We Swim the RiverWe swim the river, shoot the stream, swept along by desire for the sea. Pools, rapids, shoals, rocks. Inlets, marshes, channels, dreams. Waterfalls that plunge in violence, mists that envelope in seductive kiss. Deltas that scatter roar into meander, mud flats that ingest swamp and make remembrance. We swim the river, we are the river – stream desire, dream fire. We plunge into the quenching sea, where question ends as we. Redwood MemoryReturn to the young groves that are ancient, where ancestors lie fallen and silent. My life is a spare set of their recording rings, each glorious nation and notion a hiccup in redwood memory. Their wooden days are dwindling if days are counted in eons. The fog they bathe in has retreated, the inland seas where they once waded drained by shifting geography. Before the hands wielding chainsaws, before the papers claiming property, they were a lawn of red and green, of whisper in the wind, of canopy in the clouds. Before the natives gleaning and praying, before the gigantic beasts sheltering in their sweep, they were a memory of continents drifting, of glaciers sojourning, of oceans restless in dreaming. But this morning in fog and breeze as branches sway and rub, they do not think of history, of riches or of misery, of conquering armies or violent religions, or of striving after things. This morning in shroud and leaf they sample again what’s warm and what’s wild, give shelter without rancor, revel in the beak that pierces, in the owl that sleeps and strives. This morning in mist they dream of stars that once made different pictures, of an age of snow that put them to sleep, of fires that cleansed them, of people that ravaged them. This morning in mist they dream – the sap that wends, the claws that climb, the earth that caresses their feet. The wind that sings eternity – at the last their shortest sleep. Apple MilagroApples in the branches, once green as leaves, now are yellow as the sun. What miraculous process makes color from air and million mile light? What genius strand thought up that chemical way? Pigmentation blooms deep in the cell, youthful in the fruit. Till age and ripe plunder the color, deluge the dance. And firm flesh is flooded with soft and rot. Call it death, call it vinegar, call it cider. Call it fallen, call it compost, call it begin again. Butterflies and BirdsButterflies and birds -
cute and fragile, tough and agile. We watch them flit and whistle through shingle, leaf and thistle. We buy cards, share pix, print their delicate, flying images on fabrics, wind chimes, summer dresses. But twice a year the gossamer and feathered launch on epic journeys without ice chest, cell, or GPS. From arctic to tropic they soar and skip over white peaks and white caps, across frozen tundra, desert dune, and night’s black. Through predator and pesticide, hunger and hunter, smog and typhoon, some veer and fall while millions more hold true.. Beside these wonders the macho we with our loud trucks, our weapons, drinks, shouts, and road rage are pale, and wan, and sedentary We bluster in our macho, they hear the call of ancient, we break down in curse and fight, they give all and take to sky.
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