Witness

Tree who catches

every sunrise and sunset in your boughs

you have been my closest friend, the

witness of this story, too short and far

too long to yet tell me its meaning.

You have heard it all. The scream of the train

every time it crushes the land west where I

cannot go but have reached for all this time,

the way you reach. Unmoving and traveling

all the way to the ends of the fleeing universe.

The silence, crushing silence between

there and here. Only you would know.

You have opened yourself to

the dance of the smoke of every

smoldering prayer I burn here beneath

you. Witnessed every ceremony between

me and the sun that abandons me

right after I give my heart to it again.

And again you make me trust

by the force of saying nothing,

by the force of being, by the force

of your unseen movement in the night,

underground, in every one of the

directions, knowing you could cover

the whole world if enough time went by.

You pull me into your hidden rings

one by one until I see the substance

of every year of desperate survival,

the truth of what all forget but you.

You live and die and resurrect

and survive unnoticed, sure of what

you hold, what sap has gone deep in

your veins, forced by the sudden cold.

With a great crack

you thrown down your soul

in each limb that surrenders

to lightning, showing me

you are broken too, and nothing

can rob you of beauty that is.

You are young, you assure me,

you will die soon enough, you tell me,

you will live forever and you still

know nothing, you say—

You are just as alone as I am,

I say, unbelieving, as unknown, as

solitary and confined to your own unseen

movement, as powerless to change

the elements you brave.

Yet I know I'm wrong

every time I sit near you, every time

I lie beneath your great sheltering body

to watch the bright planets and muted stars

we know have been assigned to be seen

by us alone, from this exacting

city plot of earth.

I know you're telling me

what I don't want to hear,

the lavish questions to my questions,

the hope that drags me back

into this strange arena with nothing

to fight with but gnarled fists.

You force me to sing with you

every time the wind rises

in our midst.

Now you must face the truth because it is facing you

Finally, the flood has risen to your front 
door and finally you regret the way you 
dismissed the last one with a flick of the 
wrist and a click. We’re all lost now, rising 
one level up at a time, wind shrieking all the 
terror we feel, toys now gurgling underwater 
with the pilings and levees that once kept us afloat.

No more running from the catastrophes of humankind,
thank you very much, acts of God! Lost! All is not lost!
Better yet, you could’ve moved north, up to the Arctic Circle, 
up into the sunless day, where no rain ever balloons into obese 
deluge. Miracles fall by the millions from the sky, shocking no 
one, seen only by wind some days. But you never thought this 
day would come, when batteries go cold and the music 
washes down the river into death, no longer 
commodity but something like salvation.

So yes, you did not run far enough from 
home. Your shadow stuck on you like a 
faithful, unthanked bodyguard. You 
couldn’t get away from the rumble 
of meaningless words, the cackle of 
the hags that track you, determined to cut 
out your eardrums and sew your heart shut.

Now your only hope is climbing the world’s 
tallest tree, from where you’d see your timeline 
as the city glitters in ancient amber. Pure in its 
dreamtime. From here, you might see my house at 
a tiny distance only, see me on the roof waving, when 
I could be in the basement watching you drown on TV.  
From here, you only watch the rubble swirl away. Here, 
you can sit with hawks and swallows, watch them 
run their messages from tower to tower.

Choose this day what you will lose. 
I can’t send my sea kayak down 
your way. The saving will be 
up to the providence of 
thunderbirds and whales 
working in conspiracy to 
redeem your life in a number 
of dramatic missions. Your best 
hope is to hang on to this uttermost 
branch till kingdom come, or just plunge 
in. 

Because oh no, karma is not in the water. 
Only grace and destruction.

Touch

Hubble Ultra Deep Field .

I am not interested

in describing what you

already think you know in

a more interesting way.

I want magic.

You want answers.

Or a system, a grid

to run variables through

so you can say Oh, that.

But mystery wants you.

It stalks your quantifiable

dreams which can so

easily be explained by

chemical and instinct.

It goes in for the kill when your

heart swells over your sleeping child

or when you lose electricity for a few

night hours and no one’s there to

whittle away the expanse inside.

Doesn’t truth beget question

beget truth beget questions with

answers that are not answers that

unravel questions that dive into

the heart of an answer to find yet

another vast yet-unnamed universe?

Yes—no—love is strange

and unsayable, which is

why we toss it around

in one small word.

It makes the miles of our old intestines

as electric a maze as the whorls of each 
tiny handprint long before birth.

It burdens us with

words that tell who we are 
and a game of subtraction 
that, with such patience,  
closes our distances.

You don’t know what you want

and so you keep dissecting.

I once did that, too, yesterday.

Today I’m ready to

chase down a supercell

in true belief of my smallness,

the probability of death, the

impossibility of telling you

how it feels to be caught up

in that churning cloud.

Tomorrow I may be pulled apart

by that mysterious power to feel

anything at all and be moved

by it—whatever it is.

That we’re not hurtling through space—

that we are—that we’re not suspended

in chrysalis—that we are—

that we reach for each other here—

yet never quite know for sure—

and yet something wholly new yet

of us and our ancient backstory

comes of our not-quite-touching—

it is a miracle.

It is as plain,

as common,

as usual as the

next singular

act of being.

Hope is the smell of water

Simpson Desert :  

               Hope is the smell of water

               A magnet on the plain

                         of desert, city, lost in the

                    wilderness,

                Delirium

                                       It says all is not lost

                            After the loss of everything

                     That God is love and wants your love

               after the night you betrayed each other

                                       That you belong here in this country

                                                 Even in your alien deportation

                                                       That the cold is your salvation in a blizzard

                          And the only way out of this terror

                          is to go right through its dark tangled thicket

Broken

NOAA :

> SAGE<

Do you know how much sage I need

to cleanse this place? How much smoke

needs to travel the north wind upward

to adequately say this prayer?

I never seem to have the right words.

I can never just walk away.  I can’t accept
this world and its ever weeping wound.

I’ll let my fingers burn first.

I won’t let go of this last leaf.

>> WHISKEY<<

Despair is the demon you create then

throw your last precious black stones at to defeat;

rat poison in iodine masquerading as black whiskey—

it swallows you whole saying all will be undone;

take comfort in that, in hungering no more.

>>> SALT<<<

If I just focus hard enough,

my mind will melt that gun in your purse.

I’ll flush away the crack that flips the switch

just waiting to tie an old family knot in your brain.

I’ve tapped a hundred trees in this forest

searching for the sap that will heal your wound.

In my dreams I roll all your burdens into the mud like a laboring dungbeetle 

and push them over a cliff into the wide arms of the ocean below. 

It catches our tears.

Its salt envelops.

I have no other answers.

I have no cure.

>>>> LIGHT<<<<

In the old tales, there’s always a journey to

be made, a key to find, a secret trial to pass

in order to heal the unhealable fracture.

Because a fracture is not

one of these things you say

will just work itself out.

So unless you leave your bomb shelter—

stagger out into the blinding yellow light

and embrace the pressure threatening

to collapse your veins—this whirlwind

will never pick you up, never set you down

bruised but with your pit-dark hunger arrested.

The old stories never lie.

There is a way.

Anything can

change.

Magic holds
your hand.

>>>>> BREATH<<<<<

If this is all there is—what

more do we have to say?

If the stardust we’re made of

is nothing but cold fire, cold dirt

then where does this warm breath

come from that turns snow into spring?

Why do we tremble when the sun rises over

the mountains and our hearts ache for home?

Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Sudden Silence in the Middle of a Mob, Etc: All Acts of God to Be Determined

I want to know that 
someone here in the crowd reads minds.

That someone saw the seal 
rise with the waves

and swim straight toward them 
with a message from God.

I want to see 
the whole terminal break down weeping 
when the light hits the silent asphalt 

after the electrical storm.

I want my heart to 
break a gash in the wall 
and see water pour out,
glimmering waves to lift us, 

drown our inner feed, 
make us play or fight for life.

I want you, unknowable one, 
to know that you are known.

And seen.

This earthquake, 
hallelujah, 
was for me.

And for you, 
if you looked up and out.

If you let your core 
be shaken; be held; 

be moved by the unseen lover
that came to Psyche in the night.
 
You walk in a myth, 
but do you believe its stricture?

Why is flight only possible as you sleep,

sweating out your gravity?

I will not tell you what to do.

The body next to you on the bus, in the line,
heading toward you on a suicide mission 
can give you the words.

Their syllables shimmer 
in the grand halls and crannies

that lead to your hiding place,

calling you out.

To get up, 
to open your mouth.

 To say nothing
and be fed.

 And be known.