all through the night
out along the ocean
clouds call in salt voices
speaking rain,
while up in the hills
morning comes
cool as rivers,
infinite blue
and still
the goose shouts
horizon to horizon
claiming this perfect sky.
last light
the dew comes
before the stars
cloying my clothes
and damping the grass
as i pull the season’s growing
from the paths,
clear the ponds of roots
and stem for autumn rain.
a new crescent rides
the fading sky
and mist is breathing the valleys –
under my feet the soil cools,
singing the song
of winter seed.
day 86
and what
did i ever have
but this silence
and the sound
of my words
falling
like pebbles
to a well.
the turning
under the quiet arc
of a waiting sky
a new moon rises,
pushing
the changing tide,
unseen.
belonging
if it was longing
that brought us here,
life longing for life –
for river tree bird love
flower ache – reach hand
stretch across the dark empty
with nothing but our own light
to show the way.
if it was longing
that brought us here,
then let us be this here
this bird sky tree light,
this love that calls –
let us be this longing
made matter, earth body
grown from light.
always
beyond the quiet of leaf drip
as night rain gathers
along veins deep grooved
to spill from leaves
new touched
by the awakening day,
beyond the calls of birds
summoning the sun,
beyond the noiseless sound
of barefeet on damp paths
in the morning,
a tree waits
rooted in the silence
at the edge of the world.
i asked for nothing less.
don’t speak to me
about sweet annihilation,
about a love,
a god
that obliterates
when we have lived
this perfect obliteration
our bodies counting
moons and seasons –
barely able to contain
the exuberance of bird song
in spring and the quiet
perfect longing
of winters’ dark night.
for generations
we have thrown our bones
to the forest floor
rested hip and rib
to soil and rock
until the gnarling roots
could read the runes
of our ancestors
etched in living flesh.
and when that living
becomes mothering
as it sometimes does,
it it comes with blood
and a meeting
on the threshold
between worlds –
this is not a metaphor,
death attends every birth
as door keeper to the infinite.
do you think our bodies
would not break open to birth them,
did you think our hearts would not break
with this love.
it is hard not to be enraptured –
deliciously swallowed
by their perfect need
as they grow and flourish and love
and again that sweet annihilation takes us willingly
and for a while we are no more.
but the day comes, as days do,
when our daughters stand beside us,
women of blood and earth and sky
ready for the night stars
to sing us skinless to the moon
until our eyes
drunk with beauty
can see no more
and we stumble ourselves homeward
to dream the world anew.
in the morning there is tea
and voices of the living
and a school bus down the hill
before seven.
