Love

Beholder

I do not understand.
But I can feel.

This world builds
prisons
for each of us.

To be born
is one thing;
yet another
to grow into the cage
they give you.

Beauty,
Power,
Lineage,
/
Bars,
Locks,
Chains.

It is


exhausting,

lonely,

cruel;


and for you,
the same, but

manifold
  logarithmic
   multiplied
    perpetual
     incessant
      relentless

This is why I am so pleased
you have learned
to pick the locks
or slip between the bars
or simply disapparate,
escaping
when you want to.

Listen.


You are not

an image.


You are

an interior.


You are

a cathedral

with many rooms

and stained glass in sunlight

and libraries

and catacombs.


You are

a book

with 1,000 pages

and many chapters,

including the unwritten.


You are

a mountain,

fitted in a flowing garment of forests,

dotted with deep caverns,

drinking lightning in summer,

content under frost and snow in winter,

filled with granite and obsidian,

quartzite and gold.



You survive all fire.


You navigate by starlight.


You leave ripples in the world.


You are a microcosm.


You are a garden.


You are a home.


The waves break themselves on your shores.


This is why no cage will contain you.


You are.

Coherence

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe.

No empowered crack of the electric
arcing back and forth,

no aurora painted by the solar wind,

no polarity of the magnetic
to           push          apart
or pull-in-close-together.

No elemental binding
in all the flavors of matter.
No quarks or gluons or plasmas,

no 

e x  p   l    o     s      i       v        e 
r e  l   e    a     s      e
 
of the nuclear.

No | wave | particle | duality | particle | wave | No

quantum collapse to knock flat
your tiny human mind.

Gravity is the weakest force in the universe.

This is why you do not fall through the floor.

It permeates all that is.

It does not manifest.

Not like the others.

Even something as old
and as true
as love
unveils itself.

But you say “gravity”

you say the very word:


G


R


A


V


I


T


Y


and

I’m reminded
it’s only weakness
if you keep staring at the surface.

I see the moon locked in tidal orbit
with our pale blue dot;

I see the sun and the Earth at perihelion,
closer than they’ll be all year;

I see the white tail of a comet
flying through the abyss;

I see the long sunset horizon
of a black hole;

I see the colors of stellar birth
in the cradle of a nebula.

And beyond…

a binary system.

A neutron star,
a pulsar,
each sharing the other’s orbit,
ferociously magnetized,
broadcasting into the black,
emanating light you can hear,

radiating
the circling of their dance
as far as they can
out into the deep
and the long dark
of the ever-glinting void,

until gravity wins,

warping space,
bending time,

and they fuse together
in their ultraviolet,
in their sunrise,
in their infrared,
in their lightburst collapse of all that is.

This is called a kilo-nova.

This is how gold is made.

The Truth

I speak to all people. I speak to you.

Your worth as a member of the human species and a resident of Earth is not defined by how much money you make, what possessions you own, your looks, your social media, or even by what you achieve.

It is defined by the shape you leave behind in the world. It is defined by what you were able to contribute to the sphere of experience in your life.

Some people earn monuments and accolades.

Some people add to the pool of harmless joy in the world.

Some people create a fire of goodness and courage that burns away the darkness.

Some people leave an irreplaceable void, sometimes within nothing more than a single other person.

And some people toil under the light of the sun or the light of the moon, nothing but nature bearing silent witness to their work.

Ultimately, whatever we do is meaningless. That is the way of the universe. Yet we must do it nonetheless. You matter here and now.

You did not choose to exist, but you must choose what shape you leave behind in the world. You must. And in deciding not to choose, you still make a choice.

For every human that has ever existed or will ever exist, this is everyone’s same charge, same vocation, same calling. This is the one thing we all share.

Reject it at your own peril, because in doing so you reject not only your fellow people, but your own humanity as well. You reject life itself.

We are islands to each other, yet unceasingly bound together.

What fires are kindled in your mind? What waters flow in the deep and secret places of your heart? What shape will you create?

As a human, you have within you the gift of conscious creation. It is what you live and what you pass down and what you leave behind.

I speak to all people. I speak to you. The power of this calling is in your own hands. Choose.

Evergreen

I have bought
so many books
across the span of the years,
and so sold,
and so gifted,
and acquired yet more,
that from time to time
I catch myself
staring at one spine or another,
as you would your lover’s profile
wondering:
Have I seen you before?
Did I know you
when the pine on the rock outside,
bathed in mist and light,
was still young?
Or…
Even before the rock was old—
perhaps that’s when we first met.

Sylvan Lake | Black Hills, South Dakota

Western Window

I wanted to tell you
that I just watched the sunset.

The last 10 degrees sunk below the mountains
in real-time.

We say “I watched the sun set,”
when really we mean
“I watched the world turn.”

Our feet are rooted to the ground;
our eyes live on the horizon.

A lingering blossom of auburn
and dripping red
and yellow and pink
and pillowed blood golden sky now fades
up
into the coming blue hour.

Only in these slices of time
do I feel allowed
to be—

perhaps because
I’m watching
the sun set
and not the world turn.

The earth revolves in constancy;
the sun sets in a moment.

Yes, this also means
I should
remember
to hold on
to such a feeling.

Yes.

So we persist in the knowledge
of the fact
that we have different words
for “life”
and “death”.

Life revolves in constancy;
death arrives in a moment.

We inhale and exhale,
rooted to the revolution,
trees of bone and dead stars,
veins of ocean water,
skin of salt and the electric,
eyes open
/
only
/
in slices
/
of time
/
that permit us
/
to break with gravity,
or find a safe orbit
in one another.

Twilight fades into the blue,
deep now in the coming dark.

No.

Not darkness. Look.
(I know you would
if you were here.)

Worlds
upon worlds
upon worlds,

spattered,
innumerable,
dancing with us through the void.

Southeast Arizona Desert, Dragoon Mountains

Coyote

You know how headlights,
when you’re near a desert highway,
pan across material like a searchlight,
casting incoherent shadows
past whatever they happen to catch –

sage, cactus green and praying to the rain,
hitchhiker’s drugstore cowpuncher boots,
corrugated lean-to slumped up against the wire?

Well that isn’t happening just yet.

Coyote isn’t on the wander right now.

The sun is still walking, heading west,
knowing exactly where to go.

Daylight melts over dust and hardpan,
yellow, umber, ochre, neon hot pink.

Memory melts like daylight.

Those clouds, see. That’s what I mean.
Cirro… cumulo… cirronimbulus?

It rises, dark and thick in the gloaming.
It drinks the melted daylight.

A rush of cool air. Scattering of sand.
Silent stab of arced lightning.
One million volts in a terawatt cycle.

Thunderstorms drink memory like daylight.
They amplify.
They make ready for the night.

You should come tell me what you think.

Silence. Rumbling over the distance of the earth.

Silence.

Cumulonimbus. That’s it.

You’d have gotten that quicker.

Silence.

Scent of the dry before the wet.

Burning gold at the end of the sunwalk
underneath the dark tower.

There. Coyote’s on the wander. Hungry.

The semi-truck moves past
and headlights cast no shadows beyond a ghost.

Thirst.

Thunder.

Hunger.

Arclight.

Silence.

Sometimes,

when driving with old music under slated smoke
against the brushstroked horizon
fading along mountains to the west
as the sun-heat of the high desert
reflecting off the scent of sagebrush
gives way to a chill mist
collecting on burnished sandstone and granite
with small patches of veridian moss and lichen
in the wild geometry of a late afternoon
as amber light stretches out into a blanket
under which nothing can harm us

(not even the future
not even the past

[this is a good place to stop
and get out the cameras] ),

our gaze sweeps
the scattered domains of the earth,
of the coyote and the elk
and a railroad track not used in years;

soon,
we will start thinking of good food
and something cool to drink.

Shell Canyon | Wyoming | USA

Anathema

20 years into this century
and the West burns,

the land inflamed, unceasing.

It burns in the forests
and the fields,
it burns in the streets,
with fires small and great
all stretching out for the same air,
all feasting upon the same oxygen.

But empires thus
are built of bone
and of sweat,

and within the elements
of things closest to our hearts,
from the private
to the pestilent,
we wait
and we watch
with dilated eyes
the assault and decay.

To breathe! Only to breathe…

The body has a finite amount of blood.
The mind can only take so much.

They will not stop, you see.
They will never

stop.

This is the desolation.

Oh rise now the midnight daughter,
oh rise now the twilight son;
keep your blades sharp,
your torches dry,
your eyes up.

Under the roaming haze
under a descending sun;
late now, the domain of summer,
and the long dark
approaches.

There is but one bastion,
one shield,
one bulwark,
one fire in the night:

hold fast thy memory,
thy faith,
thy hope
and thy love.

You know
in your deep-heart
what is right.

All else is anathema,
all else is so much dust,
for there are no spells
with which to resurrect the dead.

In Memoriam: Patrick H Lee

artist: https://www.deviantart.com/pe-travers/art/Desolation-120816158