Bonfire in the backyard.
Moonrise.
Few words, crickets filling the spaces
syllables won't bridge.
Realizations
fade in and out as embers,
glitter as the stars
sometimes behind clouds
yet still there.
I do not know the time,
just that it passes-
what was missed, right there,
never to return?
There'll be more.
Yet this-
still night on rusted lawnchairs
sometimes perplexed as language inadequately
imposes itself where the heart wordlessly dances,
so accustomed to the routines of the unspoken.
Late in the summer,
the heat recedes degree by degree,
and the nights give way to a coolness,
a hushed serenity before the green gives way to ice.
These nights, the soul rests
before bigger storms come to upheave the knowns-
these leaves will soon be blown by northern wind
skittering across the road as frantic refugees.
So, I cast my truths to the coals,
bless the stars, and ask the moon for forgiving light.
We leave the last heat of the fire untended
to devolve into mere ash, just like everything else.
We are kindling,
just waiting to be gathered
and transformed by the heat of coming together
in recompense, in stillness, and in the faith of love eternal.
Just past midnight
A squalid summer night
Nothing moves now, except
The moon's a'rising as lovers
Collapse in sweat, so wordless.
That celestial light runneth over,
Covers bodies in a radiant haze that
Knows the paths of a million miles, older
Than any word, fuller than any in-breath.
Under the buzzing streetlights, those crude
Fires we stole from Prometheus, rested a moth
With golden antennae fashioned from a heretic's
Invisible geometry- it held fast to the cracked road,
Claiming its place here amid careless feet and hurried
Transits, wings still yet ready, immune to regret, disgrace.
We met for maybe three minutes, I lost time and myself somewhere
In between the moon, a streetlight, and a moth, and what remained was
A shadow-play of merged beings, silently dancing, merging into one pale glow.
So much love.
So much light.
So much heat.
So much exertion.
This, our eclipse.
It began with a road bounded by still black water
Reflecting the tangle of trees in a symmetry far too perfect
Reeling past an acre of char where chimney was the last thing standing
In the hopeless space of blackened time.
This, my eastward dream.
Five days departed from the familiar is fifty days’ worth of inspired breathing.
Yet while here, amid the stands of pine and the slick symphony of frogs
It’s to the west my heart has looked
To the west that my beats are bounding not in the hope of love, but the throes of realization.
Here, rapt in the whoosh of wing and the crash of wave
I’ve found you, in the chill of sea and the glory of hot sand.
I’ve found you, deep within me and holding my unsteady hand.
In the touching of souls we feel the steady pulse of the brine from which we emerged.
This is nothing new, it is as old as the rocks upon we build our flimsy shelter
And it is in that age, that timelessness, that I revel with you.
Our story is just sand, and its blowing boundless across the shore of identity.
Who you are, and who I am, these are arbitrary questions as speechlessness overtakes us
From the arc of stars that spell our real names across the sky.
From black water to black night, we emerge, to shine momentarily
To the enjoyment of some stranger on the beach.
We are fascinated with the night
because it does so easily what we cannot,
silences the thrall of our storm-whipped landscapes,
soothes the jagged peaks of the soul,
blankets the day-worn heart with the softness of cloud,
and tosses the inspiration of stars through tattered souls.
As I am lulled to sleep by the comfort of obscurity,
the suddenness of rain makes mad music on the leaves,
and a slight chill hitches the wind,
fully awake now, I must go deeper into these hours
where all intentions lay hidden
and dreams are woven from the hush of the wilderness.
Hollywood makes billion dollar epic movies about saving our planet from all sorts of peril, and we consumers feed off the trough always gratified that the day is saved in the end, the golden American sun ever shining bright. These films seem to be dispossessed of the reality of how our society and our governments really operate, much like those who clamor about how things should be without burning a single calorie doing anything about it. Right now, amidst a great ecological disaster of gigantic proportions, there's no sudden explosion of genius going on, no heroism. Instead, we're giving up the creative reins to the same bamboozlers who got us into this mess. We're reduced to dropping thimbles on geysers and wondering what went wrong when the didn't work.
Where's Bruce Willis and his valiant crew to come barreling out of the blue with that make-do fix that saves civilization? Where's the ingenuity and resources that we entrust to our governments with our tax dollars to be at the ready when All Private Sector Hell Breaks Loose? Nowhere to be found, it seems we're scratching our national head trying to plug a leak that is destroying whole ecosystems. Just because the oil hasn't washed up on shore doesn't mean it's not wreaking havoc. The surface of the ocean is not the ocean. There's a whole lot more life below the surface than there is above. From birds, to whales, to plankton, these systems are being devastated.
Are largely untested dispersants that just cause the oil to break up below the surface and sink the best we can do? Surely, middle school kids would realize that this is just as long-run harmful as allowing the oil to invade the marshlands and estuaries. Short-term, the beaches are kept tidy and there will be less tear-jerking videos of (larger order) dead animals. White sandy beaches are good for tourism, but what about the rapidly expanding dead zones of ocean which impact local economies, let alone all that lives below the mystery of the waves. What isn't seen is the dramatic toll this is taking on microbial and smaller order life forms, which form the backbone of the oceanic ecosystem. Right now, there is a plume of toxins which is completely subsurface [ref.] exposing creatures to the poison of our disastrous energy policies. Why should whole ecosystems collapse because the American free market is sacrosanct and cannot be made be accountable to their various catastrophes?
I'm disheartened that this ecological cataclysm (there aren't words accurate enough to describe the lasting toll this will take) is already being displaced by the mundane triviality which feeds the zombie-like American media appetite. Right now, the main headline on a mainstream media site is about whether a para-celeb murder-sensationalist should get a lethal injection for snuffing out her prey. Sorry for the deceased, but whoopty-doo, an entire ecosystem upon which America has become crudely and carelessly dependent is about to blink out. Every inch of headline space should be used to galvanize our greatest minds and our highest ideals to get the fuck down there and cap the damn leak. Where's a Dutch boy in a pressure rated suit when you need one? Again, where's Bruce Goddamned Willis and a few hundred million clams?
Oh, that's right, I forgot: filming the next sequel.
Whatever you as an individual can do, please do it. If it means not buying BP gas, good plan. If it means faxing the living shit out of your congressperson, than work that bitch of a machine. If it means gathering up supplies for the scant workforce trying to contain the spill, call your boss and tell him where your priorities lie. If our government isn't producing the ingenuity needed to meet this challenge, it up to us, we who are of this Earth and dependent on it, to remind each other that we are but links in the chain of life.
Historically, this catastrophe is one of thousands. Contextually, our collective response may be a deciding measure in the exercise of our self-awareness, our humanity, and ultimately, our will to live in harmony with the Earth. She's taught us she will not be enslaved by our greed; it's either respect and revere her abundance, or be doomed by it.
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