Words Don’t Run Off; We’ll Still Be Here Come Dawn

That rich, wet reek of dirt and sage
When the dry scrub’s graced with light rain—
Drag that fresh tang deep in your lungs;

Fill your chest. Grace like that can’t last.
We can, and we can share what’s lost
Or locked in the cells of a brain.

We were born to be in the air,
Like birds’ songs, brief, but there—and there—
The same—or as close as same gets—

So you could know, soon as you knew
What we meant, we meant—and we meant—
In strings of sounds, in shapes of hands.

Ink and print and all the rest just
Add more time to what we do best.
It’s too bad we can’t bring true scents

From rain on the scrub in red dust,
But we can hint at what that was,
And you can take a hint from us.

Blank Lack

Stare in the blank.
What’s it tell you?
It tells you what
You filled it with.

The rest is blank.
When the pumps pause,
You can hear things,
But you can’t breathe.

You pare the skin
From the round world’s
Hum, thump, and click,
And you find what?

There is no blank.
There’s lack of us,
Which is a world,
A world you lack.

Blue Black Green Birds

We were born to help you,
To find you when you’re lost.

Get up, friend, it’s dawn soon,
Sings the black word at night.

Sleep, fool, this shade is cool,
Sing the green woods of noon.

Find what’s left of the sun,
Old bones, sings the blue one.

If you know which sings when,
It’s not hard to get home.

Learn the time for each song,
And if you’re not home then,

Home will come and find you,
Child. Home can’t wait too long.

Prayer’s Dearth

You won’t run out. You
Pray when you’re in want,
When you want, when you

Want to, when you don’t
Want to. Your faith’s not
Why you pray, and prayer

Has a dearth of facts
To back prayer’s claims. Prayer
Just stirs air. So, why?

It calms you, that’s why—
That’s the way it helps.
It takes the edge off,

And if it pulls no weight
But that, well, so what?
Pray you, prayer soothes you.

Don’t Search the World for the World

Since you read and talk a lot
Of what is not us through us,

You take note of those of us
That point to those things not us

That are rare, that you have not
Had in your life but through us,

Through books, old tales, half-dead poems
And such, things the names of which

Were once dulled like coins from use
But now seem all glow to you—

The woods, the stars, the dense songs
Of birds at dawn, whole days spent

With no news from the wide world,
The scent of a hearth, a lake.

You seek out those things in hordes
That you know from tales, from words,

That have their worth to you now
As things you just know from words,

From terms, from their names, from us—
Bare bones of old earth, plain air.

You search your world for us; you
Don’t search the world for the world.