I want to clear some space, 
perhaps a little time too, if
I'm lucky. But I'd start with

space,

and see where it takes me.
It's a luxury, I know. Just
the thought of some room

        to breathe

and stretch, to widen my
arms and my stance, pan
up and out and back, gets

 the forces

coursing in my veins. Of
course, it's not enough,
thought. For that matter,

        to want

is not enough, still too
heady for the job, too
still. So I move. Space

clears.

Harbingers

A hot wind stirs the briefest of rains – 
                                      not water, but
pocked, yellow light catchers,
whorling shards of captured sunrays,
too spent from heat to hang on until
weather cools, days contract,
but not so far gone they don't
have work to do, 
               still.

They are loosed from the hickory 
               choir, where
they sang out breath to the world.
But their release lies ahead still,
a slow leakage of stored sunlight
into soil, to nourish next year's 
crop of choraliers and thus fail
to expire fully, ever.

               Still.

I know all this, and yet I find it
               unsettling,
this wind that carries the song of 
things to come. It is too early for 
this, I whisper, even as spinning
chips of gold dazzle my eyes. I 
want summer's stillness 
to stay, well, 
                still.

 August 19, 2020

Motion Picture

It takes longer than you think, this

          living-into-dream

business, and it's harder too, because

the dream itself is a living thing,

growing and changing like a child.

It recurs, loops back on itself, but

never all the way back to the start,

          incarnating

in unsteady pulses: gather, molt, 

recollect, shed, wander, rehome.

It searches for itself, finds tid-bits 

here and there, tiny keepsakes fit to fall 

into the mosaic trailing in its wake,

           comely pieces

that settle in place – or don't – as the

           dream moves on.

August 17, 2020

Storytime, Magic

Read me stories, or just tell me some,
from when you were my age and the world
was wider, more nebulous, and how you
picked your way through, or it picked you.

We could cuddle in the rocker or build
a pillow fortress on the floor, a sort of
makeshift stronghold, or softhold as it
were, the making of which makes me

believe – in me, yes, and in making more
generally, and in the me who is made by
making, especially the making of time,
fantastic a notion as that is. I am here

to make that sort of magic, with you.

 

August 13, 2020

Offboarding

Not at this pace. I cannot make out the truth

through the blur of rush, the hurried, harried,

headlong whir of Forward, Onward – NOW!

No. I want to circle back, back to that doe I 

glimpsed in the meadow you missed because 

you looked down for 2.5 seconds as the train

barreled ahead, breaking the necks of who

knows how many creatures more intimately

acquainted with limits and the instinct for

self-preservation. The irony is not lost on me

as I contemplate how to jump off this blind

iron horse with my own neck still intact. If I

somehow manage the feat, I'll take to the 

pace of my human feet – akin to the pace of

my human heart – and return to that meadow,

follow the doe's tracks to the tree-lined edge,

where perhaps she has stowed her dappled

twin fawns in the understory, where grass

warblers flit in and out of shadow, feeding

on insects grown on the riches cast off by 

earthworms turning, churning soil below.

 August 12, 2020

I want to live a solar-powered life.  I can make out only the dimmest outlines of what that looks like, what it means, its affirmative contours.  I know it has much to do with drawing my energy from real-time sources – sources, that is, from which energy is generated and renewed very close in time (and space) to its point of use.  Here on Earth, the Sun is the ultimate source of real-time energy; indeed, from a human perspective (or a biological perspective, more broadly), you could say it is the source of real-time itself.

So to say that I wish to live a solar-powered life is, perhaps, just another way of saying that  I wish to live in real time, and not on borrowed time (which might be an oxymoron) or on stolen time (which gets closer to the truth, probably).  The logical conclusion of such a wish might lead me to say that I aspire to become a plant, so that I can draw my energy from the Sun directly.  But here I bump up against biology: it is blood coursing through my veins and not chlorophyll.  My essential carbon chains center on an atom of iron, whereas those of my plum tree – and every other thing that photosynthesizes – center on an atom of magnesium.  And that one tiny molecular difference, that one substitution of iron for magnesium in my lifeblood, means that while the plum tree lives by sunbathing, I must live by the plum.  

Plant-dependence is thus the very essence of my being.  I am removed from the Sun by an additional degree. My relationship to the Sun must be mediated.  Plants are the gatekeepers, the mediators, the go-betweens, the peacemakers.  Blessed are the plants.