Homeworld

this is the growing of things birthing of skin

and bone stem     and leaf     this is planet

earth beneath snowlight and desert sand

this is the place to find human beings walking down

the street with their souls drifting just ahead of them

with their faces half-lit by their own eyes

this is where you find the bodied and unbodied

living and the dead     also apple seeds and moonfish

swimming by     with heartbeats like fingernails

pinching and releasing flesh     their minds turning

          in their sockets once every hour

this is where glair and yolk sing to the heavens

where each clade is born to their spiritual dimensions

where God and the absence of God are interchangeable

where the prayer on the lips and the claw in the pulse

          send the same message to the stars.

                             ~

in this world every life is a grubstake and a courtship

with affections foraging and fretting beneath the sun’s heat

with rootings of pain running down deep into soil

with sorrows immaculate and tacking steadily ahead

          every grief transfixed on a breath

          every teardrop tigering through a vein

in this world there are beehives and mice     there are

rivers and seas     and a great darkness perched

on each grain of sand at the water’s edge     in this world

all life is connected     right back to the flyblown point

of our origins     here everything moves towards

the apparitional eventually ghosting outside the frame

even us     especially us with our religious endgames

          and our backstairs to paradise.

                             ~

on this globe there are lightning strikes and plankton

there are population shifts among prophecies

and superstitions    at night there is the homily

of quietude     there is the homily of similitude

during the day there is the discourse on going forth

the discourse on building up     at the graveside

          there is the preachment of falling down

on this globe chickadees sing and glaciers calve

and the spirit flows with blood     through

                                a wickery of veins and arteries

with imaginings packed in among the body’s organs

with a heart that is kept polished like a red apple

in case the Teacher arrives unexpectedly

in the guise of a drifting cloud or a fly’s wing

or a sprig of angelica from somewhere

                              in the green world.

                             ~

on this planet you must listen carefully

to stones and rain     to the creaking hinge

on each blade of grass     you must look

          long and hard at other beings

and if they’re not iridescent like chatoyant silk

you have no business on this green surface

          floating in infinite space

on this planet there are yellow jackets

and red-tailed hawks     each with a consciousness

to match     there are gametes with circular psyches

          sighing upward to a multiplicity

there are lifetimes spent in soil     there are minds

of water and salt     huge ocean-going minds      calling

to one another     pressing their thoughts against

          strengthenings of inner light

on this planet every sigh creates a morphic resonance

somewhere in the dark corners of light

          in that shadow rising out of light

the mind’s shadow     its brevity     its silent grace

its faint edges dispersing and gathering in again

unsure of where to settle down for the night.