Bon Courage

Why are the woods so alluring? A forest appears

to a young girl one morning as she combs

the dreams out of   her hair. The trees rustle

and whisper, shimmer and hiss. The forest

opens and closes, a door loose on its hinges,

banging in a strong wind. Everything in the dim

kitchen: the basin, the jug, the skillet, the churn,

snickers scornfully. In this way a maiden

is driven toward the dangers of a forest,

but the forest is our subject, not this young girl.

She’s glad to lie down with trees towering all around.

A certain euphoria sets in. She feels molecular,

bedeviled, senses someone gently pulling her hair,

tingles with kisses she won’t receive for years.

Three felled trees, a sort of chorus, narrate

her thoughts, or rather channel theirs through her,

or rather subject her to their peculiar verbal

restlessness …    our deepening need for non-being intones

the largest and most decayed tree, mid-sentence.

I’m not one of you squeaks the shattered sapling,

blackened by lightning. Their words become metallic

spangles shivering the air. Will I forget the way home?

the third blurts. Why do I feel like I’m hiding in a giant’s nostril?

the oldest prone pine wants to know. Are we being   freed

from matter? the sapling asks. Insects are well-intentioned,

offers the third tree, by way of consolation. Will it grow

impossible to think a thought through to its end? gasps the sapling,

adding in a panicky voice, I’m becoming spongy! The girl

feels her hands attach to some distant body. She rises

to leave, relieved these trees are not talking about her.

Amy Gerstler

CultFit Twirl


Bless Air’s

… gift of sweetness, Honey

from the bees, inspired by clover,
marigold, eucalyptus, thyme,
the hundred perfumes of the wind.
Bless the beekeeper

who chooses for her hives
a site near water, violet beds, no yew,
no echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green
or gold, pigment for queens,
and joy be inexplicable but there
in harmony of willowherb and stream,
of summer heat and breeze,
each bee’s body
at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,
strumming on fragrance, smitten.

For this,
let gardens grow, where beelines end,
sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;
where bees pray on their knees, sing, praise
in pear trees, plum trees; bees
are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

– Carol Ann Duffy

CultFit Meadow


The Amaranth

is an imaginary flower that never fades.
The amaranth is blue with black petals,
it’s yellow with red petals,
it’s enormous and grows into the shape
of a girl’s house,
the seeds nestle high in the closet
where she hid a boy.
The boy and his bike flee
the girl’s parents from the tip
of the leaves, green summer light
behind the veins.
The amaranth is an imaginary flower
in the shape of a girl’s house
dispensing gin and tonics
from its thorns, a succulent.
This makes the boy’s bike steer
off-course all summer, following
the girl in her marvelous car,
the drunken bike.
He was a small part of summer,
he was summer’s tongue.

Matthew Rohrer

CultFit Flower


Let Nothing Lie Dormant

At the farmer’s market in Rosarito, Mexico,
a man touched my arm.
He sat on a stool at a wooden table,
and in the center,
a blue pitcher of water beaded under the sun.
Hunkered over his lap,
he worked with a gouge on a block of walnut,
and he blew at the dust,
and the dust swirled in the breeze.
Done stripping the sapwood vulnerable to rot,
the man held the heart of the wood,
a purple wood hard against
the chisel’s cutting edge.
He looked up from his work,
and his gray eyes told me I must listen.
“This wood must be strong
or the heart cracks before the real work is done.
See this?” he asked softly,
and he lifted a mallet carved
from a branch of apple, “Strong wood,” he said.
“It wanted to be more than a tree.”
He rubbed fresh walnut dust between his palms.
We drank glasses of ice water,
talked about life in general,
and he used the pitcher,
billowed and wet like the sail of a boat,
to cool his neck.
Later, through the soft meat of an avocado,
I felt the pit longing to be free.

David Dominguez

CultFit Woods


Bring Wine

For I am suffering crop sickness from the vintage;
God has seized me, and I am thus held fast.
By love’s soul, bring me a cup of wine that is the envy of the
sun, for I care aught but love.
Bring that which if I were to call it “soul” would be a shame,
for the reason that I am pained in the head because of the soul.
Bring that whose name is not contained in this mouth, through
which the fissures of my speech split asunder.
Bring that which, when it is not present, I am stupid and ig-
norant, but when I am with it, I am the king of the subtle and
crafty ones.
Bring that which, the moment it is void of my head, I become
black and dark, you might say I am of the infidels.
Bring that which delivers out of this “bring” and “do not
bring”; bring quickly, and repel me not, saying, “Whence shall
I bring it?”
Bring, and deliver the roof of the heavens through the long
night from my abundant smoke and lamentations.
Bring that which after my death, even out of my dust, will
restore me to speech and thanksgiving even as Najjar.
Bring me wine, for I am guardian of wine like a goblet, for
whatever has gone into my stomach I deliver back completely.
Najjar said, “After my death would that my people might be
open-eyed to the ecstasy within me.
“They would not regard my bones and blood; in spirit I ama
mighty king, even though in body I am vile.
“What a ladder I, the Carpenter, have chiseled! My going has
reached the roof of the seventh heaven.
“I journeyed like the Messiah, my ass remained below; I do
no grieve for my ass, nor am I asslike of ears.
“Do not like Eblis see in Adam only water and clay; see that
behind the clay are my hundred thousand rose bowers.”
Shams-e Tabrizi rose up from this flesh saying, “ I am the
sun. Bring up my head from this mire.
“Err not, when I enter the mire once more, for I am at rest,
and am ashamed of this veil.
“Every morning I will rise up, despite the blind; for the sake
of the blind I will not cease to rise and set.”

جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى‎

Notes:

This coming Saturday join me at the Omaha Healing Arts Center for a “Rumi Celebration”– An Invitation to Universal Love and Knowledge. If you would like to learn more please visit the OM Center Website.

Be well today!

CultFit Bloom