Soapbox

                                                It's easy to forget what legs are for,
what sinew and muscle and bone are for
until yours grow molten
and every fiber in them speaks to you,
until 'up' becomes the biggest word in the English language.
It's easy to forget the life force of a hundred millions tons of rock,
when after all- it's just been sitting there for the last epoch or so-
until you have the time to notice how it's skin changes
from sandy feet to its bald, granite head.

It's hard to know what wet really feels like until
you wander for hours
inside a cloud:
wear it, breathe it in, feel it slip between your toes,
and expell it again through your own pores.

It's easy to forget, as we sit, locked up tight 
in our offices and living rooms, encased in our car-cocoons,
what the world is supposed to smell like:
damp, and stone, grass, and bone, tang of fir and cedar height,
musk of death, and flash of life.
We seal our doors and windows tight wear chemical masks of simulated reality.
We log and mine, drill and frack our wild places
and then name air fresheners after them.

As we pace within the lines we draw for ourselves,
set our fence posts and rake our lives into tidy rows
we forget the splendor of disorder,
the true peace of letting go.

It's easy to forget what the earth actually sounds like  
when all we know is the argument of traffic,
shriek of synthetic televised laughter,
click of locking doors, humming pump of artificial air.
It's easy not to recall the chuckle of stream over rocks,
piping of the Carolina wren from across the hollow,
the scrape of a footstep through leaf litter,
cathedral silence of the hemlock giants. 
We forget about the sound of the wind
telling the secrets of its journey to the patient trees,
so that on winter nights they might dream of far-away places.

We forget, in our blinking digital age, staring at LCD images of water and sky
what light is supposed to look like-
forget the way it slants through branches in the early morning,
illuminates each fold and undulation of the mountains at dusk,
the infinite varieties of purple it paints on the underside of an evening thunderhead
or the way it glitters off restless water like God tossing a thousand flashing coins down to earth.

It's impossible to know what dawn really means until you stand above everything else
so there's nothing but you and the sky and the edge of the world
and watch the sun come up, and wonder how it is
you ever slept through such ear-splitting beauty.

It's impossible to know how many colors there are until you stand on the mountain
and watch a thousand of them thicken and drip and fold in on themselves
as the sun goes down.
It's easy to forget you even have a heart
until the perfection of a single drop of water
tears yours from your body and offers it, laughing, to the four winds.

The gift of the mountain is a new understanding of these old things,
a re-acquaintance with the primal force of your own pulse,
a remembering what life is supposed to be.

Because it's esy to think that mankind is the master of our universe
after all we go Roving on Mars, baby!
but we are masters of our own little stinking caves, nothing more.
It's easy to forget, from the bowels of cities where the lights never go out
and the sky is a pale, silent thing
what the universe really feels like-
what it means to throw your head back and hear the roar
of a carpet of stars and galaxies both black and bright, 
so massive it could crush you,
so vast you could just spread your arms and float away.
 

A true story, actually.

Her hands resemble wind-gnarled branches now,
or claws, clutching at the past
unable any longer  to grasp even self.
Mouth without words or teeth,
nonsense syllables are the only story she has left to tell.
She does not interact with the world around her,
just sits by the door at the end of the hall and rocks and rocks
hooded eyes gazing already into the abyss that most of us fear more than death.

She does not seem to see the young woman who is visiting,
just mutters and occasionally waves bent, twisted arms purposelessly
seems incapable of recognition or contact.
She has already left behind her life and her tasks,
her body and even her name.
But for all this indignity and terrible loss,
she will never leave behind the one thing that truly makes her human.

Look, Grandma. Look who I brought to see you.
The woman lifts a tiny, wiggling bundle from a basket
and holds it forward towards the wizened figure rocking, rocking in her wheelchair.

Perhaps it makes a sound the rest of us are too far away to hear
or maybe the old woman catches that distinct newborn smell
which I believe every creature instinctively recognizes.
Whatver the reason, the rocking stops,
ancient head on bird neck rises, turns,
frail, twisted arms raise in a beckoning
and light pours from her creased face as if a candle has been lit within.
The beautiful arc of her cheekbones is visible again for a moment as a mouth
that can no longer speak her own name
frames a single word, a most important word
possibly even a last word,
breathes it like a prayer:
Baby!

Trusting  the love that shines before her
the mother gently sets her child into its great-grandmothers arms
while its tiny clutched  fists wave purposelessly.
The frail body curls protectively now around this new, old thing
and though she can no longer hold a spoon, we all know
that she will not drop this child.
She does not know who it is, but she knows what it is
and what she needs to do.
Perhaps she simply recognizes someone at the other end
of the same journey.
She coos and mutters and resumes her rocking
but now it does not seem  a slipping away so much a motion that complete the circle.

Of all the things we fear to lose in life
the thing that we will never lose is the one that really makes us human
more surely than creativity or language or even self-awareness.
For love is not a thing we learn or acquire,
but are simply made out of,
a thing which we breathe as surely as air, that anchors us more firmly than gravity,
that fills our sails and carries us inexorably homeward.
It is the blood that flows, however weakly,
and the bones that shape us, however brittle they become.
It is the tiny fists that quest out to meet the world
and the crippled ones that draw in to protect and cherish.

Love is an ocean and we are creatures of the mysterious deep.
It is endlessly circulating, flowing in invisible, inexorable patterns
connecting everyone.
All of the ocean is contained in each single drop of water,
and  we can only drown if we refuse to open our hearts and breathe.

"You belong to me"
The words simply escaped, kicked past the boundary of lips,
brushed by the guards of convention
and presented themselves as I stepped into his embrace.

He had only been gone 4 days, just a few hours away by plane
but with every nerve now fine-tuned to the thousands of ways
the world can take someone from you,
I found his return more than just the reestablishment
of companionship and routine.
For me his absence felt like something of irreplaceable value had been stolen, 
something rightfully and unquestionably mine,
like my voice or my fingerprints had been
slipped from my back pocket while my attention was elsewhere
only to turn up again here in the baggage claim area of the Columbus airport
looking fit, slightly tanned and cheerful.
"I missed you too" he said,
amusement in his voice because he didn't understand
hadn't been awake to see, didn't hear the echoing emptiness
that had threatened everything like the scream of an approaching missile…
never quite saw what was missing
until it had already come back.

He didn't recognize me.

When I touched his shoulder and said "Do you know who I am?"
he turned his head, smiled at me and said "Hi"
with no recognition in his eyes.
I am no stranger to concussion,
have seen short term memory loss before,
but there is nothing short-term about me and him.
For 35 years he has known my name
known my body, my joys and fears, my heart
but he just licked his bloody lips and said "Hi"
with the same odd cheerfulness he displays
when the doctor introduces himself
and  fear probed into my heart
sharper and colder than the phlebotomist's needle
penetrated his scraped and bruised right arm.

Outwardly he is a patchwork of shallow scrapes and torn skin
but occult and sinister damage lurks inside:
a spider-web of cracked bones around the eyes
and underneath, swollen folds of grey tissue
surrounding misfiring neurons.
They tell me they're going to do a scan to see
how much is lost, what to expect to come back.
If the scan is good, they'll  keep him 'for observation'
but what I observe now makes my fingers grow cold.
His hands, so nimble andd expressive,
flutter and wave above him in constant, restless motion,
like small birds seeking to escape from this unhappy trauma bay.
I reach for them, need to hold them and him here.
He takes my hand when I catch his- I wonder if it is simple reflex-
and I want to  cling to it, but his hands are bleeding from a dozen places
so I gingerly slip my fingers between his
lean forward and brush them with trembling lips.

"What happened?" he wonders again, apparently in no pain.
"What's going on here?"
I've lost you, and you've  lost me I want to wail.
"You crashed your bike" I offer instead.
"Well, that sucks" he replies cheerfully.
I dab a drop of blood away from his cheek
and whisper "Yes, it does…"