the waves

Each summer

paints another brush

stroke down

the giant’s back.

A canvas of dark gold 

with blood running

underneath.

The old day floats

its red hair in

the rising tide of night                     

takes a breath

and disappears

in the down below.

I drift away

from a dream of a life

in my dead Aunt Mitza’s 

96 rust Honda.

Failure and the stars

bloom in the black

iris of night.

Sweltering today

it was my turn

to sit in the car

on a side street

in the shade

because I did not want 

to go home to what

was once home

while missing home 

beyond reckoning

and without moving a hair

I was carried

on waves of sadness

out past the past

with its tinted colors

and the future

with its cool morning air

and into the open water

of the present.

          Once, deep in the wilderness, I lost my bearings. I knew where I was in the wilderness. I lost my bearings of identity. It's happened many times. It’s one of the reasons that I go there when I can. On this particular trip there was an afternoon after a day of paddling and portaging that I stripped off my salt stained clothes and carefully waded out over the sharp granite rocks that had been there for thousands of years until I could safely launch forward and glide out into the dark water so cold that it made me breathe quick dollops of air as if I was running or making love. I swam away from the tiny island. No people, no cabins, no boats, no electricity, no roads, no society. Just wilderness. Surrounded, cocooned, for days by wild forests and lakes. Moon, wolf, fish, bear, water, granite, pine, birch, sun, clouds, waves, wind, fire, flower, eagle, night, day. I turned over on my back and lie among the waves. The sun warming my face, chest, cock, and legs; the lake below making my skull, back, ass and legs shiver. The only sound was the wind and the tiny music of the waves lipping by. Over the heavy days of passage back into this wild place my identities had been slowly melting away and as they did I felt more and more of the wilderness until eventually there was so little of me left that a great quietness was able to grow in the space where all those other me(s) used to live.

Now I am soaked

in sadness and sweat

in the car

on the side street.

Now it is night

and I am driving away.

Now this prairie city

with its ten thousand roads

is a sacred ground

for the passage of our lives.

Now I am eating alone

while the sun disappears.

Now I am lying in bed

with fear by my side.

Now I am writing

this as a prayer

to the great 

quietness inside

which lets me see

everything more clearly. 

Now I am lifting my daughter

high into the air.

We are spinning

like the universe

as she laughs and laughs.

                                       

  

.