Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire

Between the Fire & the Flood

B E T W E E N T H E F I R E & T H E F L O O D The soil breaks apart in its lost fame, far from the Pliocene now. A caul of fog from Mt. Diablo down to my first husband’s grave. Not much grows between granite & serpentine; the glassy edges gasp. Sound, you have eaten the lyric. Soil, you’re the crushed thoughts of stars— Years of not getting enough sleep; awake at 5 to worry about the planet. (Now i am sound. Now i have eaten the lyric.) We think of adulthood as layers of panic, is it, is it, is it, in the deodar cedar, the squirrel makes nano-chatter to the jay— When as a child we made dirt soup, my brother stirred the gravel with a stick. Summer barbecues had ended; someone scraped the metal on the grill (it it it it). The desert was calm; i get calm just thinking about it. Now a warm storm coming in. Creek brain puts bells on, i talk to the ground, then i push an acorn in the grave. Something nothing something nothing (it it it it) something saves all of it— 3 5 ...