defiance

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At dawn the spouts rise into light I slip over the side of the boat — Now they come closer, my face buffeted by swirling wrack I relax I hear the eerie wail of mother and child slowly roll to me wide flukes bending furling — I am weary of walking this land, bitterly breathing air of mountain and wilderness — If I flow through all the seas mingling with the herds as they graze in clouds of plankton will I be washed clean as I was before I lifted myself up in pride out of the grass defiance of gravity stiffening my backbone —

expectations

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We are loathed
to give such feelings
anticipation, mercy
to forests, trees of sap

In the hills of middle California
where entire mountains are cultivated
to be chopped down
right before the bulldozers & axes arrived
they’d send us, part-time archaeologists,
to verify that they weren’t destroying any,
“cultural remains;” all that summer & that heat
I walked one foot ahead of the bulldozers
looking for fire-cracked rock, obsidian,
anything to indicate that this swath
of trees, this valley,
these canyons, could be saved

and the trees held their breath
and the wind turned its cheek
as I passed by