Earthen Vessel

The port is still. The rain lays down
the restless remains of ship-wakes.
Not a thick rain; vague, like the dust
from grade-school chalkboards.

I run from east to west along Jericho Beach
toward the Pacific, which I’ve never seen.
Not really.

The clouds unfurl, sweeping across the masts –
the harbor is a shadowbox. The bow lights
shimmer in halos through the rain
and reflect from cloud-bottom to sea
and back again. Our shadowbox world
is small.

May we find peace in the periphery.

Perhaps we have looked up too often.
Perhaps the clouds teach us aspirations
more befitting to our human nature
than flight. If we are dust after all, how can we
return once we’ve left the dust behind?
We are nothing!

We are nothing
if not married to the ground.

A couple stands on the beach, pointing
to the prows anchored to the seabed,
content to keep their feet dry.

Sanctuary

I drove to the border of cloud and watched ghosts dance about its edge like waves on the sand. From here I can see the land bathed in thunderous sunlight; even from the shadows I can see that the world is filled with such beauty. There is a gossamer veil of mist, impermeable and unforgiving, that separates our world from theirs. Toeing the end of shadow, I can sometimes make out the holes in the sky where what lies behind pierces through – stars. I’ve tried to paint them, but white is hard to come by in this land between the highways.

(From the base of the clouds where the ghosts spy, we are probably only a contour cutting its way through mountainside and ocean shore, unalarmed and indiscriminating.) I asked the ghosts where white tones are found, and they indicated the cemetery. But, as I said, that veil is impenetrable; thus I stand in a meadow drenched in hues of grey so that the highway is indistinguishable from the patch of Queen Anne’s Lace to my right. I stand looking into a sun meant for a painter of white. I stand looking into a sun that whispers lines I don’t understand.

Walk in the Morning Rain

An archer steps still to the edge of the ferns;

arrowheads barely piercing the mist.

It is a silent moment when a heart stops beating.

Ferns dip their head in quiet assent, while

the mist falls disinterestedly on.

 

We retrace the archer’s steps as the days pass.

We run our fingers along the papery bark

of the evergreens, remembering.

 

Songless sparrows look on as we plunge

our hands into the wet soil where she last lay,

hoping to feel her last heartbeat.

Hoping to hear the last melody of our

Godforsaken siren.

And still the ferns creep closer to her grave.

A Year of Mornings

Sheets blue and lined by the impressions of raindrops on the window, hardly thick enough to keep out the cold. My skin tingles at the touch of the fabric and warm words whispered by a fleshless voice. Eyes open slowly, faintly; vision touching the walls illuminated by a sun grinning through clouds and rain. I could laugh at the stillness of the air here, behind the windows, when outside the wintry branches wave naked fists in the wind.

The pads of my feet aren’t calloused enough to ignore the spring of grass leaping into the sun. I bury my toes in the sponge of soil, tapping my fingers to the percussion of snapping roots. Looking up, I can’t help but to laugh with the chorus of new growth. Thick air born of bark and budding branches caresses me in a wordless expression of rejoicing and being.

I can trace the lines left behind the lights in the towns below me as they go out. A light here, to the east, goes out just as the hum of electricity bursts in a home, miles west of it – both homes lit by the same lines. Children laugh as fathers tell stories and believe that all is well. I lie in the grass beneath gathering clouds and let my clothes soak up last night’s rain, wondering when the voiceless whisper will speak again.