First Saturday of Summer
our hands sweat in the grass until
plateaus and peaks draw in their woolen covers.
Fried fresh corn kernels from the fire
salt.
Each drop on tin, a world
An hour, or so
maybe more or less
to talk about, so
We gaze out the door
where slick leaves are dripping
lick our salty fingers
and pass the minutes
…or so they pass us
listening to the rain.
*
The cicadas came when I was five
behind the school yard.
I put my finger on one
and then I picked it up
it was like a fig, dark and rough.
At five cicadas were interesting, like figs.
Now I am much bigger
friendly, the little goat nuzzles my shoulder with his warm snout
soft, we are alive, together easily.
And then I press my eyes shut
as I capture the insect that has invaded this carpet, which is mine
because I own it.
Sometimes I wonder how I can find my way back
from the pliant kid to the figs to the cicadas, captivated
with all their legs, their slick ribbed shells, all their songs enchanting
the school yard
all chirping and chirping tickling my ears until my ears overflowed with music
amid the crunching leaves and delicate wings
a symphony, a society, a universe blossom
after seventeen years of silence.
Sometimes I wonder
what we are afraid of
why we crush things, bugs and leaves and oceans and people
when I was five, I used
just one tiny finger
to say hello.
*
Where droplets of water leak through the tin roof
Into the cooking fire
What is an education?
Page after page after page after
She can’t read
Pages.
She can read the weather
She can read the seeds
She can read the incense spiraling up over the roof into the sky to Heaven
I have a book.
I leave it at home and follow her
In my flip flops
Flop after flop after flop after flop down
The stone path to the fields of buried seeds.
We planted the corn
We tilled the corn
The hail is ruining it now
And droplets are leaking through the roof in to the cooking fire
Just one at a time
Plop after plop after plop.
She collects water in tin jugs
For drinking and cooking
From over there, near Bauta dai’s house.
I imagined this place once
When I read about it in a book
My education began when I began
Tearing the pages from the spine
Page after page after page after
LISTEN.
What is this world anyway?
An education.
Pick up your pen again
And again and again and again and again
You must send something
A gift to the future
That somebody can rip in to beautiful pieces
And put in the fire
Where the smoke seeps
Up under a gap in the roof up into the sky up to Heaven
And comes down again
As drop after drop after drop after drop
Of rain.
*
All The Pieces 