—After Lucia Perillo
For now, I’ll just stand in the courtyard.
For news is news and I have the wisdom of the Zero Step.
The do nothing step, the stillness to listen inside, the now
to gather and hold this body erect, to stay quiet and wait,
drink water, watch the sky and the trees grounded in the
earth, to know what to hold onto.
Sure, anger comes and fear, but
these trees guide a hidden disease.
There was a moment I did not know, different yet the same—
For now, I’ll just stand in the courtyard.
The diagnosis hit like a tailgate strike, a scathing jolt,
a wake-up crash, whiplash,
but there is a way to forgive—to stand with trees—to grow a
gradual acceptance, a sliver matures in stillness, time passes
moves on to what transpires next, on a tree leaves come and go,
this process cycling to a calling that opened to a career
that came and went, I survive like the trees, in their daily standing.
It makes sense, this emotional stew that stormed my life—
a personal study—how to midwife the specter of death.
Grateful to the trees that absorb pain, they would accept even
my blood if I had to bleed. I stand today one of the lucky ones.
Me and the trees, the trees and I
in the wind, in this courtyard.
The Zero Step is the first of the Wise Woman Tradition Steps of Healing
Julene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, worked in AIDS services for twenty-one years. Her third poetry collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, and won the Bisexual Book Award. Her next book, Slow Now With Clear Skies, published by MoonPath Press,will be released by June 2024. Widely published, other work appears in HEAL, Mad Swirl, Anti-Heroin Chic, Feels Blind, and recent anthologies: I Sing the Salmon Home, and Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice. www.julenetrippweaver.com