A quinceanera after the pear tree harvest,
Enough for some tuval toning inside the sequoias
On Sunday, lower than I can go
because they need me to.
The people have returned, to sing with them
Though no one has to say anything, the sign
"Call before you burn" covers it, for everything
Must go, for this, the grand return of evanescence,
icicles gripped by stiff heads of rock hair
Left to drip endless woodland tears, to infinity
And disappear, as we did, the ... seeded.
Once we saw from the promontories of silence,
Before the snows came, and the terrible blaze
that rose straight up the mountain
Where the tallest, widest trees were still waiting
To rest, only the ascension relentlessness could reach
That far, to the pines that would not burn, elemental
Still, their broad red skirts as free and magic-packed
as a younger dryas dryad,
And the same spirits wait, for us, who we tone to,
Until the stinging bees come to remind me of our karma,
Our obligation to community. For eons we let the birds
Of separation rule over us, and families programmed
seemingly not to see us
Instead of these, the tribes who need no explanations
Of the golds your tongue has gathered, in the gift light
As the liquid ambers wave it all away one last time.
It's an encouraging sign to see that antiques store
by Hawk Hollow Drive closed down,
For the false memories to be banished at last,
And the gorge to hold the red we always knew
Was there, at sunset, when mountains are brothers
And the rocks close up the stacks for the night
truth's relentless pictoglyph fractures
Of what really happened, not the mindless game
Of consequence but the river cold, blue sky pure,
Clear as the snow sun true, where there is no end
To celebrate, no birth to ignore, just the endlessness
of finding enough silence to hear,
Not to be pulled to the breast of the living earth
But to remember you never left it, except that eye
That assumed a hawk was looking to strike instead
Of teach, you, the only God this is happening to ...
We've done this a million times before,
In the same spot, as falling snow, pineal cones,
The long, slow, burning life of rocks, and here we are,
Just learning the basics of etiquette:
What poems to intone, what laurels to store,
how presence alone is honor.
