from Arrivals
Cosmogeny
We’re thrown into the momentary
world, our fingers grip the dirt, we
hold on. Each breath invents an
image. Thumb-tacks fasten them like
slips of paper to the heart. The heart
is made of meat. Each image poses a
question, or part of a question, or
what could be interpreted as part of a
question. You see, there’s no way of
knowing. We’re here–– that’s all we
know for certain. We’re here on the
shore & we’re dying into the moment
like a wave continuously breaking.
Meanwhile, certain faces remind us of
the sea, of sunlight pillaring that
beautiful abyss.
Dawn
Sometimes a truth rises slowly
from the dark place where it was kept,
like the sun from below the earth.
At first, there is only night,
a rustling of leaves in the wind.
But then a stillness falls, and into it
the sound of a bird like a small bell
and when the light swells up
out of the past, articulating
cloud and field, you sense it has been
arriving all along, for years maybe,
like an unfinished sentence.
Night will come again. Meanwhile,
the earth is full of song.
Underway
The ground: look at it
drinking us one-by-one.
See how the light abrades us
grain-by-grain, hourly,
till there is nothing left but
this darkness, these shapes
of absence, these powdery
indentations in the past.
What is this life? Where are
these shadows pointing?
And if I leave here, who
will look after your glances?
Who will water your dreams
with listening? Who will guide
visitors to your collection
of snowflakes & silences, your
complete skeleton of a leaf?
If I stay, who will dig me out?