Diaspora of the leaves now,
The chased and harassed
As the wet always breaks
To something lower, seeping
Toward the center of the earth
For reassurance.

We are still here,
Carrying the heavy lids of fatigue
And the suitcases of having to go,
To flee, to find something new now.
A shallow grave with a stolen marker.
A broken voice with a clay face.

The charm, the votive offering
Flickering at rims of broken glasses,
The books left unwritten.
The higher and the lower wars,
The sands and water go.
Tiny, tiny, tiny.
Receding over the lip of the existing
And in the fall of non-existence,
Seemingly everywhere!

Never the fool of semblance, appearance or becoming
Where the potential probabilities of now
Seem to determine the step of the indeterminate.
The face of her hungry child,
The mist hanging in the light of the waterfall, refracting.
We plan to reflect together-
Ambitious selves to fill our nothing with doings
And time well spent, naturally.
Bounty, harvest, cynicism as the source of individuation.

Question even the question, the questioner,
Let alone the power grid, her quirks and touch.
A bit too early for the light,
We lay back in bed to talk a bit and a bit more.
A Q-bit dream of drunks,
A hand washing for the sleepless,
Wringing out their clothes by the river
And so, standing naked, naturally.
Warm and green was the earth then making us.
Once upon a time, licking her young with a rough tongue.
Bloated, we had to learn surgery and lancets,
Groves for the growth and storage,
Replenishing enough meaning as well.
Carrying on, the loads, miles, amperes, hectares, hands and feet.
We came together in such reflection of power
Like sun and lightning,
Wind and fire as soul mates goading each other on.
Restless babies cry at night.
Stamping feet of the bovines
And the cud and manure and wealth of their blood
In thick, clotted pudding – a treat of intestine and fats-
Putting the cabbage to ferment,
Reiterate our passage – crying at birth,
Falling into the black earth like a plough, a hoe or a shovel.

I cut myself on it, got infected, swollen – unable to digest,
Dead as the wheel, the broken spar left in the tall grass,
Chipped by snowfalls, buried as the silt and the way,
Like the river wends and strays
Like hair on the pillow of the delta,
We talk about it changing up our approach
To be more hospitable.
Including genuflection as an afterthought at first,
Then something more and nothing.

Something she said to me once
That really we need not evaluate our experience- good and bad.
The music is not binary.
The grass lays down at all angles in the Winter.
Beneath the ice, the stream of air bubbles and water gurgle,
Bulbous as a cloud of metamorphosis.
Of motion in sound,
She thought it not worth dwelling so much on what I might say,
So anxious, uncertain of shame and making the impression
Before the nakedness of all and so on so useless…

So like a man to talk all the time and never listen.
So like us to wonder about us even now
Leaving the screen door to swing and bang,
Leaving the turning wheels to make their rhythm and turn
Even where so many lay beneath the stars
With their hands entwined in each other’s hair.
A sort of search,
A recollection of our considerations.

By Rolf Stavig
11/10/2024