gift to 599

there is power
in our youth, and I can
feel it.

I can hear it in the syllables
that lilt over our tongues
and see it in the thoughts
that pass over our foreheads.

I have seen our beauty in our laughter :
sitting at the corners
of her smiling mouth -
and his, wider still
nestled in the salt in the corners of his eyes...
in that shedding, in that vulnerability
there is power.

I've felt that push up the hill, knees
crick-cracking, muscles
aching
with heat and fresh blood, blood
sniffed out
by the forest's wolves
teeth bared, ready to
kill - or, to
cradle...

As mothering dogs do, carrying
in their jaws
their pups, by their neck-skins.
In that choice, there lies power
on that edge, lies our power.
there is vulnerability in our youth -
I have felt it:

we have wanted
and needed, we have spent
nights alone in the dark,
slept in infinite jagged peaks
carved our beds in dead earth
alive with insects

So steer our eyes each morning
towards that emerald mirror
and there we will know our power
because we'll see it ourselves
knowing that we've stood from this same dirt
as all the world's life has

well, then we have already risen

unlike some of those ahead of us
who have spent
their lives, gazing at the horizon
of their own deaths
we
will stride forward - if
blindly, courageously -
toward living

There is power in our youth
and we should feel it,
and we should clench our teeth with
all of our tenacity
to keep that wolf from feeding
There is power in our youth.
I can feel it !

So let our journey
  be relentless
let our immersion
  be in fullness
let our discoveries
  be in conquest

all that we have seen in us
must now settle
in us
and trust
that amongst the chaos, we are
powerful
calm, beautiful, touched, marked, perfect
we are full of possibility - brimming !

we are
unsketched question marks
forests unmapped
oceans with the tide out
lightning not yet touched down