I. Our Daily Dance
 
The waning moon has this hour turned above the crowns of trees, and spilled its liquid light into the yard. So this evening is accompanied by a shadow of sun’s heat. The same moon that years and years ago was torn from earth’s belly, born from her and borne away on some celestial tide: once blazing with the fire that gave us life, now its patient ashes spy upon our daily dance, at times shy and out of sight, at times winking at our plight, or otherwise full-faced and offering its white-washed world for these our fine somnambulisms.
 With no one’s arms to hold you from these sights, the dimensions fall one into another, you join the ranks of every color-blinded creature as it flies or crawls or navigates the night, employing sharper, duller vision. A leaf-rattle makes the paw pause mid-step, a stick snap shakes the courage of the smallest, while above the sudden flush of air or nearly-silent slant of wing makes cowering the act of statues, whose hearts race from one moment alive to the next, still alive, alive yet still, praying to not be prey, hoping for no tooth nor talon’s spike to rake the nerves.
 
Some of us are larger: suffer less.
 
But suffer even so, adventure when better ventures aren’t reached by opening fingers, opened hearts. A footstep starts the body where the spirit would prefer to stop. Still. A stick snap stops the world around the boots of men: who goes there? What would a man be wanting of the night, if not a hunt of one sort or another?
 
The moon will not stand still; her mother moves below her, always at arms-distance, always departing. The child spins as if to turn away; the weight of their connection means she’s always falling toward her elder. A pure, white face: smiling as she rises her hello, sad as she departs. A desert of desire, whose fires went out so long ago, depends on stars’ impressions to light her further face.
 Who wouldn’t see a spark up there? Some ember that was better than its gray surround, some flickered flash of life that kindled past to second sunrise, companion star, golden guide to keep us honest and awake and in each other’s arms, to banish sleep in favor of a man or woman’s favored sleep companion.
 
 
II. Gift of Sight and of Delight
 
One can speak more plainly. An apple, for example: there was nothing woman ever gave a man that would be his unmaking. Genesis requires rethinking, since its metaphor is cactus-garden, is painful to embrace. If (for example) Eve opened Adam’s eyes, it was to preciousness of life. I suppose that might be blinding, but hardly expulsion from the Divine; invitation, rather.
 
There is some bland assumption by the readers of those ancient runes: a paradise was lost, to be regained at last when body’s been betrayed as temporary residence, reminiscent of a slum-lord’s tenement, reminiscent of a child who’s given no delight or - more likely - never found its gratitude.
 
I do not sign that lease.
 
Paradise is every moment, but skill in seeing clouded by emotions or events. The paradise of creation is in company of men and of women, building walls or raking them down, raising pillars of life or whirling in the great river of each other’s dancing, scratching at the earth or forging teams to push back need, or needing the sweet waters of ourselves to wash upon that labor, to loose the earth of us and make us one.
 
No, an apple, or a pomegranate, maybe have been a gift of fruit, of sustenance, of sight or of delight. The days that followed, simply striving to maintain that paradise. If missed, at times, or if (at times) we fail to be delighted, still there’s no mistaking it exists.
 

Flying out of the east in splendor        the silver beauty of the wings, oh beauty poised and driving like twin knives,        and all those migratory lives depending, as it happened, on the magic   of rivets and steel webs        and pilots immune to fear – so be it, he travelled west, before the sun could dog        and trouble him, falling headlong into a desert ground, seeded with aloes   and yucca and dryland sage:        if the least of these seeded also a desire to dive, to dig and bury his winged feet,        to cover his travel with a delicate frost and keep his eyes from leaning further west:   to say I will decide contentment        as one decides the right soap for the wash, or chooses the ingredient for a meal –        so be it, may the peaks there overtower him, reminder of his measure and short life,   let the wind lift every morning        with common scents, and expected small delights, his name be humbled and diminished        for lack of yearning: Ah, yes, a clever man, but where his passion went–?   Continued on, unmindful of the desert,        the terrible, bleak terrain of it, and perished in a gully, dried to a fine chili-dust        that mixed with the sand and disappeared for all its fire and redness.   That may be a kindness: to cull from his ambitions        a circle smaller than his shadow, an innocent hedge-row with a few slow flowers;        not to ache so for so many colors; that is why he travelled west,   dismissing Eden, perfect in its past,        to praise and kiss his partners for their human dress and dreams;        to balance the rolling rock with the slanted path, the day’s graces with the night’s small death;   oh, let the rest depend on silver wings and say enough, as final as it seems.

Certas canções - Milton Nascimento

Certas canções que ouço cabem tão dentro de mim que perguntar carece como não fui eu que fiz?

Certa emoção me alcança corta-me a alma sem dor certas canções me chegam como se fosse o amor

Contos da água e do fogo cacos de vidas no chão cartas do sonho do povo é o coração do cantor

Vida e mais vida oferida chuva, outono, ou mar carvão e giz, abrigo gesto molhado no olhar

Nick Van Alstine, 1982-2010

There’s a shout from the water:
a man is struggling with the current,
his mouth fills as he goes under.

He clears the surface, spits out salt,
finds clean air, gasps it in,
shouts again.

He is drowning.

He knows it.

His voice leans out in all directions,
asks assistance from everything that hears.
Everything that hears measures compassion
and the weight of that current.

uma palavra balançou
na ponta da língua
falada, calada, falada, calada
batuque rítmo de coração

será que este por do sol
seja à medida do seu nascer?
o menino enraizado só
(arvore-gurí, criança-flor)
se sente o peso diferente
nas almas dos seus pés;
de cima, entretanto
sol é sol

até o día em que sangue dispara
com tamanho desejo, o corpo canal
com gritos do mar e da morte
falado, calado, falado, calado
uma gota de sal como vinho
da ponta da língua traçada
doçura na linha ereta
boca garganta ventre

Plum was heaven Plum was stem Until the season’s turn And early rain’s intention Until the bud’s desire Until the blossom-burst Until bee pollen-scattering And Sun’s divine attention The fruit imagination Until its flesh uncovered Until its curve encountered The touch of tongue and teeth Until the sweet surrender Its sugar-water tendered Washed us stem to heaven Bud-desire, blossom-burst Victoria-by-the-Sea, PE

    Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 The Way West Inc

Maybe it was - seems long ago - I danced on a flickering flame
so my feet would burn if I stood my ground
and another tongue, insistent, called my name
I’d lean into tomorrow as though I were bound to the wind

Where does an echo lead? I heard a sound, I turned; again;
the globe as it spun was the head of a pin
whose angels (lost souls, too) so crowded in
they jostled one another, profane, divine, profane, divine

Here is the canvas of the sky: one long stroke of gray where it is brushed upon the blue blue pastel of the day, it is an overhead wave, a sun-shade, a blanket pulled up past the eyes, water-color wrung from a sponge, a light’s-decay. And then it rains, of course. As cold as it can be, with just enough vigor in the shortening sunbeam strands to heat those flecks of ice and melt their hearts as they hurl earthward. So they fall instead of float, merge instead of mass, drop instead of drift, and winter waits another week or more to make its white appearance.

the eyes are a chamber of the heart
and the lips and tongue, a chamber of the heart
the fingertips and skin are a chamber of the heart
the sense of smell is a chamber of the heart
and the ears are a chamber of the heart

so near enough to see you
to taste you and to kiss you
to touch you and to feel your warmth
near enough to catch your scent
to hear “I love you”

we decorate our lives: with loves contrived of scent and sweat and secrecy and grateful dancing, toward and away; the rocking cradle of the heart beats and buoys the body’s arc that ripens, rises, tires and moves on

its flower opens and opens when the water pulsing through its vein urges the petals wide to welcome sun

we decorate with silks and bangles scents and sweat and filigree: when spirit first flicks into form until it forms the canvas given you and me each day desires paint and every touch the painter’s brush might blush a smile upon the skin that all who witness can breathe in