Language & Literacy A Writing Life

Night I

July 6, 1998 · College Poetry
1 min readConstellation: The Poetry Years
Writing & CraftSpiritualityMemory & Time
They will speak to you my mind sang into my mind as I watched the lines pouring by like liquid streams of light into darkness. I drove to the Sky, to meet my ancestors there. We parked together in the woods, the leaves dancing shadows across time-worn faces: and we touched in the way Of the Way, nestled like spoons, dipping into each other’s minds like vultures clawing for a return to life in the remnants of skin that remain, swollen and juicy in the Sun. We watched the stars later that night, laying back on each other’s back, listening to the fire lick the silence out of our mouths, and I could see our Past written in the stars that wrinkled like waves of light into my Vision. I could see the connections Between Us, the blood and jissom that pulse history into movements, into mountains. When I came back down, in that cold darkness of the early morning thinness of the air, I could feel my tongue sliding through the roof of my mouth, flopping for a breadth of words and coming up with bile. Memories sicken my mind rang into my mind and I hung up this time, I broke the line: and I watched the smoke rising outside of my window, billowing up like birds singing on their way to the heavens.