You must be you for you to be.
I know: to be the only you
is difficult. You must repeat
the same old strengths and flaws, ensure
quirks and habits stay organized,
a regiment of personhood.
You cannot disappear from you.
When you're asleep, you're sleeping you;
your altered consciousness is altered
you, but you-never-the-less.
It could be worse. I know you can
supply examples of just how.
But still—how strange to have just one
attempt at consciousness in all
of Time, to have to spend it on
one incarnationality—
This is still unbroken country: granite
that buckled a million eons ago,
diorite boulders, manzanita—and coyote,
as lean and sharp as death itself.
I think of the ridge in darkness where
ponderosa pines creak like beams
of sunken ships. If you think about
a slab of slate beneath the snow,
you are glad to be in bed,
three blankets toward sleep.
It can be that simple.
A winter night in the hills allows
the luxury of plain choices,
whether to freeze or not.
Out there the bear’s brain sleeps.
A coyote cries like a victim.
Leaves fall like words
on a page, punctuations
in time.
Summers passing, flights
of geese, the
loosening of ties.
Orange ambiguity
leaf and butterfly
fluttering.
One to fall, crinkle
and wither, the other
freedom and flight.
red serrated
face shining
at the sun.
yet like me
you haunch
your tiny
petals in the
dark.
Roadlake rushes to pour
its pools onto the pathways.
Mercury-mirrors dot them
imaging the trees' dark sway.
a scrap of satin - some wood
what is beneath the wood ?
dirt : the earth
it is cold
is it alive ?
it contains the stir of flowers
it contains the whispering grass
and above it all ?
some turf
the blue sky
what are you listening to ?
my dark blood
the heart plays a tattoo
beneath this pale linen
this wool-stuff
and ?
a hook for an eye
this ribbon for a slip
there’s a pigeon in the pot
and tree makes the room
your foot on the boards
your head in the sky
no mind if your stockings snag
are splinter-caught
the red thread
frayed or snag
walk now on swollen feet
on feet that are bound-in
with red and orange
with stocking threads
these can be mended
these can be made whole again
Wren leads the charge,
her small soldier heart.
Follow her flitting sound
into the lowest corridors
This is not a universe,
It is a garden.
Trees,
a hierarchy of halls,
halls, a universe to sing.
Follow wren’s sound
into the lowest corridors.
There,
a huge gap, fox
-made,
is where blackbirds sing.
Stone-plateaued,
hazy morning
the great white heron stands
by its reflection
early spring drizzles &
so many shades of green
on the mountain
after the rainstorm
all of the old gravestones
still dull gray
near the bridge
the few old thistles
collect the snow