everyday
I find myself
sitting on a floor
with the pen pinched
at each end
between my two thumbs

but,
for whichever reason
it never quite
disappears

I tore a page
from here

sink the stone and watch
ripples through solar systems
streaming white starlight

she knelt, a
mother of none, before
a mother of all,
tired between her
stiff legs, over bent knees
scavenging
with torn fingernails
pouring over the soil and stones
searching for her child
never born, never found
never told of love stories
and wishbone grassy mounds
deep underground in her churning
*****, burning viscera, spewing
laic songs of hope; night-time
lullabies, war chants, waiting
for the birth,
for him to climb with tender arms
from warmth to cold, toward
a searching woman lost
digging for her babe

When will they see
the hawkish types are no more
able to fly than they are loving
of the earth and her animals
scampering on two legs,
swimming deep, flying on a flap
of any kin, of any breed
with pulsing blood and thoughts
of open pasture and blue sky and
peace based in love for sisters and brothers
with the same blood; the same mother watching
matricidal fratricide again and again
and again, children flailing without learning the secret
whispered in her wind
moaned in her shifts
echoed by her current
falling in her rain
so politic and briny

without the humans
pedaling along like
ants following paths
the redwoods still stand
still and mighty and feeling
the faintest breeze and dampest
touch of the birds nestled between
branches
never moving unprovoked or uncaused
they wait for nothing because there is
nothing to a redwood but the earth and the sun and
the rain and the ants pedaling between grooves in her
hardened flesh, no wringer so efficient and wise *******
fallen water and moist air through the tips of toes and out into
the world above the wood ceiling so green and full and bourgeoning
life into the lungs of the moving types unable to stand still and breathe
and watch their god turn miracles by unspoken stories of growth and sheltering
persistence and resolve to manufacture life and color from dirt and water and air so
quietly respired