seeds

telling secrets underground, deep marshes, in caves, surrounded by unending ocean, tall waves, men in fishing boats, huge nets... they catch and they catch and finally as the fish move on they get in the truck and drive through the hills and then through the mountains back to their families on the high plains, back to the land of wind and sun and cold. they bring dried fish and grain and seeds and blocks of salt. they wait through the winter, they hibernate and then wake and drive back to the shore.

the heat mixes with sweat mixes with glare on the water, staining their eyes a deep dark color, the color of coffee, raised in the hills, where trees shade precious harvests that once fell to the ground unripened, when deep dark yellow clouds covered the earth and forecasted a year of no shadows, a year of thick impossible air, a year of stillness and doubt.

in the end a single white flower rose and bloomed into a field of bare earth, a single white flower with pink stripes, a single white flower that belonged in the deep thick forests of the old world, once kissed by a young girl in a pink dress, once provider of hydration, once blessed by a saint. the petals fall softly, the leaves wilt back, the seeds spread in the field and are sown.

road trip

we sleep soundly, dry throat, wet eyes, tears coming easily in the cold morning, in the cold overcast morning waiting for sunlight. but the clouds thin and clear out, the wind dies, the heat comes and sand swirls around our feet, building into dunes and eventually deserts, and again it is cold as ice in the darkness, many stars up above. we wander, grateful for our mysteriously intelligent animals who can sniff out the water so we may not drown in dust. we wonder, grateful for our inquisitive minds that are never idle, so that we may not disappear in the wind. and we wait, we just follow the path, we stopped looking for the end of the desert, the far off city of gold.

we sit down and sink in and it is mud and we are dissolving like a sugar cube in a cup of bitter coffee on the stained counter of a diner by the side of the road on a long stretch between cities. out where someone is always coming and going and speeding toward their destination unable to think about this barren beautiful land between, populated by hawks, and scrub, and hills, and the occasional row of power lines or cellphone tower.

there is service here and you call while i am stopped for gas in the middle of the night and you probably have something horrible to tell me but it seems meaningless out here, at night. it seems forgotten. it seems light weight and wispy. it seems like you might have said something but you don't and we hang up and i get back in the car and keep driving.

Chicken.

Chicken, fickle chicken. You run about spouting some fantasy, some wish-dream-hope. Run away and down corridors of foreign cobblestone streets, crooked buildings looming, looking, hoping you might trip and fall. And if you do you duck and roll, under a desk abandoned on the sidewalk, transformed to snow and ice, a whirlwind of cold. And suddenly you are still a centerpiece in a deserted square, watching newspapers blow around under the thickest overcast sky. Like it happened after all. Like we really did end up leaving, faster than we came, in one violent moment.

i am a glass jar

temper
tempered

sheltered
shattered

heated
spilling

splashing
crashing

we inflate