Whale Fall

Sip tea by the morning glories,

taste leaf and light and steam, 

warm on unhurried lips,

and think, this is our Earth. 

But send one thought away. 

Send it on an errand, down deep

to the whale fall.

You know it’s there,

even now while you breathe air 

and fold your soft hands in sunlight. 

Where midnight is a place

they are building a cathedral in reverse,

singing in the ribcage sanctuary,

a slow hymn of tooth and claw,

chewing the arches back to earth.

Far from your teacup,

in a boom-and-bust town 

of sleeper shark and spider crab, 

you will sense a homecoming

hanging in the heavy dark,

where one great heartbeat became many,

became words scattered on sand,

this is our Earth.

The whale is not here. 

The whale is not gone. 

Like her mother’s milk. 

Like your tea. 

Your morning. 

The years before your birth. 

The ecosystems you are

and the ones you will become.

The mystery of it all

is both the ghost that hunts the hall

and the steam rising from your tea,

bending with each sigh,

intimate and out of reach.

The ground knows what you suspect,

that there is an unbroken path

from where you sit

to leviathan bones. 

Feel it like a scar beneath your feet,

leading down to where the whale

called her congregation

from black water. 

May it haunt without menace.

Not because it is powerless, 

but because it is yours to share.

This is our Earth.

Afterlife

What if he let the ghosts write this one?

What if the poet is dreaming of lichen

on an old boundary stone,

leaving his desk unguarded

while spectral fingers pluck synapses 

like spider’s silk? 

What if he pretends it was his idea,

dozing in the clover while autumn

strips the mulberry trees

and pelts the shed with walnuts,

keys tapping in an empty room? 

What if it’s a smuggling operation,

secrets tucked into a knothole

calling out for grass-stained denim

and curious peerings?

What if it’s all about thought?

What if brains aren’t what you think?

What if intention misses the point?

What if nature treats personhood

with the same respect as fallen wood

and flowing water?

Preserving. Reimagining.  

What if heron-print texts

on muddy riverbeds are holy books

even without a reader,

without a writer? 

What if we remind you 

that eyes do not bring light into the world,

that they just interpret it?

What if people are the same? 

What if we don’t conjure consciousness,

only borrow it,

an otter dreaming on a seafoam bed,

a falcon riding warm air upward,

a human sensing self in the swirl of leaf litter? 

What would that mean for the long ages 

when you have no body?

Does sunshine depend on vision to be real? 

Do those with sight know more of light

than moss on splintered stone?

What if we told you a brain is just a keyhole

through which all the universe looks on hold,

looks expectant for the coming key?

What if that key matters less than you suppose? 

What if, when you pass the door, you will not be the same,

but that too is kinder than you imagine, 

kind as seasons and sleep and sudden morning?

What if the poet awakens uncertain,

stiff-necked with his nose to the ground,

leaves in his beard, 

thinking the soil smells of coming mushrooms,

dismissing the scent as unscientific? 

What if the truest statements must remain ajar, 

must linger on as questions,

stifled laughs beneath the floorboards,

or betray the natural generosity of not knowing? 

City

That rotting stump,

that pile of yellow leaves,

a city on a golden hill,

remembers what we forget.

The detritivores gather there,

saprobes sharpening their proverbs,

past lives gift new soils,

fungi bundle the words

like warm bread

while moss looks on. 

Like all cities,

it’s a city of the dead. 

Like every life, 

it’s countless lives as one. 

Inkcaps and pinwheels. 

Bleeding fairy helmets and mazegills. 

Like all lovely things,

you could call it an aftermath,

mourning the tree that was,

once green leaves in tatters,

new growth spent and gone. 

Test these thoughts on the city

and hear the gentle hush rebound,

hear a voice among the decay,

All beauty in nature arises from endings.

Seasons and cycles make music from limits.

Forever is a broken measure of success.

Hopelessness lacks imagination.

In the city’s cellar,

at home among the dead,

a single seed dreams

of two hundred years in sunlight

and even asleep

shivers the dark with potential.