Here the ceasless tumble dances
Rude leaves thinking they are light
As sun quivers, rain shadows
While birds and men and even women
Go to day as if they could go through them
Like tunnels or sanctuaries
A gesture
Hand cups weary chin
The gentles of touch
Of flesh becoming and unbecoming
A place of whole emptiness
Where nothing matters
Matter is time coming less and less itself
Not a cup or tree
Or even bear most holy
But song and shroud lifting
Through sense and smell of dogs leaping
What is it you want
For that is what you do not want
Not the ceaselss trick of understanding
But the slow vanish into shimmer
The shimmer seems the point
Catch of silver fire on cedar frond
The loam as fragrant as any song
But the shimmer lies
In wait for what could never proceed and follow
For the procession and funereal were never the point
Only in the drum beat lies a truth
Not the beat but the drone
The ceaseless beginning and end of beater
Hitting flesh of horse
Hooves do not clatter hear
For made of wind and something I do not know
Is its value
Do you see how I said that
As if it were true
As if I knew or could know what we cannot know
And if remembered from what
Could we come
What could we know of
this
place
Of grace and utter humility
Of dances never begun or ended
Tortured ancestors ripped from fire and drum
Of rattle made undone
What could we know to be a bison raising its head
To receive the arrow or the dog panting his last breath
Or friend dying in California
Is this for you
Is it
Is this for you
It cannot be mine or yours or anyones except
Perhaps the shame and glory of the tribe
A feast never shared, a dance clumsily executed
Feet knowing better than heart where to step
The song the prayer
The dance the prayer
And what now
That this is said
What does it touch or shape or know
These curves of shape always broken by their utterance
Here it lives in the moment of the new journey
That moment where the journey never starts or ends
A body undone breaking apart
A voice trying to speak what cannot be uttered
Chance, future, what we can intention
Try so hard to frame what is frameless
The holy altar undone, always, always beginning again
And again and again
So there is nothing for it but the shimmer
As unsatisfactory as that is
As ecstatic as that is
A simple child’s drawing
And if we are lucky one note of his laughter
As if that weren’t good enough
As if we could ever hope for more or better
Put down what you are doing and listen to me.
You are not who you think you are
Bones and blood and spit
Not thought or poem or work so hard done
Or so resented
Or so loved
Or so revered
Ceasless it turns what it is not
And never has been or could be
Roars around me, the sound of fan
A slice of pounded steel poured to form
from tired hands in some factory
Cleaving air to wind oscillating as if it were something new
Something refreshing or untried to make
That which I still move and bend and fly.
I do not know if you should lean in or turn off such wind
Or feel it sweep across your skin
A broom to take heat or fear or grace
Pick up what you are doing and stop listening to me.
One voice
One moment
The moment before the shimmer but never the shimmer itself
Unknown and only a way to remember
What it is we can never know or forget.