dot jot poetry or the things i have thought today

there is a whole universe that i hold between the full moon of my arms reaching together over my head and when my fingers touch each lightly, there is energy; i can feel the roots take place

i fall in love with shapes and curves and it is easy for me to love because it is easy for me to imagine

i love you i love you i love you i love you

i am a tree falling forward i am nearing cement i have rooted my back foot and i will stay in place for years to come

it is okay if i fall out i can get back into form i can 

a mother carries so many things inside of here i understand the name mother nature; the natural mother

as it comes

this great silence of morning is what i cherish the most, the softening of the sky, the ease with which light fulfills expectation, the closest to silence i can get. and though i love the night, we are often at odds. there are many shadows and when the windows are darkened with the exhaustion of having taken so many steps, it makes me worry and i get tired and i get static; i can hardly move. but in the morning there is still a chance, you can see it in the dawning lights of all the other apartments in the back alley - the first cup of coffee being brewed in my kitchen is another first cup of coffee in the kitchen down below across the alley. i can't see the sunrise from my kitchen but i can see the aftermath, the long-reaching streaks of pink and diluted purples; even the chill in the sky is nothing but residue, a calmness to jump from. if i said i wanted to stay here forever, i would be lying because it would turn, as all things do, and the hours come regardless of movement. the earth keeps on spinning so that everything moves, even if i stay still, even if i hold my breath. but i appreciate the mornings, for the idea that all things can be good.

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.