Tree of Many Feathers:

9/12/2000

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First, there was the sun.   From the beginning time we willed it to exist, lungs full of amniotics, kick and roll, kick and roll, finally in sunlight born, there in sunlight a first cry, there in sunlight, and so this is why I am always writing of gardens, gardens and sunlight, the first clichés.

Moon, the second cliché—there you were bathed in ghost light, night ghost light, like those men from the aeons, men who might have tasted me and left their marks, from beneath various powdered wigs, behind beauty spots and grease paint, from atop serious horses, armored by serious God-the-Fathers, blood and fire and horses, the second cliché would be moon, and once I thought it would be the last cliché, but that is yet to come.

Then, Love. An echo of moon reflecting sun across a vast cold vacuum. It’s the idea of you. The idea of you, it’s the idea, the idea. I would never bow to such things, but that they fill my head, fill my head like water, like clouds of water, it is congestion, nose blowing, the rattle of brittle edges on stiff wrinkles, they fill my head and warm it, party it up, woo it, until my hands have unfisted and I have thought, yes, yes, okay, that’s what I want, at last, that’s what I want and maybe I even want to try and get it, maybe I even want to try to do more than think it over and over again, or dream it, maybe I actually want to make it happen. This is not the last cliché either.

Because, there is the body. More garden imagery, more light imagery, but not sun, not sun, no, but circles, yes, like empty suns, circles and circles and circles, planets, their axis, their travels, coins, race tracks, inhale nose, exhale mouth, I eat, I digest, I shit, the gardens grow. I drink, I spit, I intoxicate, I go, and the sea never empties. A link is forged just so: from the shoulders reach forward, four arms, four palms, the fingers must lace, the palms contract, no flinching aloud, an expression of wise individuality and unwise individualism that flows between eyes, and looking, and will.

Paradoxes. (I thought we’d never get here.) They are last, but the why will split you in two, for without circles, planets, coins, race tracks, without gardens, birthing, links forged, without the ebb and flow of tidal fluids, moon and sun, sun and ideas, without what we have we would never know what we have not. This logic started with the sun, but it returns unanswered.

Living is always so.