Log

There’s a whistling in the pines
a sound without cheer that travels like saline
down into the tearducts of the mountain
The needles on the extremities of the branches, boughs
They sing high-pitched and
Let the notes tumble down into the banks of the
cool river as it burbles and hums along
captured in a flow of silt and I

Watch and touch to feel
extremitus
of eyes and fingers and sensible work shoes
sucking in mud and muck and tiny sand beads

Sun bakes my flesh, ultraviolet light snapping tiny protein bonds
My animal muscle arms wheeling the oar, snapping tiny protein bonds
Beefstick in my belly, stomach acid snapping tiny protein bonds
Let’s go!

The water floats mirages
The constancy lies in some faraway landmark
Sandbar, tree, log
There’s a holiness here in the silence, the motions, the way we move
It’s iterated in generations of long ago
It feels like a faraway landmark
Splayed and dissected by the words I can array in my schema
Like Thunder and Woman and Meat
and like laugh and disenchanted and microscopy
Sandbar, tree, log
Father, home, night

Anhedonia comes easy to a skeptic,
and doubt pumps blood in the valleys of my conspiratorial brain
But it all seems too frail, too sugarwire framed
out here in the scrying mirror
of water lapping against
my way and future
The branches can sway and roar emerald
The river still moves