Pull a string from anywhere if it is all connected anyway,
Projection I make dim as slides on the screen
Of science and her quantum flux, nuance of war
And clean rooms publishing that next graves are lined with silicon
Just as the sands by the sea are pounded to shiny grains
In the waves and the night caps catch the spray, breaking
In moonlight like the lovers at the outdoor table
Paddling their talk upstream.
Please talk to me little wave making its way across the lake,
Is it Robert Frost or some other who heard the break on the far shore
And waited for reply?

Great motions have been afoot and making us
Like the ancestors, unknown in the survival striving.
Act accordingly says the rapper on the stage,
Blessed sage, numinous, cracks in the dark ceiling of space
Await the meteor, the eons traveling
As distant and endless as those passed from the far shore of death,
Not able to whisper anymore of consciousness than
The breeze or the wrinkles on the lake, the lines on our lady,
Her face and eyes saying to me,
Of more, of less,
Of stretching the hearing dome for the faintest sound or photon
Of distant light to reach this place in me
Like all of the dirt and contest of the daily grind reaches me
With its chatter of demanding contrasts.

Tell me of your ethics with greater silence.
I have heard enough and the trials and the learning
Are over rated for the tattling proverb of shores and light.

Silence, darkness,
All of one
Be it dog sense, blare or
A timely look over the tables between us.
Over the saga that shapes us,
Bruises the land
And with each other we go short, bitten, aging.

The Fall grass gives up one color for another,
Gracious number full of thanks.
I spent the evening thinking of my father and mother.
The most beautiful thoughts I could muster
About time and their childhood
And the grandparents hanging around home.
That slim chance of you and me meeting.
Curled up for warmth as against each other
And at the far end, where the animals are gathered,
A lot more could be said of food and warmth
And the shifting feet of ones, once wild like us.
Defined as by circumstance rarely freed.
As by aspiration, restless, breathing, planning
Not much time to disagree,
Endless time united in a unanimous majority,
Another push of the forces up against our frailty, our inability
And the gasses that seep from long abandoned mines.

Shattered tibias, sprained thumb,
The strong made useless by the misspending of their passion,
Their infinity boxed like a cell,
With a foil throw away blanket that is no comfort.
A gleaming throw away sentence of 70 years to life.
Someone ate the key
And the search through everyone’s guts to find it is bloody
And what do you say to the innocent,
Cut open and bleeding for something they don’t have.

We all have it in us,
The tripe of the trope, digestion,
Making smooth pearls of gall and Calculi
That clogs the renal tubules.
No one can live without it,
That billowing blue sky touching our lungs with oxygen,
Touching our minds with a daily practice of freedom.

By Rolf Stavig 10/16/23, 10/30/23