the supple

soufflé, the stirring spoon, the serving fork. We have spun the plates and

gathered up the goblets, hummed the flowing libations into

poetry as offering for the universe unfurling, who is a clatch of chattering

kiwi pluckers, in for a break, air cold as breath, the breath clouds

themselves. All this. And the earth herself too, and the galaxies and planets.

I am you and you are I is not only about humuns; more so projective

empathy and cross-species, cross-being , cross-scale symbiosis. Hunkering at puters,

plunkering at ukuleles, in cafes from California to Oregon, in the dim dark possibilities of poem-birthing night, plucking kiwis, offering these sweet

juicy tastes of

delight to the maker-spheres of our heaven on earthing.

Definitely part of something big, spare, whole. Jumping through,

I come back to you, who, reading this, run the hand on the back of your neck

and yes you feel the kiwi fuzz there, you just start to turn around as you sense

the giant Gaian hand hovering for the pluck. We are being tended, gardened,

and poem-harvested for the delight of things so much larger than us

that all that’s needed, feeling the whisper air of the Earth-hand hovering to

pluck the juicy kiwi skin of us from the vine ripening weave of our connection,

all we

(can) do is

grin. 

grin the gaian grin of deep knowing

that we are ripe and ready for the festival (feast of alls) of earthly delight

which as we well know

helps the Earth, rolling down a hill on a summer day,

warm, over the voluption of grassy stars, starry night

nourishes the Gaian spin

Scooter Cascadia

12-31-14