for Isa
My ears or a field of ears I lie on the couch and dream of low grasses my back a weak margin steered off course into an ocean so placental I barely recognize the form hear me do you hear me? my mind empty except for the hum of the refrigerator in another room I hum back a little song to a child not yet here a vibration of tiny feet that make their way through the desert to lie down beside me a life that knows only simple crises instinctive grief and unbreakable wisdom
The trees hold each other underground sharing bread and important statistics a net that binds the planet they keep their secrets out of sight a knowledge understood only by the burrowers ants and earthworms moles and kangaroo rats they give nothing away and fall asleep to the whispers of the soil
Hidden stones our escape from the dead makers of dead makers who inform us that our tree is not a tree our river not a river they say that the roots and honey all belong to them even death and the cold hearts of cold teeth I am distracted by snorts and kitchen sounds a burp and a scented candle by a child who hears a terrible noise as the planet falls away
We walk into the desert to lay intention for our tiny distillation and allow ourselves to believe in another future we stand on a narrow crest overlooking an old stone house close our eyes to call in the spirit of who is to come I begin to sing as a cardinal flies across our path surviving drought where even the prickly pear shrivels across the desert and only the youngest saguaro remains plump enough to find its first sky beneath mesquite or palo verde nurse trees older than their centenarian fosters some spatter-white droppings remind me how often things fall from the sky and ask us to embrace them before they land
I peer into a deep-brown portal to see a tiny fox with russet fur and raccoon eyes staring out from a wood-paneled room it perches above me on a shelf when suddenly it jumps in reflex I open my arms to catch the weight of a newborn the fox does not seem afraid I walk him to the door as soon as I put him down he runs to the pine trees at the edge of the snowy land
A parakeet sings in my grandmother’s yellow kitchen her wallpaper cheery with silhouettes of carriages and ladies in wide skirts abandoned in the mountains they rest by a warm fire in a cavern beaded and woven with a seven-haired sword a stepped scale inside a resonant fundament
I skip the 3rd dimension no depth perception except in some 2d relation to another thing it’s how I drive eyes on the white stripe at the side of the road knowing just how far to keep the stripe from my wheels but the 4th dimension is something I can smell and taste slipping in and out on Gemini flights leavings everywhere I smell of fox urine ubiquitous and protective tree urine bee urine type a and type b as in vitamin b urine
I throw balls high over the fence I thought I knew someone out there remember their lips on my neck I watch foxes slide skinny through a tiny hole past the border where steel spikes sink deep into the earth and keep out jaguars and humans rivers and mules I bury my hand into letters I do not write and see a naked mewling thing lying in the mess of every brief magic
A wolf puppy called Zhùr1 57,000 years old found in the thawing permafrost of the Yukon red fur long enough to caress and groom so wet I can smell her soft pelt through the screen sweet like corn chips she’s brand new and prowls just outside the door eagerly sniffing for leftover fish she watches us for signs as the solstice carries her loping across one great moon to another I like to believe you are right about all how the fiddlehead wraps itself around a new child like a golden scarf no grief just one great star a river of quickening as common and continuous as a rush of night air
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1. Amy Woodyatt, “Ancient wolf cub found ‘perfectly preserved’ in Canadian permafrost. We even know what it ate.” CNN.com, 21 December 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/americas/frozen-puppy-yukon-intl-scli-scn/index.html. “The creature, named Zhùr by the local Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation people, was discovered in the Klondike goldfields, near Dawson City, by a gold miner, who was water blasting a wall of frozen mud.”
