SCHOOLED

Let the living wonder

within you

be mesmerized

by the minnows

shoaling their silver

beneath the wooden

planked pier. 

Watch them make 

pattern after pattern 

from their schooled light.

Let their movement,

their shimmering beauty

pull you into the limpid lake

as if into a dream.

Stay under and in it

until you become

the movement, the beauty,

and the light.

When lifted up and out

of the undulating waters,

may you emerge not drenched 

and nearly drowned

as some might have feared,

but alert and alive,

pure and proud,

almost transluscent

before the sun—

showing the world

what it looks like

to be a boy

and a body cleansed,

naked of shame.

BEFORE THE FIRES COME

     after David Elliott

Gather and grow.

Gather and grow...

Until every part of you

—bark, branch,

heartwood, and sap—

is bursting with presence,

with a listening

older than the languages

that first began to reach

for something larger

than language itself.

When you are this presence, 

the complete 

embodiment of it,

send all you have gathered

into the fibers and rings 

of your being 

on to the seedlings 

before the fires come.

The secondary succession, 

the forests of the future, 

depend upon it.

EXTINCTION*

Imagine a listening

tons deep and wide.

A listening that hears

for miles and miles and miles.

A listening that breathes

underwater. A listening

when erased

leaves a hush

that can never be filled.

There was just such

a listening, once upon

a time. It lived 

for twenty-seven years

after being discovered.

Then, was hunted 

into oblivion. 

Its name is mute 

in my mouth.

My tongue, 

its dead dialect.

* What was the listening?

THE MISTAKE

When the tool you’ve been carrying

longer than you can remember

is mistaken for

a winnowing shovel,

you will know it is time

to set that tool down for good.

You will know it is time

to let the chaff fall from

the grain of your life.

That it is time to trade in

all your warring 

and wayfaring ways

for a modicum of peace

and time with the ones you love.

Be sure to thank the stranger

who made the mistake.

Be grateful you happened upon them

in a place so far inland

that the place knew nothing of

the sea, boats, or salt.

Be grateful for the stranger’s

poor vision, which was really

a prophecy remembered.

Do all this and then

you can really go home.

THE APOLOGY

Every time

the apology

rose up inside

it came with 

the pronoun “I.”

I’m sorry.

The “I” 

was the problem.

Its very presence

negated the apology

and felt like a sign 

of disrespect.

The “I” introduced

a self that was

separate from the rest.

It stole from the village,

from the one breath,

from the one beating heart,

from the garden.

It tore its precious root

from the grandmother tree. 

The only way

to create harmony,

to reconnect to

the spoked wheel 

of light again

was to say:

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Only without the self-

serving “I”

could there be

the possibility

of the altar of “us.”

THE LAKE (expanded)

Safety is a lake

we bring our canoes to.

You and I and the others

will meet at the bank.

We’ll wade into the water,

walk our boats 

out and away 

from the shoreline,

push off, hop in

and in time 

slowly lay 

our soft bodies down

into the ribbed embrace 

of our storied vessels.

We are not oarless

in an open ocean. 

We are held

in a lake. 

This lake: intimate, 

still, contained. 

On our backs, we give 

ourselves over 

to the vaulting sky

as the day dims,

darkens, deepens,

as the stars come out

to play. We are drawn 

into the wash 

of the Milky Way.

Lost inside its silky veil,

we imagine ourselves

constellating back 

into a singularity 

that was once our source. 

The glimmering infinities above,

seen with our astronaut eyes,

are also, we know, below,

beneath us, they buoy us up

in the mirroring waters 

we glide through. 

The cosmos, Creation itself, 

is all around.

Separately and yet together,

we drift in this lake,

in this rippling circle of safety,

held in the Here and Now.

Cocooned in self-compassion, 

and community, 

we vessel deeper 

into the medicine

and healing waters 

of belonging.