"For Melinda Wilson's Love & Mercy - On Her Birthday"

*For Melinda Wilson's Love & Mercy*
~ On Her Birthday



Listening to the messages
between the notes she hears
sweet sounds of harmonic convergence
glowing in the after dinner light
a light, a ray of diamond spray
catching across a soggy nation.
While bitter politicians talk
and the newsrooms stream
away time slots of indecision
she listens with a mother's practiced ear,
hears the tinkling Spirit's call
in a young child's laugh, the secret
voices' stillness, still now -- she hears
sundown on a calmed sea, gulls
churning for their lives: the feeding!
Food & rest for the displaced
hungers.

Tell it now, a pet sound to your ear,
the sound of meadow from the swamp,
the shelter from the storm,
the wheat-colored head of mercy:
you, O Caroline No
hallucination -- but love in the life
like wind in the wave, like
a nation of crave that's grooving
together now -- witnessed in your voicing.
"Hey, let's do. . .," you say. And do.
Together again. Someone's
home again. With an act, a knack
for love.

Melinda, she gives earth to the tempestuous
sea. She breathes wind to the salient
We. She gives ground to he
who shines wax on our boards.
She gives land to the mass
and a smile to the music -- evermore.
By landing this warmth and this shadow
she gives us our land, its nation of
good vibrations for just these times
Today.


~ Lorna Dee Cervantes
($100 donor to Jerry Boyd's direct hurricane relief effort in New Orleans via the Melinda & Brian Wilson Fund thanking you.)