He had just proclaimed
that a part of his life 
was over when

(as if in gleeful mockery
of his gloom and 
faithlessness to

his own promises
and principles)
a final burst of 

energy 
passed through him
from the center of his gut

to his hands and
out came a path to
reopening that door and

with it a completion
he had never 
expected to feel

I do recall swallows
outside the cave mouth,
and I won’t dishonor them
by turning them into
metaphors.

To say that I have fears
that swoop in and out
of my own depths, taking
odd turns, diving in and
out — that’s true enough.

To surrender all other sense of how
those birds made me feel
to such a one-sided interpretation
is too human. I want something
beyond that from this memory.

Even the thought of them
taking one last plunge all at once
all together into the dark 
before the first thin stream
of bats emerged is not itself dark.

To say these fears that flit within me
seem to presage something
more formidable rising into view
is not incorrect, but is incomplete.
I should say instead that I cannot imagine

that my life would be as full today
if I’d never seen swallows and bats
at Carlsbad Cavern. No need for more
than that.  Mule deer were feeding
on the slopes around the cave entrance

the whole time
this was going on
and I’ve never tried
to make them part
of this mythology.  

There they were,
just being present.
Just doing what they did
in the presence of what others
were just doing. 

One could of course say
that this is just
what I’m doing. But
I’m tired of doing this
and there’s no obvious place

to rise from or plunge
or simply feed now
and Carlsbad’s too far
and it’s winter there anyway.
So I must keep doing this

until something happens.
it seems. Swallows, bats,
deer, wind, stones, fire, 
storms, calm, snow, sleep,
until something happens.

In the middle of the night you awake

and in your mouth is the word 
that will save everything currently in peril,

A man sitting in bed
on the second floor of his house
thinking about the stairs
as if they were a cliff to be
descended…

a man sitting on the floor
of his kitchen, frustrated with
plumbing, exhausted
after a day of wet dirt, crumbling
wood falling on his face — memory
of cave-ins, avalanches…

a man still sitting in his car
an hour after he was supposed
to be home, staring into the stalled
lines ahead of him burnished to red
by the sunset, simmering inside, 
imagining sunsets over a prairie…

a man holding a gun as he crouches
behind a rock, trying to pretend
he isn’t too old for this posture, feeling
the weakness inside, glad his freezer 
is full and this is for the show of 
other men…

Somewhere behind all this a man
singing, dancing, weaving,
speaking in tongues.  

He raises
one arm to the moon, pivots toward
Her, faces Her without losing his rhythm.  
He returns to his original direction
without losing the thought of Her.
He loses nothing
in either the pivot or the return,
but as for the memory of song…

a man sitting up in bed,
astonished at what he 
has dreamed until he
sweeps it away in worry
for the moment…

count all the trees —

the living, the manicured, the
frayed city trees, the countryside
trees, old growth and new,

all the petrified trees,

the fossil trees, the simply
dead and rotted trees, the 
lumber and firewood and 
kindling, bones of the lost
trees, all the oil pressed
from ancient trees;

count them, learn
their names — names of
their family, their individual names
so you can call them forth 
alive or dead; know them
by number and skin and 
leaf and root;

this is how any of it
is going to survive, 
the only way.  

we’ll have to 
do the same with rocks and
fish and birds and grasses and
all things — count them and
learn their names and 
call them up and let them
speak — and it will take a long time

so hurry: no time available
so less even than that to waste:

a tree, grown
from a hole in 
the sidewalk outside
your busted home.
start here,
this is one.  

start here.
what is its name?