Trinity

We Listen

No Burnout in the Canyon

Even when you think you returned to the start, the top of the inverted mountain, two mile switchbacks to go. Leg muscles ache, burn, dream a way out. The fullness can’t keep you forever. Please tell where you want us to place the muscles after the hike’s complete, and no one wants to hear the stories any longer. When that happens, you’ll know. No burnout in the Canyon. Life requires it. Evolution. Genetics. Nothing but fire and ice, pending the season. We tell it like it is. Before the sun sets, we’re in the dark, hidden by tree leaves and needles over Labor Day Weekend. What can we do but hike? We must take the land back from the government and return to earth her belongings, missed since 1910, the inauguration of fire suppression.*

how can we detour

the asphalt leaves the roads paved

monsoon landscape breaths

I Wear Moccasin Shoes

I wear moccasin shoes.

I wear moccasin shoes, and I’m a bit tribal.

I wear moccasin shoes since everyone wants to be a cowboy.

I wear moccasin shoes to promote my history.

I wear moccasin shoes as I open my heart to my eyes.

I wear moccasin shoes to tell you what I think.

I wear moccasin shoes to tell a story, like when I was ten

I traveled across the landscape and found a meadow with my dog.

We played forts. For just a few moments and hiked back,

as hiking, like playing Legos and swimming, entertained.

Playing forts bored, like not taking control.

I wear moccasin shoes to quiet my steps, as spiders do trembling

across walls.

I wear moccasin shoes every chance I get

I wear moccasin shoes.

I wear moccasin shoes, no socks, as the leather warms my feet.

An Elegy on Paper

For Phillip Levine

Like a phoenix who returns

and keeps returning

in memory now

more so than a month

or two down the line

as what happens with our own

grandparents,

but this is a friend

who’s been alive

as we’ve been alive at the same time,

during the same time frame,

the same time frame as flowers

frame a face and then

begin to wilt and slowly

remove themselves

from the center of the table,

to the outer edges of the kitchen,

until their faces don’t glimmer

any more. We look out and see

snow covering the ground

of any city we might live in,

and as we see the prim white

snow first falling

after the cars have had time

to dwell for a few days,

the dark dirt of tires

wears away the glow.

When we think and mourn

the loss of someone so near

to us, the ache of kinship

exists beyond family,

or is family for as long as one loves.

We think of flowers as poems growing

in botanical gardens

or gardens across the world

and see a hand caressing them

with a simple touch

and sending one down the river

catching the light

at the end of any happy day.

Trinity