Darkness and then light.

I wasn't even looking, in the dead suburban night, and I found a falling star.  Tears wet my face--my spirit, raw and restless, my mouth agape.  I personalize everything: this meteorite belonged to me.  No one else could have seen it, I reasoned.  I felt the black sky tear open as if the star had broken the sound barrier--a heavy, sudden rumbling.  Only, the night was quiet, and only I had been torn open, lying ragged in a metal chair.

The next day, the golden light hit the tall, side-of-the-road weeds.  I drove by a fleet of nervous brown birds, feeding in the ditch, scattering low from weed to weed.  Then, one flew heedlessly into my back tire.  In my mirror, I saw it fall and lay still.  A small red rip in the fabric of the morning.

The fish that don't have eyes because they live in the darkest depths of the ocean.  That darkness and light and not mutually exclusive.  That the human eye can find form in shadows and light alternately, like the gaps between the trees, shining like glowing trunks.

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Trees silhouetted black against a white sky;

Her tower was sometimes light, sometimes dark, 

always either, never both.

For 700 years, she found no difference in the day,

apart from the trees noir, the grass blanc--swaying--

and black badgers sniffing along the ground.

On a golden afternoon that she did not see but did feel--

on her skin, the warmth of spring, the sweet breath 

of the blank west wind, swishing her black locks--

she lay on the pinnacle of her tower, thinking of 

truth: "Like the sky, bright and without blemish;"

evil: "The trees, the badger... my hair," 

she caught a wisp in her hands.

"Black, and very fearful."

At that moment, an itinerant fiddle player stumbled into her woods.  He fell flat on his knees on the harsh whiteness of the ground.  "What terrible magic is this, that steals all color from the world?" he gasped.  For in his last step, the hundred greens of the fields had vanished.  The greys, blues, and yellows of the sky were wiped clean.  Next to him, his friendly violin lay like a scorch mark on snow.

Bewildered, the young man rose and bravely tiptoed forth.  Shortly he came upon the lady's tower.  Looking up, he saw the her hair flying, looking much like a black flag in the wind.  He longed to know some sorcery, some incantation that would rip the contrast from the world, bringing texture and depth to this surely beautiful, strange place.  

A sad, angry song welled up in the fiddler's eyes, and his fingers, out of habit, began to pluck the worn violin. Suddenly, the ebony of the tower walls faded into a rough grey.  He lifted the bow and let forth a few solemn notes; the grass around his feet whispered itself greenish.  The man continued his song, and slowly around him the forest grew into life.  Gracefully, he lilted color over his path, passing out and over the boundary of the forest.

The sky parted into white and blue 

before the maiden's lifted eyes.  

She gasped, and her hair swept yellow over her pale face.

She leapt to her feet.

A black and white badger sniffed among the green grass far below.

She stared and a sunset drained her soul of words.

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I always imagined standing on clouds, how solid and strange it would be, like Mary Poppins.  

"Clouds are made of condensed water vapor," my droning science teachers always said. 

My hand would shoot up.  "But has anyone ever tried to stand on one, just to see?"

Science teachers were consistently the best eye-rollers of all humankind.  "Darling, you would fall right through one.  You can't stand on steam.  We fly through them in planes every day."  The same answers, always: I crossed my arms and refused to believe.

So, I graduated from high school, got my hot air ballooner's license, and took to the skies.  To spite all my past advisors.  

I climbed into the basket, pulled the cords, and rose into a cloudless sky.  Then I waited, dangling in my bright red balloon, waiting for the sky to push the clouds to me.  I was soon rewarded with a mountain fast approaching from the east.  The wind blew brisk and thin upon my gleeful face.  My moment had finally come.

Swinging my leg over the side, I watched the highest peak cresting towards me.  And then I stepped out.  And fell 10,000 feet into the sea.

music.

photo via.

You breathe the heavy mist of the day,

and yes, you must live, 

though at times the weight of the clouds 

presses your eyes hard into your skull;

You trudge over the crumbling roads,

and yes, you must move,

though your boots are scuffed and

the wind punches your breath right out;

You blink in dry dust,

and yes, you must see,

though the clay of the earth 

has caked over your clean vision;

Because

just then,

the sky breathes pink, trudging, misty dust,

and your clay has eyes to see this.

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You're walking, and your pack is falling apart, your tins and ropes tumbling down the rocks and wrapping around your ankles.  And you're gathering it up, but everything keeps falling, and you're walking because you have this goal, but you can't keep your shit together, and everything around you is so beautiful and you are simultaneously in awe and hunched over, grabbing all your crap that keeps rolling away.

For seven miles, you're carrying on like this, waking the mountains from the dead with all the racket your stuff is causing, slipping away and you re-gathering it with every fifth step.  And you have this insurmountable precipice at the forefront of your mind, and it's really all you want to get to, all you want to ascend, and you're eyes are totally fixed on it--whenever you look up again from grabbing after the flashlight or the frying pan that rolled away.  These things are necessary, they're in your backpackers handbook, so you got to keep them in your pack or you could die at night on the mountain.  This knowledge, and the joy of getting to the top of that peak in the distance are together in your mind.

So.

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The wind had whirled around the city all day, lifting pear blossoms off the flowering trees, tripping shopping bags into women's ankles as they quickly walked.  Minutes had been altogether lost by teachers as it blew through their classrooms in the early afternoon.  Gleeful boys ran home for snacks and video games, not noticing their tousled hair and homework papers running away.

The eucalyptus trees felt their leaves whispered by several doors swinging shut all at once.

A girl whom the wind had whipped all the day, walked slowly through the park in the orange glow.  Noticing her, the breeze softened.  Silently, it breathed out a moment it had stolen earlier from a postman.  The girl inhaled.  Her shoulders relaxed.  She closed her eyes and saw the patches of sunlight shadowing through the trees.  Whisking her gently along, the breeze grew her moment until the girl was gazing with wide eyes at the branches of the highest trees glowing in the invisible air.

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You sometimes glimpse it, the further dimension.  When you drove through a cloud for the first time as a girl, on the brightest, bluest day, over the road to Oregon, you beheld it.  You sensed the fog of a realer world overlaying ours.  Did you?  You knew that it was.  You had always felt there were other worlds, and inside that cloud for four seconds, your conviction grew solid in your chest.

Late at night, when you are driving with few cars, and taillights vanish into a haze, your anticipation grows quickly, with the clack of tires on the highway.  A cloud crosses the road, and you are in the midst of a world intersecting ours.  Too real, too true to be seen clearly by our minds.  

Wide open, keep those eyes.  Those glorious, cloudy intersections.

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"Hand.  Hand.  Hand! Hold my hand."

"I have no idea where we're going."

"You've always wanted to fly."  That twinkling smile, only in the eyes.

I never thought that if one were to fly, it would be quite as uncomfortable as the sensation I am now experiencing.  Your legs just kind of dangle there, helpless to move you.  It doesn't feel like swimming at all, except for the wind is tossing you around like heavy surf on the beach.  I feel crushed and thrashed, and my ears are totally popped.  You would think there wouldn't be a shortage of air because you're floating in it, but really, who wants a glass of water when they're drowning?  I could do with a glass of water about now.  The wind is stinging my eyes, tears streaming down my face.  I reach to swipe them away.

"Hand.  Hand.  Hand! Hold my hand."

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"How weird it is that there is earth that no one has ever seen?"

"How weird is it that we are under the earth, and breathing?"

"How strange, that every person meandering above our heads contains caverns that no one has ever seen."

"And they're all as beautiful as this, and as mystifying.  Air pockets, frozen bubbles of self--"

We stood, silently, our breath caught in our throats.

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all yous

Ambling down whispy walkways

with you

with so many yous

with the very special yous

who make you feel the very most you

and grateful for you being you and 

colorful for laughing and sharing

simple souls,

birch avenues and bright spirits!

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The spoken moments hold hands

  with the unspoken moments.

Frigid cheeks on an unswerving bridge,

   miles old;

Hardened rock standing firm,

   reaching far down into the swirls;

Babble passes behind and below--

   bicycles and arguments;

A seal glosses the water,

   A car trips along from the grocery store.

My legs fuse with the stones,

   and I, too, am ancient;

Forever here, 

   my history in battles and silences.

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I have curled around your middle, and you may not realize, but I am holding you up.  

Your hardness surrounds you, but the veins show the scars of sobs through your skin;

I cradle those in the softness of my greenery.  

Cry, weep--your water feeds my leaves.  

The sunlight pours into our clearing every morning, 

and we, together, will be fed;

I will hold your head up, and you and I 

will close our eyes and bask in the golden afternoon.

When the cool night comes, we will stretch, together, 

and breathe the stars in and out, puffs of cloud.

And one morning, your fullness will astound the sun;

you are straight, solid all the way through.

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"There!" she exclaims.  "That spot of light.  We walk to it!  Come on!"

To me, it's arbitrary, but to her, it's a promise, a motion.  I swing my arms and sing, "Gung ho!  To the light we go!"  Looking back, she rolls her eyes at me, but I know she senses my sincerity.  

"Quick, it's changing, the color's going!" I say.  So what does she do?  She spreads her arms, and flies me into the color.

photo by Cody Cobb.

He followed her for miles, quietly padding over rocks and pine needles, before she turned.  The tiny smile that broke from her lips was the sunrise for him.  He froze, uncertain and awkward, mid-step.

Carefully, the girl bent down and opened her arms.  He stood still but for breathing.  The sun moved in its path.  Still she knelt, arms shaking now, the smile deepening in her eyes.  His starlight eyes searched hers.  

The sky turned pink and orange behind them.  Her breath misted golden in the dying day, her patient arms unwavering.  

Finally, the sun set blindingly behind the girl and the mountain.  At once, the fox knew.  In her eyes, he saw the need of the cosmos, and he would go with her forever if he could, following the sun.

He took a step toward her and was wrapped in her warm arms.

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It comes from your hands when you brush your hair back,

and you felt it for a moment, the power in your hands

rushing into you from outside the mountains,

from the path that you are taking down into the valley, 

deep, where the wind does not blow easy but fierce and calm--

and in your feet, 

pounding the pebbles into dust, 

billowing behind you as you rush on, fast with inertia and frenetic movement

as the deer bounds with you down,

both inhaling the white air and the timber green feeling

of being yours,

and belonging to your earth.

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I am a lonely ship.

You see other ships, but I would tell you I am alone.

They don't talk to me, and I don't talk to them.

I am a lonely ship.

Things bump against my metal sides, and I hear them,

But the things don't hear me.

They swim away, silver and sweet, and shining.

Also, things do cling to my sides, so sometimes there is company;

but we don't speak, just glide-plunge ahead,

silently together.

So I'd say I'm not that alone,

but still.  Kind of alone.

Somewhat alone.

But with friends.

photo by Elias and Theresa Carlson.

Even from a small boy, he was the kind to climb up the slide and slide down the stairs.  Never a question.

Now he found himself at the top of the highest stairs, encased daily and nightly in glass views of moving lights.  His elbows rested on his desk, supporting his head, which was particularly heavy tonight.  He couldn't remember when it was not.

Then, pushing back from his desk, he felt the wheels spinning again.  He skipped into the elevator and pressed down, down, down--with a grin playing his lips.

photo by silvia mogni.

Fuzzy with warm light--

giddy, I feel

crooked and tall, no a sign of a leaf yet whole,

still very much me,

very more me.

photo by Missy Prince.

It's an uncertain breath you take after the burrowing.  Your head is covered in ground.  Your eyes are pinched shut: even in the cool shadows you can't see without squinting.  Your notice your hands, creased in dirt, and realize that they're trembling.  After being underneath for so long, you've forgotten what breathing true air is like.  Gulp it in, eyes closed, head shaking in disbelief.  The sunlight.  The freedom.  

Then a gust of salty ocean air blows you backwards.  You're grabbing the ground, grasping for the dirt that you know so well.  The depth of the blue is so big, you think, and your heart stops a little.  Glancing down at the hole after a lifetime of burrowing, you wonder, is it worth it?  The risk?  The vast, undulating blue mystery?  

Your foot is sinking back in, finding the comfort in warm soil--when a white gull flashes its wings, dives out and down.  Your heart dives with it, and out you go, down into the undulating blue mystery.  The wind rushes in your ears, and you breathe and breathe and...

Submerged, you're watching the dirt get free from you, floating separate--separate, and free.

photo by silvia mogni.

the things you tame

Ripping a hole in the forest, she stumbled into an open space.  She gulped in shaky breaths of misty air, hands on knees, throat sliced by the freshness of her exertion.  Her hands stood stiff with caked blood and sap.  A hole now tunneled behind her into the darkness of the trees; she kept glancing back, gathering her breath, trembling.

A branch cracked.  Eyes wide, her limbs ignited, sprinting her over a rocky landscape, down toward the stream she heard rushing below.  Stones tumbled all around her.  This was no time for quiet, no time for safe, sure steps.  She flew down the mountain, a red fox swift at her heels.

I observed all this from the stream bed, saw the trail of grey wolves plunging out of the tunnel, snarling, after her.   The fox turned at the last second.  He jumped at the throat of the closest wolf, a pup in the face of such beasts.  I grabbed the girl in my arms and held her head down  as the fox was torn apart.  The scream that came with the fox's last breaths as we raced down the stream bed sounded not of fear or terror, but of fierce bravery.  Now I was her last protection.

photo by Valerio Boncompagni.