I can see birds
in the sky above
and don't know how
to fall and float with them.
Where are our wings
and fragranced smoke of hope?
What can we see,
when the sky is
a bleak, black grey,
and the words are falling in?
We look up,
We try and
look up,
and our rites
are only old and shabby
garnerings of what once they were.
I can see heat
in the earth below
my feet and know that
it might not stop blazing
until the earth is
blazing.
I can see birds
in the sky above
and know that tomorrow
there may not be such
swooping, swerving luxury
of sky.
And I wish,
we knew how to do them,
rites that speak to
where we are
that set acknowledgement
and spaciousness of need
alongside that shabby
crouching that
doesn't look up.
For Christmas I eat
dead birds.
Milk that has been taken
too early
and salmon
that has existed in torment
rather than blue water.
And I think
is this the golden
festival of communal hope
entangled with sky
and rising?
Is it?
How to be stand-offish
between what we need
and what we make bleed
because of undead symphonies
that make a mockery
of song.
I wish that faith
would reform
like an apple tree
in windswept grasses like an apple tree
with fruit ablaze
that when consumed
gave knowledge of the fires
so that we knew
how to extricate ourselves
from virtual undead paradise
and stand by the swords
of change.