My chest is a clay ***,
The kind with the round body and small mouth that your abuela hangs on the porch
And some obscure thing grows from it,
Brown in the winter,
Green in the spring…
My chest is a clay ***.
It holds in everything it needs to,
And it seems perfectly sturdy,
But when the insides get to be too much,
Or the weather gets to be too bad,
It shatters.

My chest is a clay ***,
And inside it is a growing thing.
I don’t know when it’ll become too much to contain,
Or when I’ll have to reach inside and take some out
In order to survive,
But I pray each day that its chalky exterior doesn’t become brittle
And crack.

My chest is a clay ***.

The rolling hills
Crest and
Dive and
Move like
Oceans,
Covered in armies of trees.

Trees,
Like thousands upon
Thousands of warriors
Made of leaves and
Dirt and
The souls of prehistoric
Insects that may have
Planted them.

The trees carpeting
The thunderous hills
Have a sort of marching
Energy to them.
Like they
Were frozen
In place.

I am reminded of the
Army of terra cotta
Soldiers.
Unstuck in time,
Stunned in space,
They silently guard their own hill,
Crumbling slowly,
Like cheese.

And the terra cotta arms
And the terra cotta legs
Of the terra cotta trees
Are attempting to drag
Their iron roots
Through the hills,
Sinking like lead
Through the earth,
As if it was meant to be the
Ocean it resembled so much.

Maybe,
Armies of troops once trudged
And fought through swamps
As vast
And troubled
As seas.
And a terra cotta war,
Unconqured by
Shattering warriors,
Is left like
Smoldering porcelin,
Still being fought
On the hills
Of Utah.

2.
You can still
See the remains
Of their clash;
You can analyze
Their placement
And movements
Like battlefeild strategy.

You can wonder what
Terra cotta general
Put them there.
Did the trees respect him
As a father?

His tactics
Funneled down to
Swarming like ants
Or dripping like oil.
There is the occasional
Silent,
Lone,
Watchman,
Angled towards the
Power lines,
The coursing blue veins,
And the sky,
Filled with the
Bright and
Rippling trails
Of their valiant enemy.

3.
The terra cotta trees
Give way
To the stone,
Brick,
And steel,
Of an upright man,
Overwhelming white
Against
Overwhelming green
Against
Overwhelming yellow
Against
Overwhelming blue
Against
Overwhelming black.
The people live unaware,
(With meerkat eyes
And posture)
Of the armies surrounding them,
Signaling the dusk of their time.

The trees will outlive us all
By millennia.
Their war will continue.
Our bodies will become
A wave in the hills
That they march through,
A crater in the commander moon,
A foot soldier in their
War,
A leaf,
A branch,
A bird,
Food for a plant
That is food for a squirrel,
Soaked in through
The churning,
Breathing roots
Of the terra cotta trees,
In the living,
Moving,
Tumbling hills.