To Be Human

The paw of moon, here in this Indian summer that should be
November, is a prayer to the imminence of sweat and
starlings shaping and breaking away like dandelions;
we think that saying grace can save us from second-hand heat.
Things are broken too easily: the sea watered heart,
the sacredness of land, grief-hung heads in dusk.
To be human means we must break and be broken
more than anything else in this world. We must find
ourselves at a loss for words when we see the moon,
the day’s brightest star, come across the blue of sky,
against Autumn leaves that could be transcribed as their
own sunset. To be human, we must learn the implications
of the word womb—the belly of the earth and body, what
makes our hands as home. Our hands learn to grapple light
as they shield it from our face, the same face our mother
loves as we look at horses grazing in dying grass, the same
dying grass that won’t last through the last season.
Our tongues, already laden with too many syllables,
falter in the cold– we think we can’t salvage our heart
from where it hides in winter clothes. We must learn
to unravel it slowly, uncover the reddest leaf, the womb’s
bundle of joy, its biggest mistake, and take it back.
To be human, we must learn the world and find it again, new.

**

Rural Hall, Here

Never the guts of train tracks and
closed buildings, rust, the ash of fallen leaves.
Never the hollow stomach of this town–
the wildness of chilled ears
and uncovered hands that dictate silence.
Let’s drag these hushed bodies through
winter until spring: returning warmth and
sinew that still churns like an old mill.
Never like salt on the pavement. Now,
the wind has nothing to do with a bite.
The cold has nothing to do with temperature.