Tag: environmental writing

the soil beneath your fingers

and here in the winter sun and the August wind which today is gentle, you are seeking more gentleness, gazing at the sprigs of lavender and the tuber leaves extending their tendrils from the damp soil and

though the arugula has gone to seed before its time and the terracotta planters are cracking at the edges, the yuccas are still reaching-

this is a planet of reaching-

and here in this nation of fire and flood and medicationtokeepmovingmovingthemachine

you are scanning for kindness, and you’re not fit to be around people today, not fit for anything but staring and scribbling

calloused fingers moving through a medicated mind, and you can press word to page, soil into pot, metal string to note and your fingers are moving and

your eyes, they’re scanning for kindness

beyond your medicated mind and beneath your fallow fingers you are searching

for signs, for earth speak to whisper,

rest child,

here, here in the dirt, amongst the trellis of youthful climbing peas and purple lettuce gone to seed,

there is softness here,

there is beauty here in the breaking and the reaching and the dying and the living

look child,

the soil beneath your fingers is nothing but kind.

The Wayfarer

Soul weary. She feels it all.
beneath her worn sneakers and too high arches, 
a quickening. The earth’s arrhythmic pulse. 
They who follow her shallow footprints
gouge their own eyes and 
plead congenital blindness.
Along the cobbled path,
she becomes reluctant mother
to adult children.

Soul weary. No annual or 
compassionate leave to grieve
ecological collapse, her country a crematorium for
marsupials and monotremes she never knew,
folding into burned scrub, while birds fall
featherless into a reverse phoenix fire,
each species’ death
a faded footnote 
of Anthropocene history.

Soul weary. They call her way-shower instead 
Of wayfarer, 
But they’ve always pronounced
her name wrong, those who plug
their ears and cry deafness.
those who follow but forget they have feet. 
All she ever wanted
was to travel buoyant
in a worldspace so dense 
that any light is victory.

Soul weary. Let her rest a moment, 
let her crawl into the undergrowth of the casuarina 
cathedral, a dying mammal seeking solace 
in 
a 
narrow 
space.
And may the Cormorants 
and Great Egret, which sit atop this pine steeple
wake her from deathless sleep.
Otherwise, let lichen spread skin-wise, 
let blood turn to algae
and fungi cushion her feet.

Evolution

She sleeps with an imaginary violin

tucked beneath her left chin.

In the morning her neck is redwood and

after the camphor oil rub,

 she is a eucalypt on fire.

Her hands too, are changing,

Left hand cupped, each finger extended from

The palm and not the joint.

Wire printed fingertips calloused flat, feel nothing,

In the quest to hear everything.

And there’s the way she folds into its timbre

Into the vibration where horsehair meets wire

And there’s the way her bones calcify into bow,

Her arm a branch bent slightly to catch the

Light and beat.

And there’s the way she would like to nestle into its hollow

and after a minim, emerge transformed-

beyond the captured staves, beyond the renaissance rules-

to play reels beside the slowing river,

beneath the buttress roots and shedding bark

to beckon life back from forever death.

Let her practice on a promise to the earth:

Maybe, maybe we can change-

Lift a key, raise an octave.

Let us practice at humanity.

Listen, the rhythm will come!

Intonation scratchy then smooth then scratchy

Then smooth until finally

New muscle memory will form.

Practice more.

Practice better.

Practice in the hollows where sound is born.