Death Valley Lullaby

[Armee]

After driving through my childhood hometown, staring down the ledge of my son's suicide plan, and then driving through Death Valley I was inspired to throw some words down.

Death Valley Lullaby

In the Valley of Death

There's life abound

In the scrappy scrub brushes

Clinging tight to the ground

Until they lift up and grow legs
to tumble around


The tumble weeds I watched

Walking to and from school

A child of the desert

where the tumble weeds rolled.


Mesmerized I cheered on their free-er expanse

While nature and experience knowingly forbode

Claws dug in to the holes of a chain link fence

Bounding a desolate road


That land is houses now, stucco and bland

and I didn't see any tumble weeds

When I rolled briefly through town

To see where I lived

before I lifted my shallow (so very shallow) roots

and learned to tuck my head shamefully down


I rolled, back then, with my family

My mom stepdad my sis and me

We climbed through the desert

peaked and descended

Descended. Descendant. Dis-ended.


For a decade more I clung dead to life

dormant like a seed waiting. Waiting.

Waiting for things to be right.


I startle awake, choking and drinking

In life dismantling this rusted chain link fence

of my own

damned

making


Tentative strands of green

Cracked through the burnt ground

Grasping, intuitive, busting the seam


Reached out went to college

Unfurled found a career

Vines latching onto a husband steady stable dear


Two flowers bear two children and I awaken to find

Through the slit dirty grit of half-closed eyes

Children half-grown and a mother dies


Here I open my eyes to finally see

This deadening fear of death until one death sets me free

I tumbled away then slowly set root

Reached up and out, fighting to sprout


So roll on, tumbleweed, I'm watching you go

as I look out my window down at the woods below

I look down to MY children's garden wild and oak-y and slowly, cautiously I let myself know


I see two tall redwoods, their babies gathered round

All stand steady kind and firm in the ground

Their roots stretch far, nourished and bound

For them, there will be no tumbling

No rolling around


They know they belong and they know who they are

These are my babies and I hold them in prayer

Praying to know

Tentatively knowing the cycle ends here

[paul72]

 
just beautiful Armee.. i love the image of the tumbleweed and especially of the 2 redwoods.
thank you for sharing this!!!

[Hope67]

Hi Armee,
I'm glad I found your poem here, that is a powerful lullaby, and I really like the imagery.  Thank you for sharing this.

Hope 

[littlebluejay]

Armee, this is beautiful, thank you for sharing. I love the end... knowing the cycle ends here. That is one of my greatest desires in life, that if I should marry or be a parent one day, the generational brokenness among wives and husbands, and parents and children, will end with me. Thank you for sharing this, you are very talented and I hear your heart in every word.