Cry to wind,
Wind to the plain,
Waves to the edge of where we go,
Now extended out to the limits of what we know.

No, nothing.
Passing through, as the fleet footed,
Crops in the rocks and snow.
The deep snow, blue sky sparkle, water held.

Tie the end of your line.
To drop in now over the edge of the quarry
Where the yellow bird trucks did their grunt of smoke
And dinosaur digging,
Where the melt water collected.
Travelers put in for their rooms and meals.
They brush the soot off with boot black for their
Sturdy soled shoes of leather.

As time in the saddle,
Gray rocks of fish or bird backs by the river
Where carrying is the same as washing and
Flowing obeys the entropy of the stony bed and grade.
We are all down hill in our way,
Collected in a little pool to evaporate away.

Say something nice to me and I will say
That the rain comes after the season of snow and
The melt feeds the self-same trickle as the sky cries
And the ground is base to your acid,
Conduit to the earth’s magnetosphere,
Taking measure and direction as the old sailing ship
With her sextant navigator taking a bead on horizon
And moon and the barometric pressure that is the wind
And not the measure of the wind, blowing,
Circling our little boats in the pool where
Three become one and the shine on her cheek
Is the blossom of becoming as surely as
Pain is the sign of another arrival,
A new coming initiate, girl child as good as boy,
Tipple of the wheel with the weight of harvest.

The market gate and the people are open and ready.
Take us and tell us by the hand and feet.
We bend as one self-willed but also self-aware,
Humble at the dead shot of opportunity.
The flock of birds is lifted.
We are alone now.
The crowd, internalized is neutral, awaiting your signal
And from the loin of language, as from the animal world,
The word is “Pounce”. The epithet to sing.

The conjugation of the word is we,
For us to know, to act, to track
The listless surrender to the lair of darkened hearts,
As the pumping lymph,
Their standing shadow of a skeletal past
In the architecture where the Union finds its corner
Wherein to erect the monuments of our granite passion,
The stillness of hearts found wanting,
The pleasures of denial writ large in the fiery orgy of the demiurge
Come nature bound to chastise the rock of seasons and
Turn of world on her thin dimes and
The ends of endless expansiveness as sure as
The Universe once contracted,
As the bomb once manufactured was secure, succulent,
Contained as the pineapple prior,
The big bang after and all the flowing rivers,
The blood and honey and milk of the hearts’
Enormous appetite for company and
Our asking after her as prologue and prelude
Set to the opera stage for what we all know happened once
As the tragedy now enacted for our sorrow’s solace and partner.

Such are the wings,
The time tables of victory and defeat and the stage itself
Set with the next questions of creation.

By Rolf Stavig, 1-17-2021