I AM stepping into the vast ocean of wisdom each and every day-moment by moment- from the rise of the SUN/SON to the going down of the same. I am seeking the origin of my sacred wisdom-my purpose and promise-from teary midnight reflections to the shadows of yesterday’s dawns.

Wisdom is a poem written on the spirit and flesh of life unfolding.

I bleed like a virgin and a man in the killing fields. I know the metallic scent of the escaping of life very well. It perfumes my walk-as does expensive fragrance and drying branches of sage. I love with abandon- freely, awkwardly-without boundary or distinction.

My love has given me the greatest pleasures and the deepest sorrows of this life…and yet I still believe in love. I laugh until it hurts and cry until it no longer does. It is a poem that will never be completed- a mosaic of the fragility and brilliance of the broken and mended pieces of our lives.

I am just one temporary song of the ages-passing as quickly as thought and young love into nostalgia, into forever, into forgetfulness, into history.

I transcend and grow with the ebb and flow of seasons; I am cleansed and made still in the fingers of rain storms; I am phoenix on the rise- pressing through the frozen barren earth of winters dread and winters beauty-

I am a survivor-

I am the promising and budding birth of spring awakening beneath the icy feet of trauma, illness, insanity, genius, compassion, love lost-love made-love given and love birthed .

If you are truly listening, even in the silence and secrets of me, you will hear the composition of my very breath.

I will give my last drop of life to my children, my community, a stranger, a nation, and GOD. I am a writer, a filmmaker, an activist, a survivor, a worshiper, a mother, and a scarred shattered masterpiece of distinction.

I am clarity and hypocrisy-stunningly ugly and oh-so-beautiful. I am fame and fortune- poverty and elusiveness- desperation and contentment- seen but invisible- bigger than life, but smaller than atom/ADAM.

I am supported by the rock of ages and the rock of wisdom from my father- that both overwhelms and sustains me. I am women-I am scarred- I am an aging and wilting rose-I am ethnicity-

I am intimate expression and insecure flesh-

I am life-

LIFE IS EVERYTHING and never replicated-I fear life more than I fear depth-and yet, I have no fear. I am…..

That..and THIS… has to be enough as the wisdom of me-the sponge soaking in all that exists-continues on the path set before me-and then, I will be no longer here…but there…where I belong.

Hold me down, like a ravenous lover, in this photographic moment-press me as a flower into the album of time that represents NOW.

See me in this light-for tomorrow who knows what the eye of the sky will create in me.

I AM…