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I. The empty of stomach manifests silence a stillness that levels coffee in a cup and in a respectful manner allows steam to penetrate the surface. Reversal of action has created my sandstone canyon rooted cedar and sage at my feet. This movement is where a tranquility stems. II. When my child creates bubbles through a soapy wand, I occupy the action of fate that bursts the perfect form. A halcyon absorbed nesting within the existence of the form that no longer exists. The formless form is where my mind floats. III. It is easy to give form especially with English words a promotion of mechanical ligaments binding spirit with assembly-fabricated molds. Just as my hair poses an appendage of my brain my tongue poses an appendage of my heart. I cannot classify this thought as a typewritten symbol. An ideogram of essence cultivates my stillness to action.

When her recorded voice on the phone said who she was again and again to the piles of newspapers and magazines and the clothes in the chairs and the bags of unopened mail and garbage and piles of unwashed dishes. When she could no longer walk through the stench of it, in her don’t-need-nobody- to-help-me way of walking, with her head bent down to her knees as if she were searching for a dime that had rolled into a crack on the floor, though it was impossible to see the floor. When the pain in her foot she disclosed to no one was so bad she could not stand at her refrigerator packed with food and sniff to find what was edible. When she could hardly even sit as she loved to sit, all night on the toilet, with the old rinsed diapers hanging nearby on the curtainless bar of the shower stall, and the shoes lined up in the tub, falling asleep and waking up while she cut out newspaper clippings and listened to the late-night talk on her crackling radio about alien landings and why the government had denied them. When she drew the soapy rag across the agonizing ache of her foot trying over and over to wash the black from her big toe and could not because it was gangrene. When at last they came to carry my mother out of the wilderness of that house and she lay thin and frail and disoriented between bouts of tests and X-rays, and I came to find her in the white bed of her white room among nurses who brushed her hair while she looked up at them and smiled with her yellow upper plate that seemed to hold her face together, dazed and disbelieving, as if she were in heaven, then turned, still smiling, to the door where her stout, bestroked younger brother teetered into the room on his cane, all the way from Missouri with her elderly sister and her bald-headed baby brother, whom she despised. When he smiled back and dipped his bald head down to kiss her, and her sister and her other brother hugged her with serious expressions, and her childish astonishment slowly changed to suspicion and the old wildness returned to her eye because she began to see this was not what she wanted at all, I sitting down by her good ear holding her hand to talk to her about going into the home that was not her home, her baby brother winking, the others nodding and saying, Listen to Wesley. When it became clear to her that we were not her people, the ones she had left behind in her house, on the radio, in the newspaper clippings, in the bags of unopened mail, in her mind, and she turned her face away so I could see the print of red on her cheek as if she had been slapped hard. When the three of them began to implore their older sister saying, Ruth, Ruth, and We come out here for your own good, and That time rolls around for all of us, getting frustrated and mad because they meant, but did not know they meant, themselves too. When the gray sister, the angriest of them, finally said through her pleated lips and lower plate, You was always the stubborn one, we ain’t here to poison you, turn around and say something. When she wouldn’t.

Underneath ice caps, once glacial peaks deer, elk, vixen begin to ascend. Free creatures camouflaged as waves and waves receding far from plains pulling upward slopes and faraway snow dusted mountains. On spotted and clear cut hills robbed of fir, high above wheat tapestried valleys, flood plains up where headwaters reside. Droplets pound, listen. Hoofed and pawed mammals pawing and hoofing themselves up, up. Along rivers dammed by chocolate beavers, trailed by salamanders—mud puppies. Plunging through currents, above concrete and steel man-made barriers these populations of plains, prairies, forests flee in such frenzy, popping splash dance, pillaging cattail zones, lashing lily pads— the breath of life in muddy ponds, still lakes. Liquid beads slide on windshield glass along cracked and shattered pane, spider-like with webs and prisms. “Look, there, the rainbow touched the ground both ends down!” Full arch seven colors showered, heed what Indigenous know, why long ago, they said no one belongs here, surrounding them, that this land was meant to be wet with waters of nearby not fertile to crops and domestic graze. The old ones said, “When the animals leave this place the waters will come again. This power is beyond the strength of man. The river will return with its greatest force.” No one can stop her. She was meant to be this way. Snakes in honor, do not intrude. The rainbow tied with red and green like that on petal rose, though only momentarily. Colors disappear like print photographs fade. They mix with charcoal surrounding. A flurry of fowl follow like strands, maidenhair falls, from blackened clouds above swarming inward covering the basin and raising sky. Darkness hangs over the hills appear as black water crests, blackness varying shades. The sun is somewhere farther than the farthest ridge . Main gravel crossroads and back back roads slicken to mud, clay. Turtles creep along rising banks, snapping jowls. Frogs chug throaty songs. The frogs only part of immense choir heralding the downpour, the falling oceans. Over the train trestle, suspension bridge with current so slick everything slides off in sheets. Among rotten stumps in black bass ponds, somewhere catfish reel in fins and crawl, walking whiskers to higher waters. Waters above, below the choir calling it forth. Brightly plumed jays and dull brown-headed cowbirds fly as if hung in one place like pinwheels. They dance toward the rain crest, the approaching storm beckoning, inviting, summoning. A single sparrow sings the stroke of rain past the strength of sunlight. The frog chorus sings refrain, melody drumming thunder, evoked by beasts and water creatures wanting their homes. Wanting to return to clearings and streams where ash, or white birch woods rise,    tower over, quaking aspen stand against storm shown veils—sheeting rains crossing pasture, meadow, hills, mountain. Sounds erupt. Gathering clouds converge, push, pull, push, pull forcing lightning back and forth shaping windy, sculptured swans, mallard ducks, and giants from stratocumulus media. As if they are a living cloud chamber, As if they exist only in the heavens. Air swells with dampness. It has begun.

When the bed is empty, we pull the shades to block light, light of resemblance to remembery, long light of waiting, an impatience in the glows of it. The here of the now and the glow that days make in the room, without the body but with the stench of it. So we say,vacancy and abject,against the was, against a philosophy of once and then not. Not-being against. A child once grew here. As lines on a wall. As growing without knowing what would one day not be. A gnawing grows. Grew and was. Protection is curled. Motion- less. I envy her in her room. Hers with paint and dolls and hand- prints. Great green and glowing under blankets with a hand that nurtures the heart of the mouth, purrs into mouth, loves the heart. Heart beating within another—blushing blood— God, the beating, lit, and doing what it does.

When the body wishes to speak, she will reach into the night and pull back the rapture of  this growing root which has little faith in the other planets of the universe, knowing only one, by the bulbs of the feet, their branching of toes. But the feet have walked with the bones of their ancestors over long trails leaving behind the roots of forests. They walk on the ghosts of all that has gone before them, not just plant, but animal, human, the bones of even the ones who left their horses to drink at the spring running through earth’s mortal body which has much to tell about what happened that day. When the body wishes to speak from the hands, it tells of  how it pulled children back from death and remembered every detail, washing the children’s bodies, legs, bellies, the delicate lips of the girl, the vulnerable testicles of  the son, the future of my people who brought themselves out of the river in a spring freeze. That is only part of  the story of  hands that touched the future. This all started so simply, just a body with so much to say, one with the hum of  her own life in a quiet room, one of the root growing, finding a way through stone, one not remembering nights with men and guns nor the ragged clothing and broken bones of my body. I must go back to the hands, the thumb that makes us human, but then don’t other creatures use tools and lift what they need, intelligent all, like the crows here, one making a cast of earth clay for the broken wing of  the other, remaining until it healed, then broke the clay and flew away together. I would do that one day, but a human can make no claims better than any other, especially without wings, only hands that don’t know these lessons. Still, think of  the willows made into a fence that began to root and leaf, then tore off the wires as they grew. A human does throw off   bonds if  she can, if  she tries, if  it’s possible, the body so finely a miracle of  its own, created of  the elements and anything that lived on earth where everything that was still is.

Is that your house he asked This used to be my house I said But those are not your people So that can’t be your house But it is my house I said I had some people maybe a few Even though those are not your people Even though they don’t look like you I had to live somewhere I said This is the house where I lived But where are your people he said My people live in a different house They don’t care to know about me If you’re the devil Why are you asking me questions The devil said since the house You had to live in is gone I thought you’d be happy It sure is a hot day I said Of course it is said the devil Why do you think I work in town

what remained: barren stalks bowing heads by the field-full. rusty air conditioners dripping from warped windowsills. rock formations retaining roots. hollowed out caves and dog stumps forced ragged, toothy grins. all ablaze. a laser show shot hot through the tinny night. every husk wore a well lit protrusion. every breath an asthmatic thrush more material than the silence that surrounds each carcass now: voided prayer: cold arthritic grating: remembering notions of breath. saints: offer a hand to a wheezing shadow: wish for someone to hold before the sure, sudden twilight.

it is hallelujah time, the swallows tracing an arc of praise just off our balcony, the mountains snow-sparkling in gratitude. Here is our real life — a handful of possible peonies from the market — the life we always intended, swallow life threading the city air with our weaving joy. Are we this simple, then, to sing all day — country songs, old hymns, camp tunes? We even believe the swallows, keeping time.

When the very last grief deadens all our pain, I will follow you there on the very next train, not because I lack strength to ponder the end result, but maybe you forgot to bring pills, a necktie, razor blades

When thou must home to shades of underground, And there arriv'd, a new admired guest, The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round, White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest, To hear the stories of thy finish'd love From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move; Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights, Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make, Of tourneys and great challenges of knights, And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake: When thou hast told these honours done to thee, Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.