Echo

This is a day for old songs.
Remembering where I've been
the eye stares at the hand
and wonders at its incomprehensible music.
Before, there was no barrier.
Now I am sitting in a rocker watching the world.
Now I am remembering.
How did creation flow through my hands?
Sensation unknowable.
The past rises up through my feet,
a dust cloud of moments
tangible, tinged with gold.
I exist to illuminate them
My little lantern-soul flickering
in the palms of these hands.
Come, let us tell the story again.

quite contented

Before breakfast at midnight,
We screamed in the snow
Then had a snowball fight,
Ate at my favorite SoCo.

We made awful puns
But I shouldn't complain
They think my humor's fun
And I've something to gain

Like maybe some pounds
From the tastiest food
But my laughter astounds
Who knew life was this good?

Rainforest, waiting

I should say I'm a fire hazard
Sugared petals, flames licking
Spontaneous whirlwind of
combustible crackling
lightning-eye silhouette
tinder-dry litter piling high
tense potential energy
pounding too fast
gasoline, along my veins
rich and incendiary
I have built this world from scratch
from half-formed, orphaned emotion
new hopes and joys,
utterly flammable, butterflies
still dusted
with creation. All my nutrients
bound up in the biomass
of the canopy. I am a
rainforest, waiting, for
the one I call enemy. Will you
light the torch and free me
to rage beond the borders of
your mind
fling open your doors and
stand terrified
as if you had no idea what
a fire could destroy, of yours,
in its unutterable self-destruction.
Don't strike a match, or
do you think you can stand that
close, feel the blaze of my hate
the glow, on your face, and still
retreat unravaged to the cool of the forest.

Creature memories

A lovely excerpt I found:

Tent tethered among jackpine and blue-
bells. Lacewings rise from rock
incubators. Wild geese flying north
And I can't remember who I'm supposed
to be.

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon
myself, have mistresses in maidenhair
fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday:
a blank shimmering space forward and
back. I want to think with my belly.
I want to name all the stars animals
flowers birds rocks in order to forget
them, start over again. I want to
wear the seasons, harlequin, become
ancient and etched by weather. I
want to be snow pulse, ruminating
ungulate, pebble at the bottom of the
abyss, candle burning darkness rather
than flame. I want to peer at things
shameless, observe the unfastening,
that stripping of shape by dusk.
I want to sit in the meadow a rotten
stump pungent with slimemold, home
for pupae and grubs, concentric rings
collapsing into the passacaglia of
time. I want to crawl inside someone
and hibernate one entire night with
no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant
loam. I want to melt. I want to swim
naked with an otter. I want to turn
insideout, exchange nuclei with the
Sun. Toward the mythic kingdom of
summer I want to make blind motion,
using my ribs as a raft, following
the spiders as they set sail on their
tasselled shining silk. Sometimes
even a single feather's enough
to fly. ----Robert MacLean in Earth Prayers from around the world

Do you remember waiting for the bus
in the early morning snow
smelled the frost and cold exhaust
frozen nose hairs (and the sharp
burst of cold air in your lungs)?
I was a dragon, mittened, bundled,
waddling, misting poison gass,
smoking like an absurd locomotive
in my bright ensenbleof primary colors
while the salt glittered with rainbows
of antifreeze on the pavement.
We did a dance so that our toes would not fall off
So happy to be zipped in up to our chins
mittens tucked up inside the sleeves
only waiting to shed all the layers
socks wet, hair tangled
everything un-tucked
when we come tumbling
inside from recess.
But the bus is still coming
childhood ambitions still unfulfilled
Castle forts are only the biggest snowbanks,
the lightning-speed rocket still only the playground slide,
packed down with snow.

What I was missing

Stomping my feet in doorways,
puddles slowly spreading from cast-off boots.
Joy that settles quietly in a blanket
blowing my nose into my mittens,
already soaked with snowmelt
trudging-yes- I miss trudging!
The cold, the feeling of cold
and keeping warm as an activity
the primary activity.
Something constructive to fight
Putting on the heat and the windshield wipers in my car,
a complicated dance of agency between the fog and the frost
the crack of ice in a puddle
the whole world as my playground
breathing in snow-filled air
visibly magical now
looking up into a dizzying snow spiral
tasting metal, cold blood,
a glimpse of eternity frozen
my forgotten element,
enemy that I hold close
struggle made beautiful by necessity

See

I remember climbing up into the maple tree and sitting there in its arms and feeling held by the green bowers' embrace an expansive love enfolding me hidden, invisible, green fairy of the air I was, a small thing that could climb with skinny legs dangling, an apple and a book. What else the summerhood child of pleasures? My green libraries the sundappled pages that shifted all around me with the whisper of a thousand voices, each a character and each a friend, their names and patterns known to me within the wide world of my myopic inspection
daydream self that stumbled stopped dead at every dewdrop, pebble alive in millions, little worlds in every corner framed by my own fascinated mind.

What I could learn of, eagerly I climbed, remembering not the day I marveled first, saw the leaves on the trees, unlooked-for mystery revealed, two small windows--each one eye--and worlds were opened, trees, books, everything that I could fit within the frame and always and intently press the bridged glass-rim further up my nose, if the windows were only closer I could see more, know more, peer into the very corners of the universe, tease out test answers, life answers, read what's written on the board, read what's written in the wind, stay a little longer before the great show, spend another moment, breath forgotten, lost in delicate intricacy. Be quiet enough and read far enough long enough read the spaces in between the books upon the shelves, the curves between what is now and what is storied, stored. Futures, sometimes, maybes, more windows seeing past to untold worlds. Around the next corner, or the next, inside the next cover, beneath the trunk, the shafted sunlight, if I hunch my shoulders and direct the torrent, hold my head still with both hands, I might yet find the biggest frame.