most ardently

Of an animal, especially a bird. A wandering species whom no seas nor places limit. A seed who survives despite the depths of hard winter. The ripple of a herring  steering her band from seas of ice to warmer strands. 

To find the usual watering-places despite the gauze of death that shrouds our eyes is a breathtaking feat. Do you ever wonder why we felt like happy birds brushing our feathers

on the tips of leaves? How we lifted our toes from one bank of sand and landed—fingertips first— on another? Why we clutched the dumb and tiny creatures of flower and blade and sod between our budding fists?

From an origin of buried seeds emerge these many-banded dagger wings. We, of the sky, the dirt, and the sea. We, the seven-league-booters and the little-by-littlers.

The silence, the thoughts that come with it, the sinking suspicion that something more is wrong with me than anyone knows, including myself, including the doctor who hooked me up to the EKG machine and said that though my heartbeat was irregular, the irregularity was normal. It was nothing to worry about. The doctor told me there are two kinds of people: unhealthy people who refuse to get help, and healthy people who always think they’re dying. Nobody’s in between. But I’ve met so many kinds of people: people who stretch before they get out of bed, people who walk through life unstretched, people who think their body is a house and people who don’t think of their body at all. People who peel their carrots, people who don’t. People who stand on the roof and let the wind make them cry. People who are afraid to cry. People who step on all the leaves on the sidewalk, people who look straight ahead. There are people who aren’t like me, they don’t know the names of all the different apples. Once when I was cashiering a woman said to me, “Wow, you really know your kale.” And once, at the butcher shop, a man said to his dog, “That’s the nice lady who smells like meat.” I’m afraid I don’t know what kind of person I am. I thought I would get a chance to do my life over in all the ways anyone could think of: dying would be like changing the channel. I hate that you can’t hold on to anything. I was washing an apple and then I was coring it and then it was cut— and that was weeks ago now. It was a Honeycrisp, and it lived up to its name.

Hablan los hombres de la última comida, el último oscurecer rojo, el último beso, la última vez que estuvieron bajo las estrellas, la última vez que alguien les dijo te quiero y la última imagen que llega al fondo de la caverna de los ojos, y susurros, luces que giran, siempre ese olor a cera e incienso, un mar amarillo y tierno. Hablamos sobre los regalos que terminan, pero pocas veces se tiene en cuenta el último sueño y, si la muerte le alcanzó cuando dormía, suspiramos aliviados, como si la vida no fuera más que el tiempo que nos creemos despiertos, los saltos brillantes bajo el sol que da el pez fuera del agua, como si allí dentro no hubiera lugares, personas, paisajes que echar de menos por el simple hecho de que hacia fuera no los recordemos. Cualquiera diría que creemos que morir es despertar otra vez de un sueño y comprender que todo esto, incluso las estrellas de verano bajo las que no nos importa ser mortales, había sido otro sueño. Rezamos a los muertos para que recuerden sus sueños cuando hayan despertado.

Ayer fui a ver tu tumba hablé contigo en voz alta te conté mis problemas unas velas rojas titilaban cerca alguien quemaba arbustos el humo limpiaba el aire y caía la noche. Hablé contigo en voz alta como si siguieras estando sordo y tratara de despertarte. Callé al poco, me quedé observando la lápida que en silencio iba cubriendo el cielo.

Arching under the night sky inky with black expansiveness, we point to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth, we read the sky as if it is an unerring book of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky: the whale song, the songbird singing its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein. O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark.

****************

Elogio al misterio: un poema para la astronave Europa Traducido por Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

Arqueados bajo la tela nocturna teñida de una expansividad negra, señalamos los planetas que conocemos, fijamos

sueños apresurados a los astros. Desde la tierra, leemos el firmamento como si fuese un libro infalible que cubre el universo, experto y evidente.

Aún así, nuestro cielo encubre misterios; la canción de la ballena, la ave que gorjea su canto desde la rama de un árbol sacudido por el viento.

Somos criaturas de asombro persistente, curiosas ante la belleza, la hoja y la flor, ante el duelo y el placer, el sol y la sombra.

Y lo que nos une no es la oscuridad, ni la distancia fría del espacio, sino la ofrenda del agua, cada gota de lluvia,

cada arroyo, cada latido del pulso, cada vena. Oh segunda luna, nosotres, también, somos de agua, de mares vastos que invitan.

The lonelier the place, the better it pleased me: its silence, its aura, its peculiar conformation, its enclosedness. John Fowles

Woke up this morning with an agonizing urge to be an absolute nobody in a world gone mad with everybody trying to be a “somebody.”

To be unknown and unseen like a distant star in an undiscovered galaxy, a dandelion loafing beneath the sun in some deserted pasture, to be an anonymous breeze that rustles the ferns of an ancient forest at the edge of the world.

Ah, yes…

To be far away, adrift and alone, sauntering in a leafy alcove, "where Nature moves, and Rapture warms the Mind."

To get out there beyond the perimeter of this barbed wire civilization, far removed from worldly titles and deadlines and the delusional drudgery and pandemonium of endless ambition.

To be barbarically alive, to savor the pure lifeblood of our primitive marrow, to cleanse myself of the filth of steel-and-asphalt reality, to resuscitate the inner archaic spirit, to unite the conscious with the shadow and allow grace to devour what’s left of my iridescent heart.

Into the timeless woods I go where the moonlight illuminates the infinite peace of things.

I go to the woods to dance barefoot like a demented shaman in the muck of the meadows. I go to the woods as an antidote to modernity, to wander at ease among the wild geraniums and thickets, unearthing the primordial savage within.

We salvage ourselves. We savage ourselves. Octobers mean grief, deep into our bones. Can you spell worship? Do you mean warships? Are family trees reddening? you ask. When I say grief, I mean rage. I, mean strong. I news-water my nightmares. I, blue song who evaded at least two wars, can’t sleep. What do histories say to holy books? That we remain silent, fear for our jobs when hospitals are bombed? Do you believe walls sever memories? & is God there? This didn’t begin with our people, no. Ask any natives & they will tell you the lands remember, even when tongues don’t.