of a life
so much before me happens
& by the time i arrive, i am
primed to recognize how
small i am
& after many years
of carrying this
imagined burden to
consider, with
considerable relief
––how
relevantly so,
and know
how fragile, too––
and yet, somehow
still here, a
spore of moss
on wet & craggy
rock to mark
this shore.
& unseen
Kitty recovers, and so do I. It’s the last week of school, a time of dizzy rush underscored by reflection. I think about endangered creatures. One among these is the flightless parrot of New Zealand, the kākāpō. Who, according to Māori legend, is a protector of the land. And I am thinking about the children.
A system built for speed cannot see the slow one, who never flew. Who, when hunted, knew to freeze. I think of her, now camouflaged in shadow—an endangered hush—now subjected to another survey. Intended to express how well we care.
But a check mark is not shelter and a rubric offers no refuge. How many shine like saints in the chill grasp of their handlers, being measured for extinction while staying faithful to their flightlessness?
I’ve learned not to trust anyone with a grand plan because I once had one, too. Now I only want to shelter who still lives. To protect a child’s right to become what they will, even if that becoming looks like myth, even if they call it pest.
I don’t know what school is, only what it is not. One metric involves how well a person can pretend to be a person deserving of award. But that is not the work.
The work is learning how to become, and some of the brightest know better than to obey.
Do it. Don’t ask. Shut up. Or we’ll fail you and humiliate your mother.
And in other news: Kids Fail Critical Thinking Tests.
Marcos liked to talk to old people. Liked to hear their lives. He couldn’t focus on any task that felt designed to domesticate his wonder. The first act of a critical mind is refusal.
Consider the ones who vanish as portraits in negative space: Now you see me. Now I disappear.
Now I am a vase, now I am two people kissing. Now neither. Now both.
You thought your five-minute survey could find me? Think again.
Ask me who I am before I speak.
Ask as if you believe I might not answer.
Ask as if you know the form of your asking matters as well as your question.
There is much I have not said. Not yet––and no, I do not plan to fly.
I live close to the earth, as I am, in these shadows, or I die.
mid-quake
when sharp reach pangs
so long for holding & what
in need of her lost, where
soft grief trills
over low branch, see her
count our cost, leaf
by fallen why
and now
pause––
inbeing
breath of air
brush of skin
tap of wet
cup of water
hand to mouth
face to cat
ear to whale
swerve to dance
in flight
in dream
in song
in throat
of blood
gone
loosed
from one into another
at a crossing it is possible
to notice
how one emerging
from the echoic shadows
beyond the edges of this rush
is a creature
who understands
time through a listening
body & one
pauses now
sinew of back, legs, neck
all stretched to hear––
that graceful leap before
that pause, the pointed look
––one eye
& i witness
through shatterproof glass
blink
& then she moves
again the leaping
wave of herself
across road & into
an opposite dark.
whale music
to know
to be able to
to taste
to feel
only this how
i am because we are
& need know only this
& how machine will disagree
does not make it less true
but only more like the living
and less like the thing
whose badge of being
is of efficiency
& departure from
the dirt & blood
& flow of living
earth as she
remains
still
here
an offering
beyond product
or production
in echo
beyond
any other sound
however loud however
bleeding it leaves us in our ears
where we swim deep underwater & still here & here & here to hear us––
tho bleeding it leaves us in our ears however loud
however any other sound beyond in echo
still our offering here remaining
in dirt & bloodied waters
beneath you
of our dendritic sensibilities
what sort of creature is this
i
?
bound to the dark
fascia of time & energy
in the image of a constant
unfolding possibility
and why does she still
hear so many here
claiming intelligence
as a thing to be grown
outside the source
code of genetic material
that makes the material
of our bodies essential
and essentially made
of stuff so similar to
what still grows in the soil
or flies, or swims, to be
fished, felled, uprooted
to death by agendas
of progress fueled
by forgetting our bodies
already know unchecked
growth as cancer
& we know where its
progress inevitably
ends & know that
with treatment in
time we can reverse
these growths we can
prevent we can protect
the living if we will––
on being embodied
it is not enough
to tell you i think
by way of begging
some acknowledgement
of being for doing this
would mean sidling up
to Descartes who despite
apparent cognitive prowess
managed to decide it was
appropriate to electrocute
dogs who he thought did
not think enough to feel
maybe it was their eyes
the naked love of them
that scared him into
such denial &
despite my best efforts
toward intelligence i tend
to love like a dog
prone to run
with sweet baby Jane’s
moonlit bodies stomping
muddy prints in the surf
at the shore in the light
of the moon
that excess
our all
a music lesson
little bird wait
as long as you need
to offer
your opening notes
and when you hear them
come true, sing
as loud as you
can
amid ongoing hush
we shared real questions in imagined time
meaning everything we made there was
unfinished & blood is no fiction it learns
drop by unsparing bird through intractable
dawns singing feathers shrunk to fit tongues
to then expand to swallow us whole into
carrying we carry on like this & sing
