After storm.
Spinning above our framed parts, it was unclear who reached first when we fell and the silence to follow was the underground river after deluge sounding the strain of watercourse leaning into its break from behind the membranes of our eyes. The water ran fast but we held it in us as long learned, with late afternoon shadow draped across floored figures and our faces saw each other still dry, waiting for the coming quake.
Bodies in late afternoon.
When the sky bleeds sunset into the back against glass door under rustle of palms near boxes to chill the neck trained against attack and fatigue of keeping this impulse near keeps heads heavy in morning on bodies so long theaters of war under constant command to move and move out, a sudden stillness may sing.
Our storage.
It was time, after all. Of this to admit to waiting space with delicate apprehension of open book not yet read or gone. Something breathing in the boxes we kept and time to look so we opened to see what we were holding, and it was parts of us everywhere in pieces.
lightly
where are we
thin paper in breeze
under arches of feet
when to hold
us is to hold
not speak
A long return.
You have to keep imagining layers of stars at night, fold after fold the inverted brain, its witness a single synapse. But then what. Do you do? With these hands but set them over knees to breathe as wave rolls over back.
The air, its sudden stillness, its small voice, and the long watch just above its range and the watcher shrouded in a role too big for such a tight fit. In these clothes, this body, this moment, the incessant shout of it, ongoing. What is the sound of a call from nowhere and who is this approaching, calling back?
So little returns in time. Cause to wonder which of us is out. But certain patterns predict their own change. Watch the angle. Velocity hinges on this. Admit it now, how often you are carried across sky seeing bodies in it like a child still unable to crawl or follow without the appearance of other hands.
where tired of crossing
ready to say
keep the fire
wanting only to keep this skin
unburned for a little while
the last one yet to scar
to blend in with the rest
ready to welcome a long
rain with the imminence of
threat no longer in the foreground
even if of course always there
but yes, let us plan a return
to refraining here is peace
with no one asking whose
Long gaze, rolled tight.
On occasion we would notice it was possible to feel nearer to the ancient untouchables of distant tongues, then know them out of reach. Was there a time when the myth did not begin with broken parts? We could not say, knowing only heroes against horizons, shells shattering into light then back to dust––but first, another genesis. And then, and then––
Head on bed of moss before battle. Song. Oceans rising into dream without rest, yet the eyes still lift. Up and out they go, flying off.
But it was possible to learn to wrap the long gaze tight in folds of worn cloth while folding what was freshly scorched from the machine, to bring them up again to sort among the boxes and all still left unsaid between unseen and seeing.
Overheard, near the studio.
Here, each feather is stripped into muslin, then draped over discarded wood, then set in an abandoned pocket of stone––And here, look. Someone might have let this go, dismissing it as a mere bicycle tire. Now it is something else.
What is it now?
Becoming.
Sounds between us.
When I asked how, she told me, too. To find the tree to hear its sound and the sound of shaded earth beside it. To find the water, sounding water. To notice the call and response between them and listen for your cue.
This. Morning.
Sunday morning sky
and spotted details
of the last blast
photo of plush toy
bright against rubble
these folded cat paws
beside me the careful
soft of fur and the babies
and the sound of no sound
when questions about next
are done
dawn / what seed is this
what bird
what howls
