It couldn’t be closer than Mars
these days. First you’re off on a tangent,
then glittering beyond the call
in the backyard to no good effect.
Later when you shrugged you were blue,
I mistook it for “that’s life” not “help me.”
I mistake many things in dusk
like seeing liberty everywhere today,
smallish unacknowledged moments
of door holding, tossing coins
into a worn paper cup, smiling.
To rediscover our neighborhood
one wrapper and bum at a time.
Where am I going with this?
Down to the riverbank to watch the light
dazzle and showcase trees
in all their prehistoric movement.
Two more animals blinking in the breeze.
The guest-host relationship is
bigger than a house, older
than cold planets in space.
One of the earliest manuals
is about the guest-host thing.
Sit down, breathe deeply and
welcome yourselves. If you listen
you can faintly recall the song.
The sweet height of it all
breaking free from a canopy of leaves.
Remember the day
you first took in the night sky?
I mean really let it enter
and unfold along the interior
when the architecture of the body
resembles a cauldron for a dying star,
twinkle twinkle inside, and inside that
a simple hole. So now you know
what it is to be sucking air,
to be walking upright, to love.
Why not enjoy the day,
this moment to moment thing,
and the furnace above sending
you messages: breathe, dummy.
Birds do it and the rest of the ark
all following the great blank of what’s next.
What’s next is courage.
To take it all in and feel it for keeps,
that persons you meet
have a hole too and a twinkle.
Embrace them and have a meal.
Look straight into their impermanent flash,
the nervous-system tic of their talk.
Welcome their knowing
not knowing their coming and going.