Flight Attendants 

In this world that hurtles through time,

Through space,

We see that we are headed someplace.

All of us,

Whether rich or poor, 

Or what side of the oceans we may call home,

The shade of our skin,

The depravity of our religions,

We all have the self-same destination:

Wherever this Earth may take us!

What we do as we take our flight

Is our business.

If we grumble

And judge our fellow passengers, 

If we complain that we have too much rain

Or not enough,

Find trivial things to entertain us,

It’s just because we’ve forgotten who we really are.

It’s because we fail to see

That we are in the company of greatness on this plane.

We don’t perceive 

That we may never get the chance 

To step into this same stream again. 

But if there’s ever anyone who does

Rise above all the clamour and roar,

Who becomes aware of the oneness of all things

Where This Planet is concerned,

Then the glamour therein

Becomes a heart to serve his or her fellow travelers,

To humbly attend to the needs and comfort of others.

Stewards and Stewardesses

Of the Fruits of the Earth,

The plants, the animals, the human beings,

The spirits that hover in between 

And the great mother, herself,

Who gave birth to us all,

Our homely earth,

Our great vessel that carries us on its back to our great destiny, 

Calls us to care, but not carelessly,

But to a service that stems from humility, acceptance, and correctness.

We are all called,

But not many will choose

To love and adore

During this brief span,

This cosmic journey

So out of our control

Across the skies.

Yay, verily,

Not many will choose

To be this type of flight attendants.

-jenn 

 Eagles soar,

But egos do, too.

The Sun is eclipsed,

And so is the opportunity for influence. 

Yet, Mistrust and Envy,

And all such other inferior elements, 

Will disperse 

If we can hold firmly to inner truth.

The planet is very out-of-control.

How do I know?

For I once held the same thoughts such as these,

Who riot plainly in the streets.

And smally, my thoughts believed: I’m only a part of a nation.

But, I’m one with the entire world, and even the cosmos.

How can I fix this?

Only by fixing myself.

And then offering my own self-transformation 

To the world, my family, the nation,

And even, the great cosmos.

-jenn

 Uneti — Connecting the Dots

I’ve been singing a song I learned to sing in Cherokee.

My great grandfather taught it to me

A long time ago.

I never knew what the lyrics meant,

Although I felt I got a sense of 

What the song was about.

I felt a sense of connectedness

When my great grandfather sang the song,

When he taught it to me and my brothers

In his backyard 

While we played croquet.

My great grandfather was a stickball player,

And he said he and his nephews sang that song.

It was about one of our forefathers 

Who was a stickball champion, 

Long before him.

But he didn’t know much Cherokee.

The teachers at the seminary 

Wouldn’t allow his mother’s mother,

Who went to school there

In Talequah,

To speak Cherokee,

Or tell the old stories,

Or sing any Cherokee songs.

Now we play the civilized game,

But while we hit the brightly colored, striped balls

Through the wickets with our matching, 

Brightly striped mallets,

We sang a song about a man who took a hickory stick

And wrapped it with deer hide,

And made a ball filled with horsehair,

And ran a violent roughshod over

The competitors in a game as important as war,

Most similar to what we know now as lacrosse or rugby.

They said my great grandfather played football once,

But not at school.

One night when he and his friends were home

From World War One,

They got drunk and then later on,

A neighbor’s dog

Drug a dead skunk up in the yard.

They started tossing it around and throwing it at one another,

When a rowdy game of football broke out.

But on that day, we played the civilized game

Called croquet,

And the wildest thing around

Was the voice of my great grandfather singing  loud,

The praises of the great Uneti.

Sometimes this song comes back to me,

And I instantly sing it all the way through.

Usually, it’s something I do 

When I’m alone, driving in my car

Down some hilly farm to market road.

My great grandfather taught it to me

And my two brothers

Over fifty years ago,

On a beautiful day in Lindsay, Oklahoma,

While we played croquet

On the perfectly manicured green grass of his sprawling back yard lawn,

Which he still mowed himself up on Murray Hill.

I still remember all of  that song,

And as I sang it, today,

I noted the repeated phrase “Uneti.”

And today, with the capabilities of my very civilized cell phone,

I was able to look it up,

And see the definition of that word is “Freckles.”

And so I don’t know now,

If what my great grandfather taught us is true.

Maybe the song is not about a great stickball champion.

But from what I can tell,

It would be a very Cherokee thing to do,

To offer such a humble, friendly, intimate nickname 

To someone great.

Like the name we called my great grandfather: 

“Gramp,”

When he was so kind as to get out there 

And set up all that croquet game

In the hot summer day

And play along with us,

When he was over eighty years old,

And teach us a song that his mother’s mother 

Had very quietly taught to him.

But Gramp didn’t know much Cherokee.

The teachers at the seminary 

Wouldn’t allow his mother’s mother,

Who went to school there

In Talequah,

To speak her native tongue,

Or to tell the old stories of creation,

Or sing any of the Cherokee songs.

-jenn

 Insight

He had always wanted to meet Thor Heyerdahl ,

And now that he was dead, he could,

And, in fact, had been granted his wish

Of meeting two others he’d always held in high esteem

While he was living.

But because he had to go back in time to meet them,

He had a chance to view their lives in rewind, too.

In toto, he could see how they had actually been,

How they had treated their own families,

And he found that they were all assholes.

But then he arrived at a place in space and time where they were born.

What sweet babies they all three were!

And he managed to peek behind the curtain 

To find them as their spirits were in death now,

So perfect, and so at peace with themselves and everyone else!

And so he decided that in his next life,

He wasn’t going to wish to meet anyone famous,

Or either would he work to be anyone whom others might admire,

But his only striving would be to stay as innocent 

As the glorious, angelic infants he’d seen were.

-jenn

 Practice Squad

The unsung heroes of the practice squad!

The better they are,

The better your team will be!

Nameless, faceless wildmen 

Who square up for fun on the frienemy:

The starters!

They run divine routes,

Inspired by some hidden energy matrix.

They gather strength from an unknown source, 

Motivated by something intangible 

And incorruptible.

They can’t be bought.

They can’t be sold.

But they can take you places,

Or they can take yours.

It’s rare, but brother, when they do,

When they rise up through the ranks of the five star blue bloods,

They become the very ones

Who get statues of themselves placed

 In front of the stadiums!

The eternal spirit of the underdawg!

They are gold

In a silver standard.

They deserve our notice and respect.

My hat is off to you today,

You great, unsung heroes of the venerate and venerable practice squad!

-jenn