on the other side of the window

With rain still visible
the glass wet as a tear-stained face

sunlight pooling in puddles, a gesture -
There are rainbows There are rainbows

and then returning to the cushioned seats,
Picking up the conversation where it left off.

The slow drip of the faucet
in the re-modeled bathroom.  

the root of being

For the sake of weight I move and I address force with reason
I can lift           I can carry      move steel as one      be synonymous
this is the language my body speaks, an ancient tongue of survival, instinct       
I make use; I am taut and poised                                    an arch of light shooting
its way through the limbs of trees carving a trail between      dust motes and dandelions
the expulsion              the exposure                                      the sun                        light is here you can see it by its absence; this energy is gravity’s sister, a familiar face in a crowded room. Steel and dust, both catch the light and dissect space leaving the body as an outline
a compact collection of molecules vying for attention  I am under steel I am under dust and I can breathe, I exhale                                     this is root, rooted
to the being and this is how I run. 

Monarch Butterflies Use the Earth's Magnetic Field

“But tonight we are merely adorned/with the instruments of our deaths.”

                        -Christopher Dewdney

i.            

         

I was a bird, I had wings. Somewhere in the dark folds between the drum of red where light knew no place a body other than this one belonged to me more significantly and moved as I moved so I knew no separation from my limbs, I could not have known any part of my body without knowing the whole, my wingspan so breathtaking it moved grass to bow at my feet; I could take up space and fill it, I could cut air to be smaller, more compact, to move past me and move on; I could fly I had the body of a bird, bones light and full of air, so easy to carry, so easy to crush.

ii.

                  

I can remember when we were just kids that one summer we looked up and the sky that had been so blue was suddenly black and it took us a few minutes before we realized what was happening: it was the migration of the monarchs turning the sky from blue to black in seconds and you and I stood so still, listening to the hum of a million wings beating.

iii.

                

I once read that monarch butterflies suffer losses during hibernation because hungry birds pick through them, looking for those with the least amount of poison but in the process kill those they reject.

iv.

                 

The earth’s magnetic field is preparing to flip, as it is supposed to every few hundred thousand years, as in, it is now long overdue, it’s been almost eight hundred thousand years and no flip but it is beginning to weaken and shift, solar winds are cracking the barriers and animals who use the field for navigation, butterflies, bees, and fish, they will be confused, on the Earth lost, no idea which direction is home.

Except birds, who have hope, who are prepared with back-up systems that use stars and landmarks, including roads and power lines, to find their way and so, we are bringing the birds home. 

Periphery

I am ill-suited for this; I am not of these times of these and the kind
of like two things I am not and then am not. Have I found my voice
this shadow that trails behind me that flickers in the lights of the bedroom
does it sleep – voice, do you sleep? You are so strange. What sleep

Can take me from this what symphony of form that deludes reality
is anything but this. I do not sleep. I tremble the sheets when I clatter to bed
when I fold my feet and tuck my knees: I have a chest full of warm blood and raw
bones crude form that bleaches under scrutiny so weak it is deserted dirt and when

Do you think the rains will come back do you think this drought will expire will I speak in perfect form again I have no voice. Ill-suited and raw as a perfectly skinned peach

Who will take the first bite and swallow down into the magnificent black hollow
where the rot occurs where the sinking of wastes is ordinary and extraordinary is relief
the weight I have dropped, how it hangs from my crooked limbs thin as thumbtacks
what skin here

I am tired but I do not sleep I am tired and not of these places I cannot be, what grandmother mother, do you have to say to me? 

when i think of coming home

It is like this a clenched fist that stinks of love between the fingers
god the warm breast of a mother where a head can rest for just a while
a little while; my body hung out like a skyline naked in expectation
and another body sleeps and another body sleeps and another body

And I want to call back crawl back home but she’s naked too
and the trees are naked and what direction is home if it isn't down that road 

And back to the city with the kind of horizon that keeps factories closer than lovers
that keeps the colours of winter even in the summer, and we came home here
we found another place with that brown linoleum that tiny basement those tiny men
with their big beards and red eyes, how I laugh laugh laugh now the kind of men I could crush

but didn’t I anyway, with my thirteen with my fifteen with my nineteen

clenched jaw like a steeled fist take back what was taken that long highway that short bridge
that lifts out of here that can be walked over that we rode our bikes over and everyone said
we looked like sisters and we biked for hours and I thought, my muscles are exhausted how long
have we been biking how long until we get home this road from one city to the next

Men slapping up against the sides like waves up against dead fish on the shore – they call it
Steel City and the smoke makes it hard to breathe and the smoke fills the small basements
and when they gun their motors, it kicks dirt and dust and I feel that engine between my legs

I hit that ground running and I run hard and I breathe hard and I see you there too like you see me there too so like you you’re angry shaking me wanting me to take any other road than that road
you know it so well shaking me so angry but I am so tired you know we’ve been biking for hours

we can stop, sit on the shore, there are rocks we can skip stones
put our feet in the water just sit still and count the waves
our bikes in the sun, black steel full of heat. 

where i have kept you.

When I loved you, I loved you I held you it was warm and there you were
so expecting of a beginning that you hadn’t even closed your mouth; the steam
from the coffee rose up to my lips but I kissed you I kissed you instead and I took
your hand to lay it upon the different parts of my body you loved I wanted you
to touch. I had you had the shape of a woman, the softness of geography and the way
rocks can be made smooth. I loved you, in the full space of your mouth where I put my breath
and left it there for you to hold, filling all the black that black space with everything I could
pull from my lungs everything I could exhale, you so full of me you could hardly imagine space

Now I know all things about you, what the inside of your mouth tastes like, what the inside
of your body tastes like and then still, I know nothing of the what is left in the end, except
for shadows except for
what we did not say and, how do we say it? 

after the fall

And because it is fall, darkness will shadow the northwest;
and because it is late in this century,
darkness will be in the air you breathe.
And because you are human, darkness
has come from your hand,
your mouth,
and it thickens around your heart
like fat around a liver: you will never
know enough.
For you are alive”

-Jan Zwicky

What light? It is easiest to ask this question at dawn in the late fall
when the sun does not come in until after seven and I sit with the kitchen
dark at my side and the hallway dark at my side and there is light
nowhere.

Just a few days ago, a man jumped from space and broke the sound barrier.

Imagine the light. What would the ground feel like after that, or
being in love or being at all? Imagine the exhaustion. The need
to no longer be part of life. 1100 km an hour rushing towards
what he had left behind. Imagine being the heart of space and earth
for a few moments the core of heat in iced air plummeting
to the ground just to feel once again that there is solid dirt under
your feet and know you have touched earth in a way that you cannot touch
space but you have touched space in the same breath as having touched
earth. Is love better after that or weaker, diluted like sunlight keeping asphalt
on a long highway passing a truck stop between fields of starved grass:
do we keep driving because there is still gas in the tank because we are
facing forward because there is really too much space between us
and the turn-off

Or do we hit the brakes and let the tires spin for a split second a split
second of contemplating death just to feel that close to something just to
get that copper taste in the mouth get saliva at the back of the teeth and clutch
your thighs with sweaty palms knowing that this is what you wanted all along

Is it the same thing, plummeting through light and sound breaking
sound barriers every time you open your mouth hoping against hope thin as a windshield
that it might be the same?