Everlasting Thrum
like golden eagles that
emerge from black sky,
then melt away in
a corridor of skeletal
trees, how did we become
separate persons, the “they”
so often spoken here?
speech is a little thing
a huge thing
a hurting thing
an otherizing thing
what makes me wait here
among the trees for all of
you, is a lost sense of
fire to print the ground
with parallel figures, shafts
of sunlight framing
fresh-cut trunks in the
clearings, and hollow stumps
on the ground where
we gather
this human forest is
torn, unrecognizable, rotting…
the everlasting thrum
too deaf, too fretful,
too polarized,
to gather hearts and
bring all to the table
you have all passed
this way, paused at the clearing
and, ignoring, dissolved like
a sigh, all around, and no
horror is even in it
in our eyes anymore, now that
at daybreak it’s
already almost night
–Jo 2008
