Submerging, summersaulting within and without the rudder of the culture
To Petrie me, another Juvenal, another Maltese sunbathing on the rock of wrecks.

Gas up you million minds on the march.
Respect your mother, your earth, your life line that is dangled inside yourself
Hoping against all odds like a big fish in a circumscribed sea.
The waters splash at the edges.
We sip at tea, or even with coffee, we are weak,
Which is maybe the point of the much vaunted vulnerability
As the Golden Road to the subconscious.

The palpable real in every dream’s decision to pursue, turn or retreat.
She re-tweets and the sweet ambrosia nectar is next a peach frothy cocktail
With ginseng and stimulant to rouse the army of our cells, who most agree,
Do not get our just deserts and respect.

Our trillion cells and the true individuals combing and coming together for our own,
Each her individuality.
Funny how it works, screaming hair child on fire like the mountainside,
The forest and the suburbs all rising the grey cumulus clouds of smoke and mist and
Water like a recipe for origins and myths and gods, but it is only us
And our armies of a trillion souls turning over their red blood cells and neurons every 7 days
Or something to make us new again, asking the same questions of self and doubt.

The same grey dish water, bath water, grey treated water in the pipes of vast cities,
Rich but insufficient to meet the needs of so many.

Control your blood pressure, your cholesterol and the rising plaque of dementia camping
On the margins of great, safe places.
Places for bridges to the true earth wealth of the South
Where the lush indigenous might save us if they don’t become us
With a ravenous slash and burn mentality.
It is mentally I am talking about.
Both above the surface, dressed and ready and below,
Where the inky waters trace the lava tube caves
Like a tattoo artist looking for a line and finding veins full of blood,
Red land pouring volcano like into the smashing sea,
Like a seam we imagined within us that might save us
Or give notion to the end of things and the revelations of emptiness and
All who contain the Lord of the Meeting Rivers,
Just below the surface of the real like the aorta beating even in our sleep,
Like propriosensing of our feet,
Even in desperate times finding place of next step or advantage in demise,
Some strange calculus of the quanta and the numen and the mind.

Bottled and sold
But still the rushing rivers of the South pour over the gorge and fall, free fall
As water in air, a cloud I mean and the drift of mind so gently over
The verdant, immature landscape of our hope.

By Rolf Stavig 5/21/2023