temple building

Flat top treetop
Broken down river
I shiver
cause that cloud of smoke pouring from your lips is cold
or is that the broken quartz on this path poking into the arch of my foot?
Slow down boy.
Your pledge pin is shining too brightly on your black t-shirt.
Your legs are like scissors, but you’re cutting crooked in your haste.
I wonder where you’re running to
with your mind sprinting so fast that your face stays still
even when I smile.
Drip drip drop down the slope of the mountain,
should we pray for freezing rain to dry up the spring,
hurry it along for the burning fire of a summer sunset?
Two eyes piercing through the branches,
barreling towards me like a raging metallic beast:
A furnace to tear down these woods and turn them all into
heat pouring sweat pacing down my body,
worker ants forming a string from my mouth to the navel of the orange resting in the
palm of my hand.
Where is mercury rising to, and is Venus around the corner with her sulfurous yellow
clouds masking the seashell as it shatters on the surface of the lake?
Come my kelp friends,
shake your bubbles up to the surface while the turtle parades down below
dodging to and fro like an alpine skier
skittering off to the side as the goose submerges her head.
Fluffy white teddy bear tail rounding and bouncing sending ripples lapping at my curled
toes.
Still, still.
Hold them still. The pollen will wrap back around. You will be one with this world. Natural, normal.
Just keep telling yourself.
And here! Hear!
The trout arches out of the water, fins flashing between the stretching rays of light sliding
down the particle highways, bounding off debris and into my eyes.
Victory! The championship! You have defeated nature at the quiet mouse game,
startling it from stillness into the vibrant array of reality you fail to notice bounding through and picking up flowers and stick to build your temple fortress under the willow sobbing beside the dock.
You win a morning and an evening and an eye for beauty programmed into your halfway
hard heart.
Here’s to your tangled thistle hair,
Your porcupine skin slicing into the brick wall.
Here’s to your naked limbs angled on top of the grass like passing driftwood.
To your head full of lyrics and fears as it leans up against the golden bark of the
grandmother tree.
And she tells you that you are at peace.