Nature

song of the multitude

she is multitude

she contains ecosystems
she is immense
filled from edge to edge with wilderness

she bathes in nightfall
and walks with death

she heals the forgotten and the outcast
moves in silence through shadow

sleeps in a mantle of tranquility

and like a leaf unfurling
bursts from joy in the light of dawn

she weaves her web on the strongest boughs

she watches from the high ground
of the mountain
and listens in the low places
of the valley

she can see the small things
and hear the small voices
of the earth

her hawk-sight soars far through the air

her song is water flowing over rock

she is guided by the stars

she is interlinked

her eye is uncovered

she is the dry country drinking the monsoon rain

her mind is the undersoil network electric
of the ancient forest
from mycorrhizae to heartwood
where the hare darts through the unrolling ferns

her heart is the cumulonimbus
towering anvil thunderstorm
lightning arcing into the dust and the dirt
where the coyote runs over the darkening desert

her soul is the deep of the estuary
where the ocean welcomes the river
after its long journey
where the salmon come home

once in every circuit
of our planet
around our sun

in this furthest arm of our galaxy
spattered among the deep space countless
where gravity bows before the unknown

she is multitude

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

Distance

Sometimes, there’s a place where the grass and the sage, pine and cottonwood, rocks and scrub and a cactus or two — maybe piñon and mesquite and yucca and so forth — they all get together and make up a kind of existence that’s mildly intoxicating.

Places like this are important if you’re extra-sober to begin with.
Say if, for example, you happen to be born that way.

Little breezes ruffle and shift the scents around.
Sometimes the wind really kicks up and does its best to rearrange your day.

Mostly, these areas aren’t burdened with an overabundance of trees or houses.
You can see the horizon. You can breathe in deep and feel your mind flatten out.
Memory and time stop fighting each other. Your worst enemy might be a fence or two.

I don’t generally have anything against concentrations of trees or houses — or people, for that matter — but I need to be out in the wide angle, out in the open kind of wild.

You can see the storms coming in of an evening.
Hear the wind searching. Feel the thunder unroll, look at the lightning crack.
You can see the sun breaking in yellow through the mist or dying down red in the clouds, and you can watch it all coming in and get yourself together.

You can give yourself to it. It’s like getting ready for church or mass.
Like a wedding or a funeral.

Folks tend to be fearful of a skeleton.
Something about bone laid out bare to the weather, I’d wager.
Out there, you get reminded you’ve got one inside you. You were born with it.

Things in the land and things within us consummate and live and die all the time.
Out there you can feel it, know it for what it is — a sort of honesty uncontrived.

You can see it all coming, and see it all going.

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

92%

had to wait a while,
didn’t we?

for the stars to fall in supernova
and the far trails
to be formed and tread
and for the long night
to descend upon us?

and so we did.

be then ignited with me,
you inviolate wonder;

for tears are sacred things
that flow
through the mountain-field
and through the desert
into the ocean,

only so they might be carried up,
and by desperado winds
returned to the earth
as a storm over the sage,

where grace as rain comes down
around the lightning we make
in this love like thunder.

artist: https://deviantart.com/viconbecon

Geology

Your skin is of alabaster,
and your heart, rose quartz.

Your mind is diamond.
Your hair flows down like tiger’s eye.

And residing within granitic bones
of cooled lava,
your soul is formed
of topaz and citrine;

your eyes of obsidian,
of dragon’s blood,
of labradorite.

And your mouth
speaks in rivers
and your touch
laps as waves on the shore
and your dreams
are snow gathering on the high peaks;

for you were forged in stars,
and born of fire,
and a wonder,

never simply on display;

but forever that of beauty,
wild in the earth.

Coffee

The moon, in her wisdom,
hides for the day;
and the sun tumbles
in photonic procession
over hills of tree and rock
to come gently,
unassuming,
in between the curtains.

The cat stretches.

You arise first, usually.

You are the concerto’s
opening notes.

You tell me of the mountains-
the old ones with long and white hair
falling over their shoulders,
guarding the far and wild reaches
of the old country.

You tell me
of the realms of your imagination;
of the paths traveled with companions,
and of those without.

You tell me of the burning light of hope
hidden in the deep night of the soul.

You tell me of faith.
You tell me of mystery.
You tell me of love.

And I see the trades
and skills and crafts
concealed
among the books on your shelf,
and in between your piano fingers.

I see the nameless fears
waiting in the dark.

And I think it is no wrong thing
to take a step back in time,
and say “thou art Rogue”-
feline-footed and shadow-friended,
come to meet me
at the edge of field and the forest,
both of us bringing secrets for trade.

And I see the sun coming in.

I want to hear more.

I want to hear why you think
the violin is the most beautiful sound in the universe.

I want to close my eyes
and see more of the piano fingers at play.

It’s hard to close my eyes around you,
but I will try.

I want to hear more about your paths,
see more of your map,
taste more of your wine;

only because
I’m not sure
anyone’s listened long enough
to hear the song
of the golden threads
that hold you together-
the ones the world tries so hard
to unravel.

So let me check today’s itinerary:

Ah.

“Hunt for rocks.”
“Eat food.”
“Dance in the kitchen.”

But first, breakfast.

Coffee.

Then come and meet me
at the edge of the field and the forest.

artist: https://deviantart.com/rhads

Theory

What makes a wild heart beat?

(no, i mean really beat)

Does it fly full-out and free
under the sun?
Does it hide and whisper
its dreamings in the dark?
Does it drift
in fitful slumber beneath the sea?

What voices, still, are carried on the horizon’s wind?

Where do they go?

And why,
why is all this insanity
very much like a coming home?

(does it even matter?)

Here,
I’ll tell you a secret:

I have no idea.

But I think it’s very close

to whatever makes a horse
dig its hooves hard into the ground,
playing with the earth
at the scent of rain,
throwing out ripened patches
of green grass
to an evening blanket-sky
burgeoned with pillars of midnight
as the final spears of sunlight
slip past the edges of thunderwaves
forged in hearts of lightning.

artist: https://www.deviantart.com/temiree/art/Rising-Thunder-606707595