Richard Alan Bunch
SEQUOIA
There were survivors in your family
Too. Before the kingdoms of Benin and
Ashoka's India, you survived it
All: denying spirit to matter, and
The healing power of rage, captive limbs
Who freed each root's journey, those mother tongues
Of mutual emptiness. Other limbs
Became the heirs of worms. Through fires your lungs
Yet breathed. Circles of seeds became your skins,
Scars of your history, wood of our myth.
You survived as Lao Tzu died praising yin,
The Black Death cinched the dead, genocide blitzed
Us with ash. But before you're axed to jade
Your shorn limbs will hold more than this time's shade.
CANOEING
The way she breathes with each deep stroke that feeds
Eddies and swirls, her paddle arches wide
As though to turn. But the currents that breed
The most difficulty are those well-tried,
Need deeper strokes. They're biases that shift
Their histories along the waterline
With scars. She finds it hard now not to drift,
To keep stroking in despair's wake, to find
Cathedrals in waves, genius in turning
Back to where she's come from, sometimes has to
Steer toward the shore, avoid the current's
Mainstream whose sunset cargoes can slice through
Some that are unsung. She knows too how pools
With each stroke change, how currents vie like schools.
LATE SUMMER, RUSSIAN RIVER
Endless
the desire
to halt the hum
and buzz
and buzz
of passage
and clutch
what bubbles
from the restless heart.
The blood
no longer curious
flows
long into shadows
to learn
a latitude of ripeness.
Still
there is this yearning
which juts
past the mellowed
senses, past beauty,
this yearning to
master fire
to season the discerning
eye for twilight.
Late summer survives
when our
shadows engender praises
at dusk.
Even now in this west wind
with desire
pulsing our currents
this yearning
is there to climb
down into
the root of stillness
and touch
her holy
skin.
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