Somewhere a young girl is looking up and sees a sky elk
in the stars.

Next to the elk is a grove.

And next to the grove is a family of trees.

This is all happening inside the inner skull of the Creator
that is the sky.

The stars twinkle and burn brighter or lighter
to express themselves.

And we watch their star light communicate, and light up
other parts of the sky world.

Because we have this beautiful vantage-balcony of the sky
from here on the earth.

And we know the elk, and the grove, and the trees made of stars are alive just like us.
And they have their own lives to live and things to care for.

They have their own things that make them laugh and that make them cry,
and their own way of singing and dancing.

So tonight we look for the elk, and send our thoughts, which are words without sound
that carry massive amounts of energy and meaning up into the air.

And those thoughts travel to the antlers of the elk, walk down the antlers,
and ask for permission to enter the ear of the elk.

And if the stars that are the antlers light up, it means
the elk has given permission to the ears to listen.

So you and the girl are now both telling the elk, that you see next to it a beautiful grove, and beyond that grove is a family of trees.

You tell it in your own way—
and the two tellings complement one another.

That’s when all the stars that are the elk-body begin to light up and shimmer.
And the hair across the elk’s back feels warm and good.

Because what you conveyed connects the unspoken worlds
of the sky and the earth.

Because the Sky and the Earth are lovers
from two different places.

And the elk may agree to watch over you and your people
for the next season of time, as it walks across the sky.

And the elk asks to sing to you a song.

And do you hear the elk make this ask?

And the song is about what was told to the elk
from the other side of the universe, from another faraway vantage point.

And from there, the same stars align differently
so that the family of trees is in the foreground,
and behind the trees is a grove,
and behind the grove are the eyes of the elk.

And everything lives inside the thing before it,
from this point of view.

And this is the same song the elk sings
that traveled safely through those things.

It’s in the air now.

Making its way to you.

Tell her to wait for me
Tell her I’ve traveled inland
And like the old travelers
I pray for this place called home

Tell her that I’ve bent down to build a boat
I am looking for the tree to hollow the body
I am looking for the hands to scrape the paddles
I am looking for the lake of glass to glide out into

Tell her I’ve been watching the running water
And I think that if I lay in the stream
The water will round out
My chipped edges

Tell her if I return alive
I will be carrying the ashes of my boat
And together we will float them out
Across our garden

My body’s geometry aches.
There are a hundred miles of captivity inside.
This junglized-desert is a rainstorm in reverse.
I’ll take the willow tree bowing; be it oasis or not.

I say to myself, “soft eyes.” I say it as soft as I can.
I crack open the bottle and drink the poetry.
I see in double helix. The Earth is breathing.
Treading lightly, I do not pretend to be drunker than I am.

These geese are graceful white wind chimes.
The swan is a singing corridor of cottonwood.
The hummingbird flies through a thousand falling knives.
There is a raven in my ribcage outsmarting me.

I out think myself Baba. That is my problem.
My arms brace the ledge like claws of a suspension bridge.
I think; I will be here for a while. I think about what forever will do to me.
I am so used to bracing us, that when I try to sit straight, I lean over.

I have faulty logic. And beautiful dimples.

How much love could a lover love
If a lover could love love?

I sing again,

How much love could a lover love
If a lover could love love?

There is a great yearning in me to speak to the water.
I crack open the poetry and smash the bottle.
There is beach glass in your garden.
Staggering home, I am so full of love that I can not walk straight.

Some weaver is moving me in and out of the tree line
Before I collapse for a moment I am a standing stone.
My braids are miles long; and if you unraveled them,
A country of unspoken truths would fall to the floor.

With my cheek to the ground and my eyes full of mud
I swear on the places you’ve prayed
I could hear the mountain talking in her sleep

And that my friend
Is one way
To fall inside
The mouth of a whale

They say his tears
Made the rivers
His dreadlocks—the rivers
Her blood—the rivers
The braid down her back
A river

River

They say his tears
Made the rivers

His dreadlocks
The rivers

Her blood
The rivers

The braid down her back
A river

Each being has a place they bury their poetry
The rain buries in the sky
The grass buries in the dirt
The rivers bury in the rocks
The rocks in the sand
And from that burial ground
Grows beautiful storms
And thick forests
And stacks of songs
And the animal tracks are plenty
O’ I hope they bury us this way
When our year is up

These days
I drink from many bowls
One made of copper
And one made of silver
One made from clay
And another from long grass
There are bowls made of corn leaves
And bowls of red willow
Bowls of the tree bark
And bowls that to some
Look like holes in the Earth
This long cattail straw
Is a wet inhalation
A bowl full of smoke
Is different from a bowl of ash
A bowl of berry juice
Is not the same as a bowl of trout intestines
Sometimes it’s a great lake that fits inside a bowl
At first light the deer arrive
And dip their noses into their own reflection
I cup my hands to make a bowl

Before we begin we will unbraid our hair. We will comb it.
We will close our eyes.
We will fall backward into the Earth.
Yellow tear woman
Drink the bark tea
Like the tree-line shadow
drinks the dawn
Pour your tears into this cup
And we will smash it against the sky
Tomorrow it will rain into these wooden barrels
And together we will break the iron buckles and pull their ribs apart
And start a fire from their kindling
We are like this kindling
We are like this fire
We are like this cup
When the language is listening
We hold these stones
And their shapes will curl into lettering
The rock faces and typefaces talk through their teeth for days
And when they are done listening
We bury their teeth near where the strawberries sleep
So the people that come behind us can find the deliciousness words
So the stone friends are messengers and wordsmiths
And the groundwater is a keeper’s calling
And the children hunt for syllables from the past to put safely into their pockets as they walk and throw and walk and throw and walk and throw.

And taste the words as they go.

A thousand years ago
The wind blew against you
And you turned to walk backward
And as you turned
You dropped something shiny
It fell out of your pocket and
Landed on the ground
You walked away from it
And never realized it was gone

There is a cantaloupe time
That I slice open
It is juicy there and the little seeds
Sit around in a circle
To sing their cantaloupe songs
I bite into them
And remove the seeds
From my mouth
Place them in a cup
Water them
Drain them
Set them in the window light
To dry

It’s like someone has
Cut through my middle
Feasted on my body parts
Splashed my flesh
With hauled water
And wrung me out
With their kind hands
They held me up to the light
To look through me
There is little movement left
I rest on a used napkin
Partly in sun
Partly in shade
I reckon when it’s warm enough
my whole world
Will take off its coat
Run naked to the lake

And in the end
If they’re hungry enough
They will scoop out what’s left

We walk on the arms of the elderberries
and press their flowers into our cheeks.

There are thousands of us here
on the thin branches, and

cobwebs from the neighboring pianos, and
needles from the neighboring pine

pass the wooden spoon to twist their sap
into the mouth of the mixing bowl.

Our smells thread the deer’s nostrils
and with their eyelids closed,

they softly lead their families from every wood
to sniff our brew and lick our toes.

Cliff birds swoop in to pierce our batter. They rise together
and pull us up to stretch our juices across their loom.

And though they row their sky oars steady,
we capsize.

Our brownish-red liqueur pours deep
into the clay syllable below.

The night-cooking is filled with fire and we dry
like herbs from antlers. The wind chews us.

When the deer open their eyes we waterfall
onto the tongue of the bees like the pollen we are.

And from there, the swarm takes us home
to feed their lover.