There’s no bottom to this marsh.
I’ve seen shadows of monster carp,
and swarms of giant catfish.

I’ve seen an eagle drown,
and water snakes swim
into the unknown.

Divers go down
and never come up.

Those who survive
say there is a darkness down there
that’s hypnotic—

a black diamond gleaming up,
like a lake in the marsh
with endless shores,
its own sky and clouds,
a sunrise from another world.

And how deep that lake goes—
nobody quite knows.
They call it a black diamond—
rarer still than any gem.

Take me to the water’s edge
and scatter my ashes there.
I’ll be part of Lake Erie happily,
laughing in its waves.

Take me to the water’s edge
and hold me above its light,
like my father held me as a child
and continues to in my memory.

The sun and water—one element
in the fabric of those first sensations.
Like being born out of eternity,
I was also drowned in eternity.

Scatter me kindly when I’m gone.
Drop me in Lake Erie’s waves,
release me into that material light—
I’d rather be home than away.

The path through the forest
winds in and around the trees,
circling into distance—
going everywhere and nowhere.

Trails veer into singing meadows,
and here and there
a footbridge spans burbling streams
where worries flow away.

A snail migration is its own duration,
a slow unfolding measured by itself.
And the forest snakes you see
conceal what they reveal at length—
like the indigo buntings
who lie to your eye.

You breathe something greater than air
amid all this flourishing.
It’s in the breath of the forest
to be dying into so much life.

Stay longer, and the shadows
gown you in regal attire.
Bees carry a crown to your head—
I am father of the forest.

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The herds will run straight off the cliff,
into oblivion.

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Passing the limits of feeling at all,
you can go anywhere, without fear.

after Gil Scott-Heron

Living in the void, living in the gaps.
Dying in the void, dying in the gaps.
Rioting on the news, dying in the news.
Killing for the news, living through the news.
There are two ways to get where you’re going,
but you don’t have to take either.
You can be your own person.
You can’t be your own person.
Accept defeat, accept victory.
Straddle the gaps, don’t fall in.
Don’t let the sides choose you.
Don’t let them shoot you down.
Don’t carry their hatred in your heart.
You’re only dying in the gaps.
You’re only falling through the cracks.
Riots in the streets, war in the Middle East,
war in Ukraine, famine and the inhumane.
We’re living in the gaps, stranded in the gaps,
drowning in hatred and unhappiness.
Politicized puppets, lost in information gaps,
with inconclusive raps and toxic apps,
hating each other, deluding each other,
murdering one another, murdering our brothers.
You can’t hide in the gaps.
You can’t last in their death-traps.
We only just survive in the cracks.
We always get caught in their traps.
We are strategies on an economic map.
We are saps eating their scraps
that fall through the cracks
and drift down into the gaps.
We are races all in collapse,
pitted against each other in the gaps.
We’re falling into the gaps.
We breathe the bad air of their gaps.
We gasp for breath; we gasp for breath.

Why this sudden cessation of wind
that stops me mid-stride
like a green wall of silence—
a hush that halts the forest’s breath
and presses deep within myself?

Not the peace that surpasses all,
not the bold silence of being alive,
nor the breathing of a statue—
this silence is something else,
a waiting, a holding,
where leaves and tendrils
and the fecundity of life
linger in quiet suspense.

Birdsong threads the spaces,
seeding time with delicate light—
and I stand still,
caught between the breath of the world
and the hush inside.

Today will never end
Cottonwood seeds drifting
Today will last forever
Cottonwood seeds still afloat
This moment requires
No more moments
This now is now and now once more
Cottonwood seeds afloat
It’s all in the weightlessness of change
And changes that keep changing
Becoming one reality
Of a never-ending moment
I feel it now and again now
Like a joy that exceeds time