because all conversations are easy when the world cannot speak

i said

shall we start with the river –
everything always starts with the river
and ends with the sea
except life itself and jellyfish
and our mother the ocean

and whales
.

i said

egrets this morning
flying low/near invisible
along the estuary
taking form from the water
wing tips almost touching
the slate and grey and cold of river
lifting silent now above the trees
carrying the day
on their lightness of wings

i said he said

when he went there
the birds did not sing
did not – have not
did they ever sing?
that the land there
speaks now only in
human forms
speaks carved stone
and castle and road
and perhaps being there is
a forgetting to listen
but perhaps the land there is
silenced
its pebble tongue carved useless
to the glory of men.

but who will wake us
call arise arise
to meet the world anew
who will wake us
if the birds
no longer
sing

i said

now that spring has come
and sunbirds sit on patient nests,
the men arrive to cut back
roadside trees, make way
for scrapers and diggers and trucks
too close too close for comfort or
for nesting birds and new dropped bushbuck
hiding silent in tangled undergrowth.

and of course i know
the clearing is needed
and i know that not yet
not yet can the forest reclaim these roads
cover the criss cross scar story of our living
reckless and beyond reason, punch drunk
on our god given dominion

but oh lord and god help us
my animal skin crawls,
aches with the falling of trees,
looks to hide in the cool shadows –
away from the deathspeak of chainsaws
on a bright spring day.

i said

beyond the dappling tree light
fish eagle speaks the sky whole –
earthbound mudcreature
craning my neck to the sun –
knowing that vastness could never
would never be mine
(birdbrained sky chicken –
my deafness renders you mute.)
i said

its curious now
that our first letter
our first written record
of the shape and gesture
of the human mouth
aleph alef alif alap

it is curious that
our first ever letter – aleph
in mordern arabic means tamed
or familiar. like the head of an ox
known and owned. tamed.
that our written words
no longer taste of longing
and belonging – of gutteral clawed
animal speak
that shaped words
out of mud
and bird
and bone –
and in the taming
of our language
we are tamed.
in the denying of our wildness
we deny the wild world,
become deaf to all language but our own
speak abstracts and contracts
until the undoing of the world.

i said

so here i am
ocean’s edge
(where i said
things should end)
white woman
shaking fragile
fists to the sky
fluttering tongue
against the palate
like a bird against the glass –
throwing words like stones
against the waves
“damn you ocean
if you think you can rise
against us –
god’s image
i was made in god’s own image –
(or my husband was
but that is another story)
godly – we were given
dominion, ocean.
how dare you rise against us?”

and then the sobbing anger
for what am i
if i am not the ocean

if i am alone

and the ocean pools
in the belly of my being
and the tides of my living
rise and fall – and if way back
i flowed amniotic
in the ocean of my beginning
then why, oh why
do i rise against me.

i have said too much

speak.

(please)

---

For Brendan at Earthweal’s weekly challenge: AN AN ATMOSPHERIC RIVER ROARS AT US. Reading his thought provoking essay here – https://earthweal.com/2022/09/05/an-atmospheric-river-roars-at-us/