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