Hoping for a small slow start
to the process, he turned up in any place
he thought he might find it. Slow and small
in bars, small and slow in all night restaurants;
listening to small talk for clues, watching
others taking their time with whoever
was across the table from them.

One of these days, soon, he told himself every night.
He would be ready soon enough. He’d make contact
with another. Watching people in public spaces
from his seat alone with a cup of coffee
or a glass of whisky and his imagination
and no one ever really saw him, none of them
even knew his name — not even the servers
to whom he never said a thing except to give his order
and murmur a pleasant thank you in return when it came.

In Gaia’s defense, there were
extenuating circumstances
which kept us from knowing her
for a long time, the end of
Greek mythology as a driving force
being chief among them;
her fatigue after birthing Titans and Furies
which sidelined her so thoroughly
that her children superseded her
among us for ages,
especially the unkind Furies;
our general weariness
of the holiness of things
we just wanted to sell.

I see you picturing
the Gaia you’d prefer.
Do you think it is possible
to live like that, entirely swaddled
in compassion? Never damaging
any being?

As if you could. As if you could
put yourself above animals,
say you are better than those
who slay and war, more akin to those
slain and slaughtered. You are the slayer
simply by being. How many
from every species
die daily to keep you upright, connected,
smiling, healthy, mobile,
alive?

The plants, the animals, and all
the microbes in between
are gossiping about your arrogance.

You are no better
just because
you can say out loud
or write
that you are better.

As lovely as it would be
to have a world without
all the screaming,
it would also be as imaginary
as a place
without ghosts.

I do not say be cruel
for cruelty’s sake, or
gratuitously so where less
will serve —

but you are not special enough
to Gaia that you can exist outside
of the way things are.

What you weren’t,
someone was. I guarantee
this. What you could not,
did not do, someone did.
What you never heard
was heard. What you
never tasted lasted long
on another tongue; that is
my nature, the nature of Gaia:
all is embedded somewhere in me.
Even the worst of occurrences
had its place, no matter how pained
or indifferent you were to learn
of them and what they did to me.
You were a piece of both the bad
and the good and until I go,
long from now, I will hold
a place for you in my soil,
my water, my skin, and my breath.

Tired and yet all the faces all around
say I should pep up and dance or work
to the maximum available effort but I’m
unimportant to them personally and no one
trusts that what I can do is not what needs doing.

Tired and no sense of security in place
because I am not seen as valuable and the time
I can give them is not time they care to take
so I am shunted to the side of the arena as
no one wants me in their squad or on the team.

Tired of my own self pity for certain and yet
none of the furniture offers rest and those who could
put a hand upon me and give love are present
for me as they instead prefer to tell me over and over
it is nothing personal and just survival of the liveliest.

Are you as tired of yourself as I am? Let us lean together
as the years lengthen and we droop more and more
toward the floor. Let us fling our bedding at their feet
and let them hector us until we fall asleep in their paths
hoping they’ll let us get back to our feet only when we are ready.

With dagger or dirk.
Parang or machete.
Left behind bayonet
or stake fashioned from
old bloody wood.

In their night rises
our broad, bright day.

Still, terrible’s
walking among us.
Debate’s of no use.
Once you smell blood
in your neighborhood
you cannot lose the scent.

In their night rises
our broad, bright day.

No, not with guns;
if we are to remain able
to be human again
we cannot allow ourselves
to do what’s needed
from a distance. We’ll need
to feel the shock of blade on bone
in order to remember
how much better it was to be
who we were before.

An old friend, an unhealed wound,
rose from the road in my headlights.

I cried out and leaned on the horn,
stopped in time, got out and rushed to see
if they were in truth my companion
and I had hurt them more this time
than I had before our parting.
They were not there.

It was just some trick
of light in fog, but it seemed real enough
that I shook all the rest of the way home
and sat in the driveway a long time
before going in. Once inside I went
from room to room looking for others
but the house was, as it always is, empty.

Lying in bed, nerves smoldering, not dreaming:
longing for the road again, hoping a host
would be waiting for me in the mist,
hovering just above my road, just barely ahead;

the threat of possible collisions
just within the threshold of what I could bear
if I could just stop in time
before plowing through them again in spirit
as I had when they were still in flesh.

I go to the river
as others have gone before me
and though it is cold
I enter the water
at the spot on the bank
where anglers have entered
for more years than are known
seeking food and sport
and perhaps a connection
to a wheel turning through time
so I can bring what is there
to the spot on the bank
where more people than are known
have entered for more years
than are known
seeking connection to more
than is known
and once I have pulled myself out
and am high and dry and warm
I turn back to the land
carrying with me more than I can know
yet somehow I do know
I am more full
than before I plunged in
and caught hold
of the wheel

It seems
that I’ve been walking
through a tunnel for
a long time;

one hand on
each damp wall,
pinprick light behind me,
pinhole of hope ahead;

the lights
before and behind
have winked out
and here I am —

cold wet hands,
tearing my fingers open
on stones I cannot see.
I stop for a moment,

listening to dripping water,
listening for something scrambling
through the dark
toward me — and while there’s

nothing at all besides me
in here, I’m certain,
I need to feel fear anyway.
I’ve been told the dark is

terrifying my whole life,
after all. I’ve been told that tunnels
hold danger at their core,
but all I feel here is space.

Perhaps I am the danger?
The stones whisper that to me.
I don’t know if they can be trusted.
I don’t know if I can trust myself,

alone with myself in the dark.