Smoke Signals

Ravens gather
to read
smoke signals
that rise
like diatonic triads
of metamorphosed
cellulose
into a steel
gray sky.

The product
of some
disturbance regime
like ice,
or water, wind, fire
or a ten ton skidder
and a chainsaw
with a thirty-six inch bar
that rocks
the northern forest
where the ravens roost.

I ride shotgun
in another world
a disturbance regime
of twelve lane freeways
and a van filled
with darbhukas
and djembes,
bodhrains
tambourines
claves, marracas, and triangles.

The distribution
of what I know
as sensible
careens into a place
no GPS can navigate.

The blackberries
are not edible
where the cormorants gather
on the wire skeletons
of electronic lives
the smoke signals
shift like magnetic north
on an obsolete compass
and the triads
switch to a minor key
as the flames fly
from pine to birch
and citibank demands
a disturbing regimen
of voluntary
mandatory
Saturday workdays
to cut jobs
of thousands
as trillions
of paperless
dollars
flow over a dam
made of swiss cheese
and scatter
in the winds
like so many
smoke signals.

Cancer
is what
my life is
my friend
says to me
as I breathe
in the smoke
and wonder
what the burning
will do
to my throat
my eyes
my lungs
my heart
my tears.

Truro Terns at Sunrise

Photo by Mari H. Hall

The Second Coyote

"I have your coyote,"
the message says.
"Come get it,
it's freaking
everybody out."

She is frozen
on a snowbank
her red gold tail
flutters
in the breeze.

She seems so alive
I stroke her
like She is
my long lost dog.

But She is dead.

Shot by an old timer
who sits and waits for her
to take his bait
before he pulls the trigger.

"Pests,"
he sputters
Damn coyotes eat
his venison.

I do not tell him
that like humans,
coyotes reproduce
when threatened.

In my mystic's hands
I carry this dog's spirit.

I have tracked her
through the hemlocks
ash and beeches
across the swamps
at midnight
I have heard her
sing and laugh
and call.

I have touched
her menstrual blood.

I raise my arms
to the wind
and ask,
"What do I do
with the flesh
and bones
and the beautiful
soft fur coat?"

I google
"preserving skeletons"
and find the algorithms
to create the perfect curve
of a computer skeleton.

But there are no numbers here
in this world of flesh and bone.

"Boil it,"
my brother tells me.
"Soak it in water
until the meat comes off."

"Bury it in sand
and let the maggots
do the dirty work."

Dead eyes stare at me.
The muscles are hard
beneath my kneading hands.

There are no numbers here.

There is antiseptic clean
in the rotting flesh
and blood that stains
my fingers brown.

This song dog
trickster
gray ghost
rises
to explain
that there is
no order
in the chaos
of the spirit
no rhyme
no reason
no numbers.

Only Life
Only Death
in the blood
and guts
of what binds
us to the tendons
and the ligaments
of life.

There is only
our own willingness
to participate
in each other's minds
and to witness
each other's lives.

I take
this Spirit
into me
and She
opens
my Eyes
my Ears
my Heart
to Life.