Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
Murmurations: at the equinox
A note from adrienne maree brown: Alta Starr has had many lifetimes and walks with easy wisdom. These days, she is a playful poet, thorough writer, deep collaborative thinker, and tarot oracle.
between the breath’s
peak and trough
an infinitesimal point
of stillness
(less than a jiffy’s 60th of a second)
between a pendulum’s swings
at the edges of its repeating arc
gravity grapples with inertia
and wins eventually
always
given air friction
drag force
(unless: think metronome
standing longcase clock
motion maintained mechanically)
at the top of each swing
before the pendulum turns
to return
a pause
in that stillness
we can slide
out
away from the war
declare a ceasefire
a truce in this tug of war
between the inescapable pull
downward
the constant push to move
this face-off
between what we can’t outrun
and all that keeps us running
the weighty dilemmas of history
at war with life’s
bottomless desire for more
life
trapped in clock
and calendar forced march
we lose circular time
the seasons’ reminders in feeling
that the planet
rotates on its own axis
revolves, inexorable,
closer to and further from its star
we lose the joy of that wheeling
the peace of fulcrums
of light and darkness balanced
while we
wild freedom
slip
out
Alta Starr
is currently the director of training for Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), and is a somatic practitioner or “aliveness doula,” writer, and poet. She spent 25 years as a grant-maker supporting organizing and social movements to build political power in underserved and marginalized U.S. communities, especially in the South. Her own political engagement began in the Black Power Movement of the 1960s, and informed her early work as a teacher, parent organizer, and radio news and music producer. She has published essays about embodiment, including the introductory chapter to the book Making and Being, a textbook for undergraduate students in the visual arts. She is currently working on a book project, tentatively titled Conjugating Freedom, a collection of essays and poems examining freedom as an embodied experience. She is based in New York and speaks English.
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