The first village is moving
and we eat with gnashing teeth
The lion’s leftovers.
When the snows come,
we peek out from earthen caves
at the wonderment of land.
Our necks become thick
and we warm the winter air
as we suck in breathing.
We begin to notice one another
and wish we didn’t die so soon.
Feeling absence like the heavy dark
we mourn before sweet-smelling fires
And send our friends to bed
with smoke and flowers.
Days change in the infinite deserts,
and we leave footprints in the sound mud.
Starving together, we organize ourselves
because children hold us accountable
in our teaching. Sometimes valleys
catch us like a river bends catching sand
and we settle. Wherever we are, we live
in the perpetual movements of collection
and ingestion. And we thrive through long
suffering and conversations with the broad sky.
We carve and paint with our mouths,
make pictures in our likeness, victorious.
We remember stories, because the steep dark,
the monument of time, is terrifying.
Spreading across continents
The challenges are slow and the
Solutions are spread out over generations.
In this process we are made human-
The one, long memory shared, folded
one life into the other, speaking like ghosts,
like companions. Each art is the conversation
we have with ourselves, the future, and the past.
We make a continuous river out of colored cloth,
out of poems and pictures, out of necessity.
We become many, and the challenges become greater.
The fires flare hot, and the slow burn of learning is left
to warm the lonely and the patient.
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