i am too suspicious of success
and the complacency which follows
because my arms have melted
too many times—

wax separating feather from feather
wax smearing my new nametag
(and i was only flying 10 feet
above the sea)
                        

but i was there seven plus seven years 
in the mucosa-barked madrona roots
pretending some god helped or at least 
padded down the path with soft lips

pretending the sun 
which was supposed to filter
through the stone path overhead 
made it down here

but years strung together 
and the road under the road 
was still the only way from nauseous 
breakfast to a sleep of painted beaks

some time in my forties i mirrored back up
into my body pulling up from under my ankles
yanking on the tendons up the long bones 
into hips and ghost shoulder to socket wrapped

again—like i was twelve 
before my traveler felt it necessary to burrow
i again inhabit this frame of juice and hair 
because i forgave myself for all the failures

which never required forgiveness—
just breathing here skin flushed 
in its own skinness the roots 
now branches fruiting beards of bees

hands now blessed with 
permission
                        

in the stroller through these suburban streets
which used to be an evergreen forest 
and many of the douglas fir and western red cedar
still assert their stakes and hold roots 
hold court despite the plasticky houses 
and the asphalt where the stream used to curl
they stand 40 to 80 feet some to 100 feet 
they have seen the deer and elk and bear and racoon 
silently replaced by mutated wolves and tiny cougars 
and mostly pale humans where smoke from pipes 
and fluid talk was once sewn into the needles
and the late summer wind 
 
and as i look down at my son 
the linen sheet draped over the front of the stroller 
to protect him from the sun has molded to his face 
because of the gusts blowing down this manufactured 
canyon and he can’t see why he can’t see
this whiteweave obscuring the openings to his forest 
and i think we are all a bit like this 
with our own fabric stuck across our voices 
and we translate this group of threads and knots 
as the reason for the work and the pain 
and the answer rather than the bleachscript 
which has covered this hill on this moist planet 
in this silvered bath of stars that look cold 
only because they are so far away
so far away