The Simple Trail

The simple trails

I used to follow

up into the open meadows and

wild fields of flowers, bone dry

and desert blue.

I walked those trails with you

one hundred times

or more,

kicking up stones, leaving marks, watching

the sky turn, thinking

not thinking

for once.

They say the trails that

run through the heart

can burn themselves

clean, down to the end

of every bad deed.

But I bet it’s not that easy

to forget tenderness

pain, yours and mine

the open wounds

left by the flames and the

consuming desire

to burn.

I wonder:

Could I stumble

blind

back between all the stumps and roots

of us

and submit again

to the soil

with working hands,

meager rations,

and ask for no more.

Could I finally leave the trails

of my heart

to the rains?

This heaven.
This pervasive, reaching, constant
malignancy
of beauty.
This scarred stretch

of glacier
laying quiet surreal tracks
on the Earth.
The tears
through the soil
aging gracefully, deepening, filling
with rapids, or growing more
and more
dry.
The monstrous wound
of humanity
working against the flames
that burn so hot they
fill the sky,
split oaks in half.

Then, come the seedlings.

New growth
from each catastrophe.
My heart considers this
and sings.

 

Pieces

Giving

something up

of all the things you've collected

in your short and human

lifetime, how much

can you carry 

in your pockets, 

both arms and each finger

wrapped to white

around the precious goods. 

And if you had to 

reach out, break a 

fall, what would you say

to pull each aching finger free,

and how would that weighted cargo 

sound 

hitting the ground, 

and what 

would you pick up

if there was time, 

what would you find

or forgive

or forget 

in return? 

My Practice

That morning

I never heard

the familiar creaks in the floorboards,

the echo of the neighbor

in the hall, rushing away, the quiet

birds building to a colored roar,

only the buzz

of all of my bones,

against the perfect place

of the rain.

That day

I listened

to twenty beating hearts, each

full and impossible, lungs

inflating on last night’s dream, the quick

reflexive swallow

of responsibility. I heard

the distant knock

of depression, letting itself sneakily in,

denial circling in a storm out the

backyard window, the tinkling

of regret threatening

to tear the shingles

from the roof.

That evening

a birth, followed by a

death, both sounding the same,

until all the wailing.

That night

release, listening

to the moon rise

through a cavern of dark,

imagining one thousand whispered

“good nights” along the highways, the

hallways, remembering

the beating hearts

ka kum ka kum, the lungs

filling and filling

on hope, my own quiet rocking

in my parents arms. Like nothing

I have ever heard, like nothing

I ever will.