I
Of Feet.

Take off your shoes
Reveal your feet to the ground
And sigh, as your mind lets go that leather bound
Vestige, and lay with your toes buried sound
In the knowledge that feet are best unclothed
Against the foot of the world
And our toes don’t tell tales to our souls
About the paths we tread as we walk,
Toward each other.

II
Of fire

All aglow, a burning spur of hill
A bluff, a reddened mouldering show
In basalt blackened night
A sulking hill, hunched mimicking
A volcanic eye
Wood smoke sucked though the radiator vent
Permeates and marinades
The car interior light
Heart of oyster black unopened night
Gouts of smoke sheet mistaken for
Mysterious fog
A town twinkling in the dark valley groove
Below, awaits the approaching headlights
Roar of tarmac on slick black road
Here we come, down we go

III
Of rivers

The river keeper sees his charge
Crawling on its knees
It trickles by degrees, dries
To a thirsting mouth

Its pools lay oil flat, slick
And stagnant. Tadpoles ticking
North and south under
The sick skein

The only sign of life
Etched into a cleft
Where no burbling music comes
But wildflowers still dance

And sway at the oozing rivers
Slowing edges where now
He stares down onto
The baked naked nape of sedges

Where once, fifty years gone in youth
Noise he heard, the mellifluous flow
The rivers poise of mercy ran down
Its life’s course in rivulets and sweet eddies

To the people holding up their bowls
In the valleys down below it sang
Ringing through the mountain air,
Where did you go, what did you know?