For you must make room in your heart
When you settle
Because the land will fill with bones
And everywhere will be sacred
So you can't build a new home
When you set roots you lose your sky
Where God's presence can land
For you must make room in your heart
For those that have no room for you
For your freedom depends on their freedom
I constantly make room for you
We settle like snow on the dedicated Earth
Sky matching the pink roses
The blackberry flowers
We sit here and write
I am already grieving
The bulldozers in my mind's eye
A driveway to a cowfield
You don't realize I mean here
Butterflies in the budlea
Yesterday I saw your ghost
On the way to the cabin
Its ghost deck in the redwoods
Where we snuggled for warmth
Singing Wagon Wheel
Fiddle, banjo, guitar
Wondering how many people
Before the deck falls
(We have all
Fallen already
A long time ago.
We live on
A fallen world)
It's easy if you roll around
Don't plant a garden, set roots
The fruit trees, I moved
Because they were gifted or traded
For goat cheese, my friendship with goats
But I stopped caring for them
Once, I moved with tomato plants
Living indoors with them until snow settled
Outside, eating their sweet gem fruit
In a forest of warm, green smells
We became allergic to them later
I forgave my grandmother sooner
For setting her gardener on my almost ripe corn
And pansies, trundled on trains and bikes
With babies in pushchairs
Because she didn't want us to go
And only told him to dig the nettles
So I'll plant a forever garden
On the page, with seeds of kindness
Your soft blue eyes, grey hair
Pink roses and blackberry flowers
Purple butterflies in the budlea
Nettle green tea smelling of mint
We picked under the apple trees
By the pigsty
Where a myriad squashes seeded themselves
After the pigs were gone
And we can water it with our tears
Or not. Life goes on
After we leave
I sit here and assume
That we're on the same page
Because we wear the same kind of clothes
The same skin, the same age
And I see you a lot
In the same places
At dance, sitting at this cafe
Writing in your Moleskine notebook
I assume we have the same goals
(For the planet)
The same thoughts that we write
I even assume that I know
How we're different
Because I know how I'm different
From this image I project here
You see me look and think
About sitting next to you
But there isn't a chair
And the shade's better over here
You move your chair around a little
To better shade
Or so you're not looking at me
Then get up, move inside
I move to your seat
(Comfier, quieter, warmer)
I see you on my way to the bathroom
Decide, on my way back, to say hi
Find out who you really are
I can't remember if we've ever talked
Or even danced together
But you're gone
We might at least have been friends
On Facebook
Routes and places can be family
As much as faces and thoughts
We mount these slopes like a memory reel
Of other journeys, other friends
We no longer sacrifice humans
To appease the Sun God's wrath
For the moon, his wife, biting his ear
So that the world doesn't end
Instead we sacrifice bits of ourselves, blindly
Giving them over to the daily grind
So that gold flows through the veins of the machine
In the name of Freedom
Does it matter if we know?
The Mayans correctly predicted eclipses
The Incas couldn't. Both made sacrifices.
We wiped them out.
A friend's mom in the path of totality
Sees confused deer grazing by daylight
But no shadow snakes
The fire snake chases her own tail
Ringing the moon
Elsewhere
Here, you teach me to stop
Identify a red-tail, a vulture
And with hindsight, by exclusion
The man-sized condor I once saw
Biking down at sunset with my best friend
The Miwok believed he helped the rock birth
Mankind here at Mt Diablo
But we, raised secular Jews
Simply seek ritual enchantment
Abraham doesn't see the Angel
We opened our eyes at this magnificent view
