Treetop, treetop
where could you be
I dug a large hole
but you, I just can't see

You must be hiding
somewhere down there
as it is way too obvious
to hide up in the air

And if I have found you
I quickly climb on down
thru your rustling branches
it will make you frown

I will tickle you softly
patiently root by root
until you laugh out loud
and you start to hoot

you will shake your leaves
until you can't take no more
then we'll lie down together
on the soft forest floor

In dreams we stay together
untill the break of dawn
sadly, when I open my eyes
you will be long gone

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

Write everyday, too much
That's a commandment for a to do list
in hopes it will manifest into routine
I can store the text in the internet
It's safer that way, these days
Store it in a place that actually doesn't exist
How can it be lost?

There's too many spies making logs
and in the rare artful moment of an agent
maybe I'll get discovered

Not banking on it
I'm throwing all my eggs at random houses
and wearing the wicker basket as a helmet to protect from backlash
in hopes that, by then, my poet spirit could leap from treetop to treetop
to avoid hollow bullets

Muscles grip and relax, grip and relax, grip and fight and tighten.
My fingers caress the blown glass between my lips, thoughtfully I stare cross eyed into the flame brought to life by the stroke of my thumb.
Feral beats in the background of this still life pulsing, invigorating the senses;
awakening the monster as it shrieks out for breath.
And so I pull another blow between my teeth, the air tainted and tasting so sweet.
Here stand these false philosophers with me as we shiver against the clawing of a wind so cold,
but we are brought together by our love for the fire.
A network of interlaced fingers keeps the flame alive as we **** out the life-giving tendrils from gaia’s hands,
she sends us spiraling upward until our ankles graze the treetops and we are looking down on city life from the crown of heaven.
My comrades bear their bruises closed and tongue-tied, and as we fly dark hints of the world below materialize on their lips.
The stroke of each errant brush paints their words black and white as I sing color across my broken sanctuary, stubbornly fighting for this bliss that only I exist within,
carrying no burden from the world below, I let my innocence fly me higher in this treetop temple.
I break the surface of a sea of clouds, no comrade to accompany me now;
none would follow anyhow.
The freedom screams from my fingertips like thunder and with every movement I hurl another one of Zeus’s famed bolts down onto the earth, dancing with the electricity; though when you’re so high up here there is no storm.
I watch as the others begin to fall back down into the earth’s open arms, equipping their synthetic smiles, for where they are going there is no joy.
My grin glitters like the stars I greet with open palms, smoothing my fingers across their warm fuzzy forms, gathering them into night-sky pictures for the beings down below.
I place each star carefully in my dark connect-the-dot drawing, swirling stardust in the blank spaces for tonight I paint a masterpiece.
As it takes shape my painting depicts a world so far away from the one I hail from, I almost wonder how I can even picture it.
I soar on ethereal wings to planets and galaxies until homesickness sweeps my winged shoes back toward the blue planet, eyes misted over with nostalgia for those days when I,
the fire and the philosophers would breathe together.
When I touch back down, my wings fold tight against my shoulders; curving firm and solid against my back.
I am a stone gargoyle, now guarding this world that I fought so hard to protect myself from.
and I, the fire and the philosophers break out our synthetic smiles.
For where we are going, there is no joy.
The vague and flimsy memories we have of our treetop haven melt misty smooth across mental palates that still ache for the taste of fire-breath, for the swirls of hazy wonder that alit our dry smiles to burn for real.
But my philosophers have become pharisees and now I quail and quake under the weight of my sky-paintings.
The gravity down here keeps my lips tilted down in the echoes of another man’s sorrow and my sympathy for their morose self-titled melodrama is running thin.
If  I could, I’d be tiptoeing among the stars, hop scotching across constellations, at home in my world of skies and fire.
And I am shocked once more, grounded suddenly by the voice of the pharisees and their stone hearts;

mourning for I,
The fire,
And the philosophers.

WHAT was the name you called me?-
And why did you go so soon?
  
The crows lift their caw on the wind,
And the wind changed and was lonely.
  
The warblers cry their sleepy-songs
Across the valley gloaming,
Across the cattle-horns of early stars.
  
Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop
Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.
  
What was the name you called me?-
And why did you go so soon?

Goodnight stars
Goodnight summer
Goodnight interstellar glimmer

Goodnight auroras, forever dancing
Goodnight to all the treetop prancing

Goodnight Hailey, racing comet
Goodnight to whom I write my sonnet

Goodnight crickets
Goodnight moon
Goodnight to you all, I'll see you soon

As the sun just begins to set, Eevee sits perched on a cliffside awaiting her lover Chimchar's return. She knows he can handle himself but she cant help but worry about him. Anxeity rattles her brain constantly so much that she can't sit still. She begins pacing back and forth across the cliff. Suddenly, a bright light flashes in the distance. Catching Eevee by surprise, she nearly stumbles off the cliff but regains her balance and quickly turns her head to see what caused such a bright flash. A pillar of flame had appeared in the distance not too far away along with lightning strikes. Immediately, Eevee knew that Chimchar was in grave danger. She hastily slid down the cliffside, weaving around rocks to avoid injuring herself. Rattatas and Caterpies noticed Eevee sliding into the forest and attempted to ambush and capture her but Eevees adrenaline increased her natural reaction time and she jumped over Caterpies string shot and the rattata got caught in the stringy mess. Landing nearly perfectly, Eevee made her way through the dark forest, letting her adrenaline drive her on her path to save her dear Chimchar. Meanwhile, Chimchar was in the thick of battle with an unexpected foe. The legendary bird Zapdos had heard of Chimchars quest and decided it needed to put an end to the puny monkey. Jumping from treetop to treetop, Chimchar was barely dodging Zapdos' lightning bolts while
simultaneously attacking it with his whip-like flames, nicking its wings and interrupting its flight. All of a sudden, Zapdos fired a Tri-bolt of blue lightning, blasting Chimchar off the rooftops. Chimchar landed ******* the charred forest floor, writhing in pain. Just as Zapdos was about to land what seemed to be like the finishing blow, Eevee bolted out of the forest and snatched her Chimchar out of the way of certain death. Chimchar - surprised - gave a quick hug to his dear Eevee before jumping into a cluster of trees and blasting itself into the sky, grappling Zapdos' tail. Zapdos flailed and tried to throw Chimchar off but it was unsuccessful because Chimchar had scorched its tail. Then - both plummettng towards the ground - Chimchar cloaked itself in white flames and grabbed a hold of Zapdos' body. Eevee dove behind a large tree just before the two foes crashed into the ground, creating a large explosion. Twigs and pebbles flew through the smoky air as Eevee jolted out from behind the tree towards her lover Chimchar only to see him lying on the ground next to the lifeless body of the so-called legendary bird Zapdos. Throwing herself down onto Chimchars body in distress and overwhelming sadness, she subtly noticed Chimchars arms wrap around her. Eevee stopped crying and hugged her dear Chimchar so tight he struggled to breathe momentarily. They both noticed Zapdos' wing begin to twitch so they both looked into eachothers eyes and decided it was time to go. So at the end of another successful day, in an almost picturesque moment, the two lovers Eevee and Chimchar walked with eachother into what remained of the sunset.

Loneliness is like hunting for redwood trees
Their gnarled faces
Gritting teeth

They bite the loveliest poison

Out of all the holes your heart couldn’t fill
Sprout carnations
Sprout dahlias

All crimson petals
Blooming from the places
You wanted to be held

Loneliness is a garden
That no one tends
So you choke on the roots

Your tongue turns green
And little tendrils tickle up your throat
Looks like worms at first
But those come later

Pretty soon you’re planted
And collapsing blood red beautiful

Loneliness kills you sometimes
Turns you into a garden after you go hunting
For redwood trees

And on the brief occasions the light breaks the treetop
It shines on you
Just a few red red flowers

A little girl sees one maybe
She plucks what’s left of you

Places you in a vase
That sits on a kitchen table
Without much sunlight

Loneliness is you in a vase
Trying to be as beautiful as you can
Before your petals fall
And your stalks wilt

For a girl
Who thought you were worth taking home
Long enough to brighten up a kitchen

A few days maybe
That’s all we can hope for

"I know your vexed great spirit, miles away, a gentler more playful you thrives on a journey of life. There among a ridge, the plateau where you dance, leaping, ripping yourself out of the air,escaping towards the light. Free from the weight which chastises and locks you up. Out of the medicine cabinet quaffing your deepest breaths, urging your hours shorter and shorter. You cascade like glass buttons scattered on the desert floor, let those wet cloths be forgotten, may your sorrow disappear amidst that great arenose simoom.  When the ghibli makes you stutter before the bright outlook you once displayed, do not forget to visit the flowers that bring you the most  peace of mind"------------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------ It's here. In the pile-ons, wrapping around your head like a cool, wet bandage, keeping out a headache, or the rancorous guilt of an ugly night. It sits on the top-layer of your forehead, beading off in fresh droplets of self-pity, uncomfortable and self-defeating restlessness and despair. I rub it with my hands, removed each new wave of desperation and soothing your hairline with a swath of my hand. I raise up, your cucumber colored walls, that bright pink bedspread, nothing different ever changes. The masonite paintings still there, that old familiar **** carpet, a thatch-work of menage-a-tois and fifth grade-style arts and crafts. The light bulb has been out for six years, third drawer right-side down is still stuck, a mystical blow dryer blocks it closed, and the door won't ever quite close- I take a shower with the world wide opened and you trailing a fastening steep. And so your fever rises, your feet soak in a tepid iron clad bed frame while your mind rattles against your skull. Thirty days have past, lifeless, echoing in this wicked upstairs chamber. The West Wing. Slatted blinds, the white dresser, the Chanel books, the pool party photos, the blue swim-meet t-shirts, the fake gold trophies and the true gold hairs on your head, my fingers dash across your forehead again meeting your brow with the cool folded washcloth, I reach for your back and you turn, slightly rolling; something routine, unsteadied, even wicked limps in a stress ball inside your bottom lip. It's just a quiver. Nothing different ever changes. It's the devil inside, and I am nowhere to go. Maybe midnight or maybe twilight. Every hour of morning is another hour of night I'm ever taking my sleep back into. I don't count the days, just mark them in the thoughts of worry that flurry through in brief thoughts. I am obsessed with care-taking now. Three hours have passed since I showered you out of your black party dress and sparkly Gucci slip-skirt, since I took bits of post-digested food from your hair, held your nose with a tissue and told you to blow it all out, again, another night of building a sick room and sauna. I never tire, I just make arrangements, I build a small room and I wait the weight out. Nothing different ever changes, and I don't expect the unexpected or dare to meet your smile again.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------ Three months ago, thrifting on Valencia and 26th Street. Walking from Blue Bottle to the Bay then to the Breakers. I climb atop A Buena Vista with man Adam, you scale a mountain-sized hill with your teal green and cherry red Nikes. We make a photograph in front of white dogwood blossoms overlooking a steep Ravine to the East. A bird chirps, a homeless woman barks, and four children smoke cigarettes and joints in a treetop. Every ***** goes up and down, each footstep dithering amidst our biduous ascent. I buried you last Thursday beneath the dogwood, your cherry red and teal green gym shoes planted at your doggerel.

Waiting for the fruit to fill with pithy seeds
Underneath a barren lifeless tree
The carrion hunters spread their wings
And fan away the pollen on the breeze

My feet are crumpled sacks of bone and meat
My mind an ***** rotten like the orchards
Are scattered by my finger blackened pits
Inedible attractions for the birds

Famished as a calf without its mother
Left by the herd long crossed the overture
I cannot get my legs below my body
And find the gangly chains so I can stir

They wait above my dwindling departure
With slavering testaments to their breed
I am abandoned wasting underneath
With corpses of the scattered lives time bleeds

My gullet cries the reckless yawning end
That lungs have not attempted for so long
I let my chin collapse into my chest
Close my eyes remembering bygone

i waited there.  i waited for hours.  i waited for days.  no one ever came.

seasons changed, leaves fell, the ground hardened and snow caked every treetop.  and still no one came.

one day a woman with a child walked by.  they were not who i was waiting for.  they crunched along the leaf-strewn path, nodded a greeting toward me, and continued on.  so i kept waiting.

it rained hard and often that spring.  the path was unclear, and the trees were bent in exhaustion.  flower buds wrapped themselves in blankets of green as they reached toward the soft, muddy ground, trying to find a bed.

one great tree stood tall on the edge of the forest.  it was split down the middle, into two distinct twin trees, each competing to reach the top of the surrounding canopy first.  the bark peeled as the twins stretched and grew.  as the years passed the twins became tired, and so they stopped racing and waited instead for something new to come into their lives.

i decided i would no longer wait.  i walked along the path, kicking dead leaves out of the way, their arms curling around their bodies for warmth.  i whistled, i skipped, i picked flowers and weeds to make you a bouquet.  i wandered for days and found nothing.  and so i waited again for you.

there was a patch of violet hyacinth flowers along the path.  they sprung from the ground and surrounded an old tree stump, as if shielding it from harm.  their leaves were an impenetrable gate that could wait all summer, protecting their beloved, lost tree.  the stump would always be safe.  no matter how long it remained there.

in the fall, a twiggy stickling of a tree dropped most of its sun bleached red leaves.  one fell into my hood.  i took it out and twirled it between my fingers.  the days were getting shorter, and seeing the sun light the remaining leaves was like watching the branches start on fire.

i wandered toward the edge of the forest and sat against the largest tree i could find.  the tree was split down the middle, and each half was just as tall as the other.  i decided this was the king tree of the forest.  i fashioned two crowns out of the hydrangeas and mountain laurel i picked on my journey and hung them on the lowest branch of each twin king.  i laid the red leaf i picked out of my hood in the crevice where the twins split from each other, and bowed to the king of the forest.  as i marched away i hummed a tune i can only describe as majestic.

i am still waiting.  the daisies and dandelions dance in the wind to pass the time.  although there are burrs on my socks and bug bites on my knees, i will continue to wait.  i'll wait for days, for years.  i will wait for you.

There is a certain birdsong I keep trying to capture
I hear it from outside my bedroom windows
It is mesmerizing that I pause
In silence
As if holding my breath will imprint the waves
And commit them to my ocean of memory

Akin to the sound of twinkling
One that escapes from the mouth of babes
As they swing and slide
Glide from treetop to treetop
Glee

I have never seen the source
But I picture it as the accompaniment
Strokes of soprano notes ascending
While branches sway with the gentle amihan
Teeter-tottering, rays of light playing hide-and-seek
It is
Exhilaration
An aria of falling
But never of fear
There is always a safe place to land

A song of trust
The peaks and troughs are golden lilies
Dotting the field of frequencies
Rising above dispatches of uncertainty
The orchestra of engine rumbles fade
This concerto is for the tranquil

This, this is the song of my heart taking flight
In a waltz with the metronome of your love
Sparkling

I try my best to capture this birdsong because it encapsulates best our journey
Giddy but peaceful
Giddy AND peaceful
It is the ballad I am trying to write but to no avail
Nature has registered our love
No mixtape, nor playlist, nor digital recording, nor lyric can impeccably transcribe it
A wordless duet
The Universe sings, all we have to do is listen
And dance to our music

Crescendo, adagio, rest
Always a soft landing