Lisa Wells

Born again on a Monday under a broken zodiac. My father the woodman, a surgeon among snags, could read the living trail of blades rebounding in the field, the mopped-matte passage through the dew. He woke a brush pile with fire throwing shadows on the child, I was thrown over. Father, it was a pleasure to meet you on this luminous route between two lives. In this impromptu pool reaped from rain where mosquitos multiply. Though survival, I’m told, is impersonal and without teleological purpose. Malaria is just trying to maximize its own fitness as are the corporations who, for palm oil set the peatlands ablaze and drained the water table. Dense haze from the sea choked the light from day suffused our mountain in a numinous red corona. And as for the getting over there will be no ascension, no circumambulation, there is only going through. We must go through it.