My head rang while Christian domination
conquered the wild rhetoric of old,
and by the sword God’s name painted the land red.
The “open space movement” faded in thirst,
dry and frail, and everyone
knew they lived in a silver pretentious age.
Eastern spirit took to the foot of the Inupiaq,
where religion was true and a way.

With proper study of mankind, even patriarchs
of absurd methodologies can be freed.
We need not a metropolis, but a wilderness of sweets where
birth, constitution, and character count for something.
Self-thus, the path of water is such, rule one.
“If I don’t do it the other guy will” is the mantra
we sing, while hanging over the edge of life and death.

Staring upon faint marks of an ageless map,
fine symbols etched in eroding gold,
two children read “Imperial Forests.”
“they’re gone” one says.
“When it falls to the ground the sagebrush
will erupt in flames”
“How different am I?” the other asks.

Somewhere in the blue mountains sat a woman
fatigued and anxious,
hunched over an Oak table,
and a letter to her husband in Prudhoe bay.
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll go home with you,”
she scribed, and with a wax stamp sent
it to sea level, where word never travels up.
Grandmother’s wisdom could have taught these
people a thing or two.

Pine doors and baroque locks line the streets as far as
the eye can see. The Bear People never interrupt the
Mountains when in conversation. Is this what we’ve created,
a security of nothing? Bison’s stroll prairies hundreds of years
before we came through with bulldozers. One lover tells the other
....before sleep,
“don’t lift your head in the morning and look at me,
even if you wake up before I do”
“Why?” the other asks.
“Because you will not be able to hear me.”

Contact: JohSha17@Evergreen.edu