for 43, another golem made of post-its takes a deep breath
It is precisely in the apparent contradictions between the pace layers that civilization finds its surest health.
--Stewart Brand
1
love's precipice
labyrinth's door a
spiral I'm being
called into
called home
walking is stretching
up back & every whichway,
each step a stretch-yawn opens onto
rippling layers
of soil & stone,
sun-catching dunes,
glitterglass
timeway too,
round corners meeting
me at 18,
me at 5,
just like grandpa as a boy,
wanting without words,
already sky voice, earth gut,
already all kin
looking out my eyes
laughing,
waving branches & trunk too,
all the way back to
first fish on land
"nothing is wrong &
I miss you"
dreamway too,
dream across this life, others, others',
magic war blood regret,
grief hunger crookedness,
dust & sweat in lined faces,
love's lines
singing,
baking bread
growing bones
no going back
dreaming all the way
through to a new dawn,
a wholly new
here in our hands
2
I am the one being called home.
I am the last lost fragment of soul.
How I've drifted on a kite string seeking,
feeling far from family.
Yet always carried by grand-, great-grand-:
Your fields and layers. Echo,
distortion, reinvention...
"I would describe myself as
feeling creakier lately.
Sitting on the precipice.
We'd leapt over ourselves,
training lenses on dreams dimly seen.
I ended up crooked. There's no coming back."
Nothing is wrong and I miss you.
The fighting layers find a pace
none could hold alone.
Grinding lenses.
Sensemaking, lovemaking, soulmaking...
I would describe myself
as inheritor of a lineage
back to the first fish to flop on land.
The gift of their gulping and grasping!
I give it again in my grieving.
Through to dawn.
3
Somewhen back we
leapt over ourselves &
wake now sitting
at the edge of the edge,
cliffside of crowding layers,
shades of ancestral faces,
unsmiling open-mouthed,
echoing first fish to dream
legs on land.
Sandpile edging toward overflow,
loss, cascade, forgetting.
Wake now moving
between layers, moving as
wallbreaker, millstone,
shedding gifts of day's bread.
Home now and home at five,
riding Dad's shoulders,
parking toy cars.
Home at eighteen, lost,
burning, wanting, underground
in furtive pages.
Home at twenty-six,
reckless in New York City,
drunk up to my canyon-echo ears,
biking bridges with no brakes.
I am the one being called home.
You are the whirlpool
drawing me in.
I ended up crooked.
There's no going back.
Only falling forward, into
loam, lightless soil,
for re-association,
composting, rebirth as world.
Giving grieving moist breath
to this hungry world.
All these knots of grime
eaten by earthworms,
made whorls of wormsong.
Let the makers make.
Grandfather worm.
Grandmother tree.
Let my pieces
pulse and scatter
in your fields.
4
We the group make magic
in a dream of us
being with one another.
Pushing upon one another
for righting's sake.
Waves come...
Craving. Rage. Abuse.
We bake stones into bread.
Singing polyrhythmic,
polytonal, marbling our bread
with conflict and repair.
Repair is possible.
I learned.
None too soon.
I dream of us
practicing:
listen twice, sing once;
watch twice, act once.
Falling into knowing we're part
of a greater whole,
not abstractly, not dots in graphs,
but fleshly, feeling goosebumps,
hearing my voice and yours,
feeling hands in hands.
We dream together.
Through dreams and nightmares together.
See through them and see them through.
5
Somewhen back we
split from pressure or pain &
wake now wanting wholeness,
touching wholeness,
made of touching layers,
moving & being moved
by feet and hands, by
breath, by seasons
turning, by
night and again day,
carried again through
night's dreams into
the return of dawn,
of Aurora,
every day again new
August-November 2026