homestead.

oceanside there are saltdrops
and aqualine sunsets
but on a grass sea
our skirts billow lustily
   at the touch of
   the dust-winds
they unfailingly rush off
with my breath

Summits offer a view of the
world around and i see
where peace isn't
but stillness screams so shrilly
here from the banshee grassblades that I
am too wise for you and
I know

that stoicism as a rule
cuts like chaos.

here my grandfather shuffles in
dressed in oil and dust
and I love him even if
he has a Past: how he shrunk
in a time when death was
curious, overbearing: prevalent, mindnumbing
he lived in a uniform


---
and I tell him
'you could have stayed for your land
you could have hidden in the grassblades'

and his eyes were shining, diamondhard and earthsoft
and so old when he says

'honey, the land waits
this corn waits
the soil, it always waits.
but when people were dyin'
god didn't
sit and water his garden

he fought

and so did i.'




---
I gaze out the screen door and here it is:
exultant mountains
cleansing seas and
caressing blackforests sing me to sleep
and stroke my hair
but in the midmorning glare
in the spotlight

the plain is the only place where we can know
(clearly)