April 29, 2020

Music For You To Listen To While You Read

Walking across valleys
then down to rivers.
So much space to choose from
yet a tiny trail threads through the middle.

A distant mountain, thirty miles away
looks like it can be touched.
Walking toward it for three days
it only grows larger.

Standing on it, like an ant on a house.
Chipped bones from reindeer
lay beside granite rocks—
Twinflower blooming pinkly in dark clefts—
a place to sleep.
Cloudberries to eat
cold water to drink.

When I don’t know what to write anymore, I look into my bones. I spoke recently about the writing bone, but this is a different kind of bone. A new bone, and old bone. Bones meaning things that hold us up.

When one doesn’t notice their bones, one feels weightless. The bones attach to ligaments, and then to muscles, which keep it all moving. You can control your body with just your mind. Look, my fingers are typing out this unphysical series of thoughts.

Bones are made of minerals. Do bones grow and change?

The sun this morning first landed on the tawny chamisatops. Not all people like the smell of that bush, but I do. Cattle around here ate all the sagebrush. So now there’s only chamisa left. Sage brush dies after a fire because it spreads by seed. So there has to be a new crop to blow seed to where it was.

There are many sounds, thoughts, feelings—all occurring in a vast expanse. This expanse stretches from the great bone in the sky to the red blood of the ground and then spreads out in who knows how many directions. In the center of this space is a warm white sphere. This sphere some call your mind.