There is no magic to closing your eyes and breathing after awareness.
The cat looks back, the longing lines up.
Telomere of ancestry gobbled by current demands.
Damask, light
Rat let out from the bag,
Chase your flea bitten ideas around the yard,
Wearing a cardigan against even the hint of weather.

Dinosaurs, we are met with bones and bricks and loans and promises.
The oil must stay in the ground.
Sleeping, Poincare, Clemenceau, Rousseau,
Names dropped, obliterated.
Diffident in distress, less talkative, easy to anger,
Defensive as victim of prior perceived and real assaults.

The unperceived assaults on the mind are the most damaging,
Leaving us blinded and back at the start
Feeling sullen anger and the loopy slur of drunkenness pushing hooligan claims
And the solidarity of blunt categories made posh and real as a nose bleed
Or a mounted kill.

Horns of moose, antler of the antelope, necklace made of bear claws,
Head dress, feather cape, cave warrior honoring the dead.
Dip us in your deep time.
Have us understand our frailty, brevity, impact and death.

Knowing is to love but misunderstanding is far more common, more hurtful and sure.
Concentrate, stay awake walking in the woods.
Talking with the ancestors dressed in the purplish mud,
The belt of shells around the ocean of the world touching all shores,
Rolling up the sleeves of wonder, under the bedclothes
When the open windows or roofless sanctuary vents the day’s heat
For the night’s cool and fragrant breezes from having rained.

Rain on us as we wait like corn,
Or swell like the starving or the over ripe, unpicked tomato,
Desiccating our minds with want of the laughing bees of togetherness.
Not a contest, not a shout,
The bottom lands by the turn of creeks
That flooded and spread the high silt to the low ground
Like a calendar of stars for the planters to follow.

Our own bead on the true North trends Westward and
In the deep snow darkens the tent flaps
As the inches accumulate a weight
Of slightly suffocating but seemingly harmless snow.

By Rolf Stavig,
9/4/2022