Self as Goat in Tree

Nine goats scamper up
the gnarly argan tree and graze it clean.
They ingest the wrinkled fruit whole,
though it’s the bitter pulp alone
that rouses their appetite for more.
Sated, they stare at the horizon
till branches wear thin and fall.
Farmers harvest goats’ droppings
to extract the pit rich in kernels of oil. 
Haven’t you too wished yourself a goat
perched punch-drunk on a linden tree,
blasé about the gold you might shit,
how it might serve both hunger and greed.
Haven’t you goaded yourself
to balance just a bit longer, 
chew on some fugitive scents,
forget what a ditch the earth is.

Blessing

for my son, enwombed

May you harvest your language from the alphabet of butterflies, 
may their wings brushstroke your name on translucent scrolls, 
filter air for your breath, teach you flight the way I can’t.  

May you preserve the wisdom with which you arrive, 
the metaphors through which you’ll first parse the world,
the moon always a ripe banana, always within reach.  

May your fingers tease and probe all truths. 
It’s not the grain of sand, as we hold dear, but organisms 
wayward in their drift that, trapped, abrade the oyster’s flesh.  

Errant breather smothered into loveliness, 
the pearl has its own song. 
If you drag it ashore 

language loses meaning,
so bring your ear to the ocean floor.
There, neither fish nor son, eavesdrop. 

Neither fish nor son yet, 
call sister sister and lie awhile by the echo. 
While there, bless the echo and learn 

how to lie to me beautifully. 

Related Poems

Song for the Turtles in the Gulf

We had been together so very long,
you willing to swim with me
just last month, myself merely small
in the ocean of splendor and light,
the reflections and distortions of us,
and now when I see the man from British Petroleum
lift you up dead from the plastic
bin of death,
he with a smile, you burned
and covered with red-black oil, torched
and pained, all I can think is that I loved your life,
the very air you exhaled when you rose,
old great mother, the beautiful swimmer,
the mosaic growth of shell
so detailed, no part of you
simple, meaningless,
or able to be created
by any human,
only destroyed.
How can they learn
the secret importance
of your beaten heart,
the eyes of another intelligence
than ours, maybe greater,
with claws, flippers, plastron.
Forgive us for being thrown off true,
for our trespasses,
in the eddies of the water
where we first walked.