drycrikjournal

Don’t say too much – trust
instead from whence you come
to sing its own song, and listen
closely for what can’t be said

with words, for the timid
peering through the brush –
for the Canyon Wren’s call
falling eerily within us.

You are the native, be
generous, leave something
on the doorstep to keep
guns inside the house.

Don’t say too much – they
have bastardized the words,
weaned them early, turned
them out without a home.

                        …my eye seems to change nearly everything it sees
                        and is also drawn to making something out of nothing,
                        a habit since childhood.
                                                        – Jim Harrison (“Fibber”)

Always her ankle at the head of Live Oak Canyon,
toes reaching Sulphur Peak, long legs stretching south
to Rabbit Flat, to her breasts freckled with Blue Oaks

when the full moon hangs like a pendant beneath them
glowing as she sleeps, rising as she breathes, dark
hair cascading between canyons spilling into the creek.

The women who gathered here, gossiped and ground
what they found, spent nights away from men to heal
themselves – they must have seen her first from here,

alive and breathing, heaving with these hills of flesh –
solstice to solstice, sun kissing the length of her body
trying to awaken the dreams and visions in our sleep.

Thatched and lashed with horsehair
thread, even well-built nests
have casualties, tip in a storm,

spill family overboard, and we
remain to make repairs – find reason,
where so often there is none.

If we have love, we have no choice
but to fall with them, over and over
into the void – and we do it,

not to savor grief, but to collect
what parts we can, to piece our nest
back-together again.

                                            – for Alie and Jeff

We’ve come together this far –
the storm is done, but for the
leaking off hillsides, rivulets

turned clear in starlight
falling into a grumbling torrent,
cleaning house, reasserting

elbow room into the silt.
She is the last word, boss
in this canyon, come hell

or flood and we grin, admire
her spunk – not too old to buck
and run. Hope rides on gravity,

the equation of extremes
cut into this landscape
validated before us – and we pray

to all things wild for one last
tantrum, one last reason
to let her be before we go.

A prayer saved for those
subject to the senseless,
the unexplained, the never
            to be resolved pain
            that will shape them
with every throbbing ache
in this flesh – a prayer pulled
            from mountaintops
            surviving storms.

A prayer saved for the living
left to grieve the unexplored
alone to find themselves –
            yet never more
            the same.
A prayer saved for tenderness
and strength, for love and faith
            that will endure
            in time.