I wake to find
a silver bar of moon
has slipped between the curtains
to scan me…
Someone knows these answers.
Someone loves this beach
and is known by it
for the press of their foot,
for the skin the sand sloughs off
and mixes with its own.
I go to the earth,
to ground,
to lay down,
place down
all the things I cannot carry.
I gather fallen limbs,
handle lichened bones
with reverence,
returning them
to the base of their tree.
I want to know
what wants to come through you,
what lies waiting?
Today the world is too big
and me, too small in it.
The people, too many,
the problems, too complex…
This morning I
walked in the rain, bleary eyed,
startled a feeding hawk
tore the palm of my hand…
Go early.
Flush blackbirds from hedges,
let the cat find warm trails
of hedgehog, pukeko,
quail…
This is not a nothing day.
The pines are whistling,
cypress trunks squeaking in the wind,
cicadas have started to sing…
No feather will fall in quite the same way;
not in this spot, from that height,
to be caught between two heads of rye…
In this space
between earth and sky,
the here and almost-not,
what moves you?
What will you come apart for?
The shutter opens by degrees,
the thin film peels away
one quarter inch at a time
as it has been doing,
as you have been doing
even as you swear you cannot…
I love your broken edge,
the way you spill into the sea;
with your stalwart cliffs eroding,
you are beautiful…
A life stripped of riches,
a self swept aside for sameness,
barely holds together…
I don’t know,
is what we say
when we do but we’re scared, or
we've stopped listening to ourselves…
We are all ephemera,
all essential,
on this land and of it…
I know you’re tired,
lurching from one exhausted moment
to the next, rushed
through life
like a cloud
at the mercy of the wind…
Sleepless elbows and knees find my hip,
shin, and the tender bone under my eye,
my body remembering a knot of child
kneading my bladder, stealing my breath,
stamping footprints on my belly…