fire awe symbols

twenty and seventeen are just two numbers

and we were just six 

three tents one bivy 

all of us among trees

and stones you could never count.

days and miles logged were marked

by moments enacted like blue lizards

sunbathers of baroque paintings

positioned perfectly

to frame each view of disappearing horizons.

latent wildfire smoke obscured them

and reality drifted away.

this place was devonian jurassic and eocene

all at once and spoke the common tongue

the partnership of glacial polish and erratics.

seasons have always been its heartbeats

and we only just starting walking.

above waterwheel falls

we checked privilege gave thanks

and offered prayers to each our creators

with generous pinches of tobacco.

we drank from san franciscan toilets

and swam in their bathtubs

cold and called the tuolumne 

its pools every spanish revival blue of the mission.

granite calloused our soles

granite scrubbed clean our souls

all of it with its whites and blacks

pure quartz and feldspar 

a modernist dance frozen in homeostasis.

and where there is quartz there always is gold

and for us the gold was the perfect light

it led the way each day up only up

towards the cerulean

through grand canyon depths

and steps into scenes of

beauty refined but not by us.

for five full days we created fire

knew awe and sought symbols

here in this canyon we became human

more than we were before.

snowpack

I bent over to pick up a branch

broken amongst the ponderosa weave of sliver sun collectors 

dropped when it was time to reach a bit closer

I threw it in to the running ice 

and you asked why

be the branch I said 

it is how you can will the flow

of this snowmelt 

future river momentum

salmon schools will know you as brethren and share your story upon the whisper of trade winds

every five years they will find you I said and you disappeared

behind a crag of

yosemite granite

as greenland falls into the sea

wind crashes gulls into gulls and rolls up an opaque from below
it splinters the sun into a dance bright white
  of embers across this vision filter
it's as one muscle rippling:
a return run of sockeye

god wants to know if the great rise can happen fast enough
to swallow these private estates.  they've devoured 
this beachfront commons property of sandcastles

we are losing the speak of speedsmith geckoes
  of pelican spears and bleach and burn of sun
from here it sets over panamanian silica
 over subgulfic gysers of brown-black death
  we've long since swam past

recollection is lost before its whim arrives
there is no time yet time values everything the same
and we were once leaves
we were once leaves nestled amidst the shade of our mothers 
  though the summer strikes have heard our action
 waved the flag
the forests will burn

waves crash waves of wind like a fire drill
and the shoreline a halfway exit

the j train

the city was a burnt paper cutout

backed with morning fire

as i rumbled back westward

my stay was short

marked by rest that knew

less than hours

and a predawn celebration

of a better year yet unfolded

i emerged from the stale

warm belly of this great city

sleepwalked into times square detritus

and through rising basement air

to collect my next leg

you were asleep finding those hours

we lost to night

nestled within the chaos

of stepped flat rooftops that

each met the racket of the j

and that is where i left you

your neighborhood of infinite jewels

of constant change and noise

and all those pink coral sunsets

once below aristophanes said we

spend our lives searching for

our other half

sub urban

some eight hundred miles later

and new york is wide awake 

eight million plus one
equals 

eight million
and still class is given to sway

with a car door held on the subway

like some prehistoric reptilian thing

outstretched and half shroud in dew
manhattan lies with one eye open

knowing nothing of her 

tossed we are into neighborhood pools
to tread for ourselves each

as the first time

"I'll have what's on special" we'd say

after finding the washroom to clean

the salt from our shoes and

gloss from our eyes

walton's natural state

those from here 

pronounce it fate-ville

this town
built upon nickels and dimes

this land
it bleeds rust

when you cut it open

how i remember europe the first time

bullet trains at the underground

rumble german earth

and scream oily wind

through station made vacuums

and on schedule i arise in old paris

ocean grove

the inch plus of weightless white

fell since last night 

was brushed away with quiet

a black bristle reveal

of glass and steel coated

and lost to the memory of heat

woven in your turquoise beach hat

grandmother

death burdens questions with a weight unfair

as with a scramble about a ship's half sunken deck

we wander through desparate questioning

abuse rationale and cling to ladders unbound

to any universe but this. at moments like these

we reside with time meaningless and never enough

though powered by pink rosary and mother mary

years were a film to which there was no projectionist

or door to where hers rolled. the last thirty were

without her John L yet never was joy outweighed

giving unseated or throws left unknit by hands astute

two nights before the first snowfall

her breaths were puffs of delayed summer

pushed from beneath doors of two rooms away

her eyelids moved as dropped feathers

through a windless silence and still

she mouthed my given name hello

she entered the black wood the day after

so in time we can. long after grief's quieting

her scent: roses and life

yes even now

her lantern: bright

the same raised by her mother

sixtysix novembers past

this gait of hers: courage

practiced and for us

twigs' soft crackles

leaves' sweeps

we will follow

and without fear

her release to the beyond

was a sun's reminder

for crocus awakenings

and geese returnings

and we thank her for waiting so long

souls imbalanced

how long does water's memory last

what drops will remember me

when i lose it and marry my bones

should we hope it's not a shallow seive

a camera with a stuck shutter

it might be too much

from up here i can feel

rhythm of the breeze hear its rise but

nothing from the place that knows

less sun than a Buffalo winter

the deep it's lost its chorus

voices who've been given

over to life veracious and finless still

i want to see echoes of scaled bodies

dance with glint in the saline spray

life begat life and is now with us

our fire indifference shrugging most else

jellyfish replace sharks as things of terror

plastic is the new black krill 

we eat existence

breathe ice deliver volcanic excrement

and answer only to feckless distant gods or

the next beachfront vacation rental orgy 

in the next town over

the allyoucaneat buffet closed

it learned of thresholds and supply

fueled with myth that's come

like onehundredyear locusts:

rebuild the fruit cellar where

they crawled out the ground

find shade fill bags with

sand and blood.

the great entropic scale

will redistribute souls

will itself balance

and the water

it will watch

fog

the fog it rolls arriving nowhere

from here we watch it a short film

stuck in a loop with stops: the clearcut

boundary creating wilderness where forgotten

delivering walled comfort where

none ever existed

it is night cold

arriving before sun setting now

the drop of seasons into one
of dropped leavings

at least in our memory of the east:

hills stamped a red giant star's palette
of warmth

another last breath of life

our mother she once deserved respect

never for beauty but for fear earned

unless unless
that boundless slope beyond:

a sea for mills and you a life turned silk

deep earth bought privilege

and privilege bought this luxury

to bring it to art and object

and destination on a park-way

but hardly art will it be still

when the wilds reclaim

and the fog rolls back and on 

remembering clayoquot, 1993

big big trees this way during day
salted meat wrapped in tin
stickered fruit picked
from a different season
days ago. plastic jackets
in case the blue recedes
decides to hide in deeper
than night fog. here
humbly stands stands of columns
cedars grotesque and beautiful
and infinitely reverent
amongst a crowd of others

drinking ruddy tonics living
along the currents from
these mother lifegivers
pulsing silently underpeat.

there are potlatch peoples left
near here beyond the kelp
peoples who have never been visitors
and with peace enfold meaning

and symbol of trixter raven
of spirit bear and each sentient the

collective life. each know but a soft walk
where streams begin where salmonberry
can forever be thinned. they

who with their oral tradition have
and still notch millennia with harmony.

these fog islands have always been 
since the last great freeze
a nurse log puncturing the cold
crystal currents. hairy coniferous mounds
in a monstrous slumber
waiting for all of us to decide
to commit to its ways
or to our modern ballast foreign.
the local anywhere will have us
not just here
and freely
but the thickening of life

the embrace of timeless rhythm

is of it and not for it to choose.

it is one and we are disconnected. 

there are things you cannot buy back

there are still places alive not yet

wholly sold. consumptive indifference

that is what bides time with more

that are tankers and pipelines

and disappearing bees.

there are potlatch peoples left
near here beyond the kelp
peoples who have never been visitors
and with peace enfold meaning

and symbol of trixter raven
of spirit bear and each sentient the

collective life. each know but a soft walk
where streams begin where salmonberry
can forever be thinned. they

who with their oral tradition have
and still notch millennia with harmony.