I am alive in the night, the night is nothing but rain.
The rain takes its time coming alive, it is a steady motion
and soon as it is living it comes apart. It quarters itself,
and I dive back again, driving along side the river, I jump in.
Umpqua Valley distraction, land without dust. The river runs high,
the rain runs the roof line it drips in the gutter and out back still
the coy fish silently swim. I swim, I swim silently, I imagine the body
of our bodies, I imagine
traction, I imagine depth, I imagine bodyless motion inside the waterless
sea. I imagine what must already be a dream, what must already be night
what must already be nothing. But rain. I imagine a hand, the hand of your arm,
it takes my chin, adjusts me. I imagine being pulled in.
I planned a trip back to where I was from.
I planned a trip back to where I was animated.
I planned a trip back to where I was drawn to life.
Land of moss on trees. The moss laces deep things out of me
I will never know. The moss drapes from trees and curls itself
into my toes. The moss dances down the stream. Dancing stream comes
from high tops of mountains where alder trees and first growth haven’t been born.
Sunlight stays there in the grass at the tops of mountains. Peregrines and hawks live
and shriek in circles imagining the sky. In the middle of the forest deep the air stays
under canopy, has a dream of sunshine and a meadow it never sees, it does not realize
it is dreaming itself. It does not realize it is dreaming nothing. The night is not animated
with anything but the night, the reflection of itself on itself. Voidless. The void with void
makes it without nothing, makes it without itself. Makes it eat itself, devour itself whole.
The night eats itself, because it is nothing, so too the dream dreams itself and makes it go away.
The meadow eats itself, eats elk, eats mice, eats snake and small beetles that burrow in dry dirt,
they never see the sun. The water makes its way all back to the yellow flowers of sawtooth.
Bath of river, bath of moss, bath of lichen and green algae so dark it looks like blood attached to,
dancing from the stone.
The same nite as our friend M’s death
I set the map about me on the counter. It was a map with lots of green.
It was a map I had little trouble trying to read. It was laid out before me
like a broad highway with easy lights and no traffic and the places to stop
already computed in to my autopilot vegetable mind. The mind part that knows,
knows how to drive, knows how to switch gears in rain coming down no matter
the foreign town, the mind part that knows how to ease up on the gas, slow down
with out brakes, how to make room for other drivers on the road. Molly died.
She was a sailor, a sailor, alone on the east coast, on an eastern shore of an east coast town,
a poet, a poet alone on a wordless continent in a voiceless town, she was a sailor poet magi,
a sailor poet magi god who died alone because she didn’t think she could die alone.
Is she dead? The bird outside the harbor asked the sea. Is she dead? The yellow sawtooth
from the high desert somewhere above Willamette poured out the side of a flat mountain wall
and asked me.
I went down to the bay, Winchester, to see for myself.
Molly, are you dead?
I lay down, see, your heart floats out on to the top of the sea.
I imagine being pulled in. I followed the Umpqua up from the sea, I followed the river up from the bay,
I followed the bird down to the harbor the harbor followed my longing out to the sea. I imagined you,
I imagined us, I imagined us naked as one string of water endlessly running inside the stream our bodies twirled together like sound, like invisible light that only water can see. I imagined you glowing, I imagined you naked, streaming and twirling alone inside of me. I imagined you hard, hard like mountain, hard like stone, hard like the hole the water pours out from on the side of the road. We were invisible to the other because only invisibility can see itself, can see the nothing in itself. We were invisible to the other. I came here came back from here back to where I was drawn to life. Water poured out from me, water poured out from the sky. I poured out from me, you were there. You were not there. I asked myself where you were, where you went. You said where I do not know. I came alive then, to the nothing, I came alive in the nothing in you.
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