Moving through doors.
What descends through the center of radiance into light so completely that it empties into a well so remote that none in its fabric can emerge, revealing nothing except in absence, as if to humble fledgling presumptions of sight? Shell of unknowing, invisible creatures of the deep, each disappearing body of snow, fold this becoming cortex of time, our next collective memory, already an echo.
When chimera feathers fall.
Guards at the gate confiscating dreams demand our reasons for wrapping them to chests. Why this one? And this? But messengers, like so many winged creatures, are stunted in captivity, and we watched the feathers fall. With those forevers beyond language, how much of our time? Now muted by motion and moved, the assembly of permanent particles dispersed again.
What lives beyond measure.
Our forms in flight evaded all process of proof, and when they came to measure us, we laughed ourselves into vapor, evading capture. We were solid only when we wanted to be. Yes, we danced freely among clouds, but were neither formless or endless, those ideals that only vanity presumes, and we had none when we were running, streams of selves flowing; would you put a river in a jar?
Invoking a beginning.
Speak to me in dreams of living possibilities to
spring from reminiscence of the dead. Return
me to some sight before first syllables, to the
original dawn where we waited together for the
first word to rise, when it was still in you.
Toasting the iceworm.
With snow falling
too much
in some regions
and in others not enough,
a question of what’s next
to
melt
from permafrost
hangs
like a verdict
not yet delivered,
also, certain doubts––related maybe,
about what’s left
to be exposed
about the trajectory
of history
if that’s what
we’re still calling it,
so now seems like as good a time as any
to pay
homage
to the iceworm,
crawling through
glacial snows
and over ice,
eating the red of
sun cups, and melting
when traces of winter
depart. These are not
to be confused
with the army project
of the Cold War, its launch
sites under Greenland ice,
not to be confused with the
great worms
of legend heard
playing
beneath the northern
lights, near
the entry point
***
Inspired by news of the Cordova Iceworm Festival, which begins today.
The U.S. army project referenced above was nicknamed Project Iceworm.
Tracing lines of exile and return, from and to ourselves.
When we first moved into nature, we called it only looking, as with mirrors, but it’s one thing to know this and another to decide to be some deviation from the atmosphere. Ancient builders, considering the return of certain dreams, had sense enough to use the shadows cast by upright poles as tracing lines for temple architecture.
What made the created world less natural than, say, the beehive? On the one hand, maybe it was hubris, but it might have also been the practice of hoarding, to a degree not unlike the mythical cave dragons, those other anomalies.
The question lives in oscillation, tracing celestial lines of sight and we stand, sometimes still as solstices and just as briefly, before pulling back the orbital bodies of our dominion just when they seem to be slipping forever beyond our grasp, and the offerings that follow tend to synchronize with the rise and declination of the countless hidden orbs of shattered once-whole light that some say broke on arrival, leaving a legacy of singular purpose: find it––and this is shrouded, too.
Matters of perception.
Regarding certain questions of form and matter, an old, wise one observes, beyond earshot, there’s no joy in what doesn’t exist. Meaning certain illusions, such as righteous selves, but these are too busy saving to hear. Who else is saving? There’s a dragon somewhere in one of those caves, guarding what some would call fortune, but there’s another myth.
Imagination is another thing, a vital series of high-powered lenses for seeing what the naked eye, long dulled by resignation, will commonly miss, especially in moments read as ordinary time and especially in moments of crisis, where matters of life and death are prone to changes of direction before reaching orbital velocity.
I wanted to know more, so asked. The wise one said, it doesn’t matter, and then waited until we were both done laughing. Then said, Beware hallucinations of rote perception. Sight without surrender is only illusion. Then we kept watch together until we were both done cracking up. Our eyes were wet when we parted, washed into a state of fleeting and magnificent clarity.
***
The observation, “There is no joy in what doesn’t exist” comes from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation
Contending with a shapeshifter.
Some qualities of some visible bodies
––form, size, weight––are supposed
to belong to them even when they are
not sensed, by cultivated habits of
mind, creating certain illusions of
fixity. And yet
being has never been sensible––
or, for that matter, some thing,
and so many are terrified by
its/ not its evasion of form.
An old sleight of hand: make
a thing of what is/not, in order
to pretend control over what
moves too well for naming.
Fortitude is often misunderstood.
Only with courage can a body refuse any code designed to justify denial of dinner on pretension of purity. To refuse to embark on a scavenger hunt where the name of the game is seeking out the sin, to separate the convicted from the saved. To face conviction before submitting to these fiends of fracture, devils of division, forking tongues over plates of counterfeit communion, segregating what was once from what lives now and may yet be.
So great is the shock, the attendant illusions: what can a body do without a human enemy beyond the mirror?
Here’s the beginning of a story: someone meets a stranger on the road. What follows is all that matters.
Take heart.
***
Inspired by the writings of Richard Rohr.
To sing, chirp, breathe.
What do you call a spring without birdsong? Carson wondered and the answer was dying. Without this symphony, sentience itself is suspect. Sing, shriek. Chirp. The people who knew before genocide called what moved here holy wind. All breath, all spirit, all soul.
It is something, isn’t it, to live when a common descriptor of our common malaise involves the need to get away and breathe. Where is away, then? When everyone’s chest is aching, there is a silent agreement: don’t mention it. Is it true that a wolf can smell a body’s feelings, or is it only fear that scents?
If we were the gods of the people who once listened, we could turn ourselves into wolves and know. Take the flight of raptors, stretching our sights. Assume the bodies of dolphins and realize our depths. We could hear an octopus cry, taste its tears, dance with urchins, and let the lamprey finish our sentences.
Then we might know breath again, the word meaning life. Meaning, duration of a moment; a short time; a movement of free air. Air, meaning the invisible everywhere, ether of arias, current of hymns.
