A Woman of Soul

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)