She is new to the building maintenance crew
where we live in our 6-week snowbird oasis
and I know very little about her from my 7th floor view
and listening point, but I can tell you some things:
she pulls her medium brown hair into a ponytail
and she belts out the blues as she works,
and I like her and think she’s a bad ass—I mean
she doesn’t give a hoot who hears her, she’s
got something to say in her bluesy way and
she lets it rip and it rises on the breeze up to
my height with the backdrop of ocean waves and
it isn’t a tune I can tell you about as it arrives in bursts
of words that are not even clear, maybe a word
or two, but that isn’t even the point as it is the wail
that I feel and it enters me and I want more
but I must wait until she feels it again and gives me
the more I hope for as I am patient and pleading
and then it comes up from the pool where she is sweeping
for sand, or the boardwalk where she is drilling to repair
and I think why don’t we all cry out a bit every day
and share that deep river of life within and let it rise
to clouds of remembering what it is to be purely alive.
(Image: Within the Heart of Nature by Janis Dehler)
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