The warning of water
Dream the sea;
dream river, lake
all oceans folded
into one.
Dream the place every thing
meets a horizon.
Wake precisely
at the moment
of arrival,
still rocked
by memory
of water's heartbeat.
Believe
that continents are held
in ocean's immutable
embrace.
Understand
that only in dream
is everything possible -
the chance to be reckless,
to be forgiven
all manner of things.
Dawn
summons you back,
wearing night's bruises
like marks of Cain,
returns you
to life puddling
round your ankles.
Reality intrudes
and you recognize
fissures
in life's fabric,
in earth's skin.
Mind
urges you
to take
a backward step,
to empty out your dreams
with a single yank
of the plug.
Begin again,
follow thaw
back to its beginning,
to where it recognizes
ancient sediment,
recalls
a different path
to home.
Understand
that earth alters shape
under the redistributed
weight
of melt.
Re-learn
how to breathe
under water.
Premonition
The smell of burning
is in the air,
is always in the air,
leaving our doorsteps
deep in the syllables of
forgotten language.
At the back
of every book consigned
to the funeral pyre of
inconvenient truths is a
glossary of things we
should know
to save our life,
and perhaps
our soul.
Although burned to ash,
the words remain in the air
we breathe,
in the dust beneath our feet:
they are the ancient
encyclopedia of apocryphal
thought
woe, woe,
chants the mourning dove
with each day's warning:
what is bred in the
bone of earth does
not disappear
from its flesh.
ice remembers
its former shape,
dreams a return
to liquid
glacier feels itself melt
from the inside
out,
knows a fissure
finds, first, its heart,
and grows it
ten times larger.
continents recall
whose shoulder
they rubbed against
in once upon
a time.
wind remembers
'The Great Dying'
how to scrape bone
white as ash,
reminds us
there are deserts
where we can walk
for days,
and hear only the crunch
of ancestral bones
beneath our feet
volcano hibernates,
feeds
on stored memory,
wakens,
to vomit megatons
of fire,
enough to bury
a Pompeii or Herculaneum,
in sixty-three feet of ash.
What is there to lose?
Ice shelves slip their ancient moorings.
A patch of sea ice lingers north of Greenland.
What is the weight of water?
Wind howls from somewhere south of desire,
fans fires. Continents burn.
Rainforests succumb.
Three trillion trees turn to ash.
Nature's species begin a forced migration.
No one will take them in.
It has not yet been called genocide.
Fourteen million Africans rest
on starvation's brink.
Barren clouds drift in
and out of sight,
grass crunches underfoot,
shimmers in a sepia landscape.
Everyone prays for rain,
mouths open to the sky.
What is there to lose?
Whooping cranes suffer memory loss,
their migratory paths obscured by clear-cut.
Dolphin assesses unexpected redundancy, dies
nuzzling his trainer's hand.
Elephant, hobbled to metal stake,
allows a tear to run the length of wrinkled cheek.
Polar bear searches for a resting place,
floats, belly to the sky.
Oceans drink carbon dioxide,
gorge on 10 billion metric tons
each year.
Shellfish bones decalcify
in the acid bath.
Coral reefs bleach white,
and die.
The human shadow grows
a little longer.
The body contains fifteen dioxins, thirty-three
volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, lead, mercury
furans, PC's, organochlorine pesticides,
polybrominated flame retardants, phthalates.
We reject learning languages
unfamiliar to the tongue.
Singleness of vision rolls
to its other side,
believes mutability does not exist.
We dream only what is lost.
Earth grows restless in its sleep,
begins to remember
these are symptoms it has felt before,
so long ago, so out of mind --
mass extinctions, forgotten by history:
five times
but not like this.
What is there to lose?
Questions we might think to ask
The skyline is etched
with invented life:
See how wires feed each house.
Are we not alive with connection?
And fences, don't they define spaces
of gathering?
Can we not greet each other once again
in shared delight?
Do not the seasons come, and go
and return again
in familiar patterns?
Don't they reach that singing place
within our heart?
What then is this new
and nagging ache,
this tremble at the brink
of forfeiture?
Do we only imagine
some thing has changed,
that winter speaks more slowly,
drawing in its breath
and holding it to a quizzing point
before each long exhale?
Has spring extended its gestation
a month,
or two?
Do we only imagine
summer's impatience
to push lilac and daffodil
into premature senescence?
Why is earth so thirsty
it opens fissures in its skin
to draw in morning dew?
When we walked this field
last harvest time,
did our feet not sink into the soil?
Did wheat not whisper to us
on each night's wind?
Are the numinous memories
of sun, of stars,
of the night-light of moon
which comforted us
when we feared the dark,
just passing dreams?
Have we broken
our contract of usufruct?
we worry
living on the edge.
from deep in the forest,
crackle of flame
smoke writes messages:
inferno, ash, annihilation
molten core of earth below
replicated above
even cooled by winter snow
anger simmers
heat bursts its bounds -
again
the sky has fallen,
bled onto earth
mine is the power
and the glory
this will be our mass grave,
all our names expunged
will any one remain,
to raise a cross?
will anyone remember
its symbolism?
Today I think
Today I think
the saddest thoughts.
I weep,
and the earth weeps with me.
Fresh and salt tears drip
onto the drowned field
beyond the house.
Drip, drip.
The water level rises.
I dream an ark,
pray a miracle.
I thought all our gods
were grand-fathered in
to the long-term tenant lease
we hold with earth.
Goodbye, goodbye
my dream of garden,
my mistaken belief
in innocence.
Today I am drenched
in despair.
Mornings are silent now.
Rachel's fine-tuned ear
recognized an absence
an age ago.
hmmm, we replied
and moved along.
A few remaining crows
consign their voices
to the twilight wind:
caw, caw,
they warn.
On shadowed streets,
deep in shadowed cities,
ghosts in sandals
ply their trade,
carry bread and fruit
or endless sleep
with cautious hands.
Here or there, a coin lands,
and the giver's conscience
swells with goodness.
He turns away,
his head shaking with
"the sadness of it all'
hmmm, hmmm
Around a corner
a tower bell chimes once,
twice, three times.
We move along.
Earth continues its circuit
slowly,
round the sun.