brown bear won’t sleep unless there’s snow
& there’s no snow
warmest it’s ever been

if the old grasses could come back
to where the new grasses have settled

i don’t know as much as my mom
my mom didn’t know as much as her mom

you’d only have a month or two in the fall
to gather acorns before the rains

a short time to get
what you’d be using all year

something in me trying to hold on

when i came home, before doing homework, i had to crack open acorns, enough to fill a bucket

sun returns each day
green persists

and the fly i was always swatting
come to find out
is the one who in its infancy
will eat our infection

ground underfoot—
hard, soft, crumbling

water from above
water from below

make tea from what i’ve gathered

*

dove weed along the edges of the road

what is an attic, the students ask
what does it mean “to pull away from”?

we sit around the table

the soldier has come back
with all ideals vanquished

stars flicker

she gets up and gathers the plates

we have eaten

if i walk down the moonless road
i hear some laughter

i can’t remember word for word what was said

crickets in the scrub

i don’t know half their names
but i have to say
it’s a beautiful night

*

*

it’s not so easy, you have to peel every acorn—it takes a lot of time

*

that whole stretch from mountainside
to canyon to other mountainside
scorched

one way or another getting renewed

we’ll lose the oaks in a hundred years if we don’t burn in winter and clear in summer

buggy ground where it’s thickly untended

you can walk up & down the hillsides right now
because all that’s there are blackened sumac trunks

quick fall day, late leaky light

some flowers appearing
in the fall’s division of time, heretical growings
of mallow and nightshade

why so much wanting
as if all of this weren’t enough

she made herself so big
too much & too little
who had made themselves also very big
couldn’t match her grandeur
and so were compelled to sit in her lap

which made them come into balance

*

i use “genetic memory,” think about what my ancestors would do with the plant

*

bees hum in the trees
the notebook of fallen leaves i’ve been given to read

torches of war burn the ground
we’d relied on

so then the ashes of expectation

elemental, simple, unfathomable

emptiness

for all those voyages to the moon
discoveries of the depths of the sea

unschooled in what matters beyond matter

looking for the beginning

my body slipping away from its young form

the fly comes into the house
rests on the wall
and is gone

she meant to write about immigrants
but wrote instead about her lover

who else but

if we don’t go to what’s left
of the quick-melting arctic

encyclopedia of rocks

sacrificing air and water
for our leaders

hummingbird still comes

throughout the day
shadow moves around the tree