I stand with my back to the sunset as a crow calls the dusk, the wailing labors of a train cutting through the cyclorama, the day thick with heat my heart thick with smoke. The shadows scramble as the sun goes down, all at once tree tall and crowding the architecture. I settle into my tumble of spells and appetites, burning slow in this iteration of the earth, breathing through the passageways and corridors of the world. I lay out the footwork to a dance that hasn’t stopped for a billion years, thinking of bright blooms and brutal days. In interminable circles and deep machinery I offer up.
You turn and turn in your rips and healings, moving from the heavens to the prayer, moving with the old ones moving with the water. The world wears and tears. A hundred geese just turned northeast, and I think of the windows awake in your direction. The bath time battles, the streaming retreats. Spin a little chrysalis, stitch up a few seems. You attend to what needs tending, your leaps and pirouettes aside. The earth that you nurture has not forgotten.
I smoke just like in all the pictures. I love you just like that cartoon goat. There are places I will always be, things I will always breathe in as long as the breathing keeps. The names aren’t ever so much that you need to say them, but saying them helps somehow. The work of the earth is all of us, we couldn’t keep it to ourselves if we tried. As I carry the torch, so shall I tend the flame. As you mend I feed the fire and the earth. Through the aimless days and towering nights I burn unto.
