I.

Like a seashell seven-hundred miles
From the sea, I walk into the desert
To hear the rush off the hawks' flapping wings
And finally silence all desire.
Deep things will be collected in deep places.

The moon is a child's face winking.
Like the raven,
I am free.
Like the sea,
I am free.

II.

There is an alien plain unplowed,
And a road unswerving seven miles.
The sun and a lake full of fishes
Reflected once all possible futures.
They argued, fought, burnt up. Now all is gone.

Prospectors dug wells for hope and water,
Washed hands with salt, fed babies with borax,
Cast wishes to stars in the loveless sky,
Could find no solace in their own shadows,
And disappeared. Everything disappears.

Distance disappears.
Scales unbalance.

I sit between two fault lines
in the stillness of a sleeping volcano
with a twig stuck in the ground
to hold it all together.

III.

There's no wind but there's no hearing.

I mistake branches for snakes.
Bats mistake me for fruitflies.
The hedgehogs are hiding from the owls.

"The sky is falling,
the sky is falling."

The moon has left me.
My hope like a sliver of moon --
and she goes.

Enter the Voices:

We keep our wishes in our hair and fingernails.
They keep growing when we die.

The wish I send to the first star rising
is happy to be free.
The wish is free; I'm dying; I'm cold.
It's the wishes go to Heaven.
Death is liberation from desire.

The bats laugh:

"I am blind as a desert river, or
a boy who falls away from love."

IV.

The hawks forget me, but
when they grow
hungry they will rip
my shadow from
its corpse.

I bury my head in the sand and hope
the seeds will wake me
in the spring.

I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.
I can't quake.

There are things held not let go.
I've built levees from women's hair
and half-invented memories.

V.

Shitting in the desert
is fertilizing a field where nothing
will grow.

Death is liberation from desire.

The wish
I wailed unto the star
has died
and I do not know,
should I mourn it
or die beside it?

 

I'm lost in the desert,
in the desert of my mind.
I slept with raptors
a fruit grows
I am the boy who walks away from love
in the desert
I have loosed my shadow
a prickly pear
I adore you
sweet
Tonight
thistle-ridden

I am free.