after the wake

Leaving the end of things,

I drove fast in the Spring's wet,
the early dark | night wicking from its nest
under earth's thin skin | your coffin
its Pendleton lining | warmed
by your decomposition |
cut grass along the cemetery road
oregon grape cowering
somewhere under the vanished day |
the blossoming rain
a slow fuse igniting the rising, night
a glittering fire | headlights | tongues
to water, and the burning skin of the falling,
window wide | what remained of your hair
wrapped in fur and tied, but mine
unravelled in the reckless wind,
threaded, not by hide strings,
but by the beating air |
at the wake others sang your songs |
here on a roaring car, the whinging of wire,
an old antenna under too much strain





















the dandelion girl

with the Tammy Faye eyes,
the bleached white of her hair akimbo
outside the train station begging
amongst the passers-by

her small pocked face,
eyes underlined with yellow glitter
begin to roll back,
tipping against the winds of the day,

her unsteady gait, and in this
first warm wind of spring
the long green of her coated body
topples, her white hair flying
on the winds of too many refusals

proximity

here.

this.

self directive: stand in Spring and, still, face
green-rage whiskey-sap and blood,
the lamb born, and the bleat,
the edible leaf and flurry
__hungers, for milk, for flesh
__for the bud's painful burst

Is this calendrical rush of sap and serum life?

Lamb and Ewe, oxytocin and milk drop,
love. Between them and me
the arc of a green field
in flower, and yes, a linguistic gulf
between bleat and poem
__but not between our biology;

her cell and mine run the same way.
Electron ladders and ATP; proton pumps and polymerase.
There in the cell wall, the open mouth of a transport channel,
the plink, plink of some molecule or other
and another
well fed cytoplasmatic organelle.

Then there's the question of story.
Those narrative architectures__
Ewe's hungers and mine are chemical stories,
here__ with this__
articulation of need _&_ fear of death,
chemical proximity drives our bodies,
impels our stories about how things are.

At the edge of Ewe's field:
there are worlds of differing desire that link us.
Arc and angle, molecule and neuron, spin out a twisted tale__
knitted of her breath and mine. Glorious.
But it's just one, that story, and oh,
so dependent on where
we both stand.

Dependent on here.

But what from the edible leaf?
That dandelion blade standing green between us.
Ewe's food and mine,
achene blaze, sun-devouring
lion's-tooth-leaf-mouths,
cytoplasmatic streaming,
DNA zipping and unzipping,
and all pushing
the windy rush to fly.

How distant a star is that really?
Even in winter__the plant's latex river,
& root's gorge on summer
sun, sugars stored, leaves remain a fierce rush
of electrons, like Ewe and I, we are atoms,
a complex molecules' storm

__how is that not as fierce as the hungers
Ewe and I share in a calendrical spring?

Relationships rage at the (sub)
cellular: our essential needs,
food, warmth, animals birthing,
meaningless twaddle.
At the edge
of a cell wall we are about shape,
molecular orientation, ionic
and covalent bonding:
chemical allure.
Attract: repel.
This determines reality.
Life is dependent on this.

And that__
(sub) atomic particle.

And still,

even with the neutrino, there is the question of story.

self directive:
stand in Winter
and, still, face