More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Let me begin again as a quiet thought
in the shape of a shell slowly examined
by a brown child on a beach at dawn
straining to see their future. Let me begin
this time knowing the drumming in my dreams
is me inheriting the earth, is morning
lighting up the rivers. Let me burn
my vanities: old music in the pines, sifters
of scotch, a day moon like a signature
of night. This time, let me circle
the island of my fears only once then
live like a raging waterfall and grow
a magnificent mustache. Let me not ever be
the birdcage or the serrated blade or
the empty season. Dear Glacier, Dear Sea
of Stars, Dear Leopards disintegrating
at the outer limits of our greed; soon we will
encounter you only in motivational tweets.
Reader, I should have married you sooner.
This time, let me not sleep like the prophet who
believes he’s seen infinity. Let me run
at break-neck speeds toward sceneries
of doubt. I have no more dress rehearsals
to attend. Look closer: I am licking my lips.

Sob of fall, and song of forest, come you here on haunting quest,
Calling through the seas and silence, from God’s country of the west.
Where the mountain pass is narrow, and the torrent white and strong,
Down its rocky-throated cañon, sings its golden-throated song.

You are singing there together through the God-begotten nights,
And the leaning stars are listening above the distant heights
That lift like points of opal in the crescent coronet
About whose golden setting sweeps the trail to Lillooet.

Trail that winds and trail that wanders, like a cobweb hanging high,
Just a hazy thread outlining mid-way of the stream and sky,
Where the Fraser River cañon yawns its pathway to the sea,
But half the world has shouldered up between its song and me.

Here, the placid English August, and the sea-encircled miles,
There––God’s copper-coloured sunshine beating through the lonely aisles
Where the waterfalls and forest voice for ever their duet,
And call across the cañon on the trail to Lillooet.

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon          if
 
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta             if there
 
is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain         if there is
 
a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel          if there is in
 
the universe such a river          if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water
pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave

A visit with Aunt Ruby at the Red Roof Inn, 
            planting cotton, strumming a banjo 
in Sergeant Zygote’s ragtime band, 
            clogging Molly, Kitty’s nosebleed, 
medium rare, red thread in the sewing machine, 
            Cousin Claudia’s barbecue, Moses’ parting, 
Dracula’s teabag, wound of Eve, up on blocks, 
            the Cardinal’s tomato boat, taking Carrie 
to the prom, time to reboot, high time for high tide 
            tide Tide tide Tide tide Tide. 

He says, What’s that pink thing behind the toilet?  
            Trash. What’s it for? Ladies.

A metaphysics of absorption: what comes 
            between the drop and the diffusion, 
the missed made manifest, potential blue.
            What if the one full moon had never 
ripened, the one error never slipped,
            traveled its telescopic distance, 

caught hold, caught in her? Become him.  
            Would she be free? He picks up 
and scrutinizes the ribbings, fitted tubes,
            perforated meshes, adhesive tabs, 
cardboard cylinders, loosened strings, 
            cotton batting full of white beads 
of diaper gel. The biology book said

            the egg was the size of a period 
on a page. Finitude and pause. A point 
            of dried ink, a fixed mark to curtail 
the undulant energies of pitch and syntax,
            dropped into the ocean of herself.