The tree sobs happily,
In milky water.
The water bug kisses the fetid foliage.
And all is damp.
All is good.

The marsh is alive in the night.
The call of the cricket leg plays,
Along to the baritone frog croak.
All is good in the marsh.

Muted tones of green
And copper
Grow short and tall,
Sprouting from their liquid home.
Grey stones
(But you wouldn’t know),
Carpeted in moss and lichen.

So dead,
So alive.
The mystery,
As sweet as the cool lacquer of dew
Misting over me.
I blink the haze from my eyes.
Aye,
But I still cry.
I still weep with delight,
Of the sight before me.
I cry with the tree.

And by sun,
The milk-water looks as ice,
That moves as gelatinous dancers,
Or as silk
In the wind.

If the rain only knew,
That the swamp will be wet either way.
But when the sky
Matches color and dress
With the grungy mire,
Everything looks as it should.
All is good.

Wood upon wood,
I build the wall a door.
The wall that stood tall between foe,
And now stands,
As proof that held hands
Can come without gloves
And wounds.

Cheek upon cheek,
I spread the water leaked
Of eyes once grown sore and red,
To water the bountiful garden,
That community gathered,
To sow and spread
In unsalted field.

We may still have foe.
There are those
Who comb the horse’s mane,
And those who steal the tail.

But upon your knock at our door,
We don’t paint the mask of your past
Across your face.
We embrace tomorrow’s peace.

Why do we fight
Over cocoa and ivory?
Our birth is not a contract
To pick a side.
Yet we still ***** a divide.

Light upon dark.
As mountains crumble,
As mountains grow,
We can change as friends, from foe.

Can I be the man in the woods?
Who walks with viridescent leaves,
And reaches like branches
With purpose?

Can I be him —
He who couldn’t be bothered
Whether empty sea-salt shells
Lie against his stalk?
His talented, contorted arms
Pimpled in thin, brittle bird eggs.
Home to the silk-giving wolf spider.

He knows vines,
Not as something that strangulates,
But as garment.
Saprophyte and toadstool
Like jewelry,
Dress his textured body.
Extravagant, speckled robe for his promotion,
Into new life-giving.

And if I can’t be him,
Can I at least ask what it is
To know the sky closely?
And how it feels
To speak so clearly without voice?
To root-dance —
To be the rooftop of the rabbit,
And the watchtower for the owl.
To taste earth-given water with taproot,
And stand as a landmark
For the soaring hawk.
I know he would tell me,
He loves to share.

His nurturing stance.
He smiles at the small aphid who feeds.
And without needing anything in return,
He gives riches to the forest,
Endlessly,
Even long after he falls.
Aye, like a Phoenix,
He may even be born again
Of his own remains.

I wish I could be him.
But instead,
I write these wishes
Upon his pulpy skin.

Tangled,
Wiry sleep-thoughts
Still float
In the cloud above my head.
A headache,
Born of the annoying red flowers.
A self-diagnosis of pure envy;
I hate all that is beauty today.

The salmon’s bones,
Fragile,
But not as delicate as myself.
The salmon still swims upstream.
I melt between the wooden dowels
On the back of my chair,
In the dining room,
Where I eat my salmon and greens.
I took out her bones,
So now she feels like me.

Clouds rumble,
I walk the crooked stair.
If hair fell like a waterfall;
But instead it falls like ash
And soot.
If only footprints like
A horse carriage in brittle snow,
But instead they sloth and sludge
In muddy pasts
And saddened hearts.
If voices like a song, called out
Instead they gargle
Moan
And wail.
Instead they tell the tale
Of the day the clouds rumbled
And I walked the crooked stair.

The drum – the beat reverberates,
the coffin-held heart still quakes,
between the time traversed, unseen
before it died below the green.

The hand who grasps at last resorts
and goes for throws the body thwarts;
the scathed and bloodied knuckle skin,
is not a hand that you can win.

Of kin in blood, but that is all,
your legacy and greatness fall,
and eyes will watch as you go down,
but none the lips will wear a frown.

I am haunted by a thought I hold,
A vision that I can’t let go,
And words I’ve never told.
But I push on, I heave, I **
And I follow the wendigo
Of you and I