Salt Breeze

It is the innocence of the wind

that I cannot reconcile with your indifference

to the news and history

and blues of language…

For we are  tribally wandering

where slaves and settlers and natives

each worried

and speculated

and dreamed…

Some tried to get along

like you and me,

united by the wind

while others were untied

by land

both inside

and outside their minds.

I return to language

for the compass of its beauty

encompassing

some tiny slits of what occurred between people

in history

and today over our succulent

lunch of salami

sliced as thin as a Brooklyn deli squeezed

amid skyscrapers in mid-town Manhattan.

Comments sometimes

glue me back together

so that I let  the breeze slap

my  cheek in peace

even though other times

late at night I return to wondering

why or how you can just immerse yourself in the game

at the expense of language  that would broaden the scope

beyond your obvious…

but it is both the unconscious and skin

that unites and propels

my willlingness to be patient

hardly knowing if the you

to whom I speak is internal or external.

For we can only write or speak a speck of what

ever flowed in history

or even of what flows below us in a single day

And the sand and water compete

to see who loves salt more…

A competitition indifferent to us,

but which will far outlast

even, possibly, the last gasp of plankton.

I love sitting there

having identity subsumed

by salt, sea, sand,  sun

and the images and possibilities

I see in you…

ever experimenting to discover

which are nestled in fervor

that returns

and which need discarding or refining…

If we can shift from so close to so far

to back again

in a single day,

week, or minute,

oughtn’t  that make relations in history equally as suspect?

Identities of oppressors and oppressed

ever shape- shifting

and the illusion of identity

held captive by the false bondage of language?

To cling to the wind should suffice

but it doesn’t

because I want you to be all

sorts of things that I think I want to see

missing all that I could see if I were not

distracted by hopes dreams promises

lies and truths

just like our predecessors

salt breeze sings

winds wind my skin

hungry,  taut

sought by salt

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Taxpayer-Funded Indiscriminate Slaughter of Wildlife Across our Land, Exposed At Last!

Hot off the press, The Sacramento Bee at last has the expose that we (several of us in the Hands Across Prospect Park group opposed to the killing of geese in NYC)  had hoped The New York Times would write….a chilling, horrifying expose of the utterly non-public killing of millions of our country’s wildlife with public funds…unlike the equally horrific, but well-publicized wars in “our” name, this killing of millions of wild, voiceless animals in our name shows that we, too, are animals,  in a world where we seem to actively disdain our sentience that knows we don’t need to resort to such violence.

Read it, get mad, and let’s take to our local city councils, state legislatures, and the halls of the U.S. Congress…

The Killing Agencey: Wildlife Service’s Brutal Methods Leave a Trail of Animal Death

I just saw and heard one of these above-cited majestic coyotes (one of millions murdered) weeks ago in Yosemite National Park.  Their call of the wild is more beautiful than most else I have ever heard in my entire life.  To think of doing anything but standing in awe of them kills the part of me that must flinch when they are killed.  And we are all lesser for it.

Above, I tracked her in the snow in the early morning.  And to my utter surprise, her tracks led me to her: curious, but moved on quickly.  Later she caught a mouse in the field, which I also caught on video…..(unable to upload)

Dream Bribes

She wanders outside language’s cages
flitting between the furtive and fertile
widening between the sky’s ripening stripes
calculating dream bribes
in the pivot of her eyes