OK.
Now we're going to get into--
We're past the warm up period now.
Here we go.
I picked piñons at Gallina's Peak on knees beneath piñon
tree.
Sift shell wood petals in black, grainy dirt chips
that inscribed the time on my fingertips
as I scratched the Earth when Earth made hands bleed
and cracked and gave meaning to our pain.
I throw a coat on the ground and shake the tree,
palm piñons in the coffee can, then knock pocket knife handle
against stubborn acorns, fringed with thawing ocher.
And the brown shell dreamers softly
drop into the can, held aloft beneath each cone.
My hand goes to catch up piñon, and I hear a murmur
in the tree's tongue, brush my bare arm and tell of a stable
world.
It's getting dark.
I sit on a boulder and scan the valley below.
Hidden rock hollows are rooms at the end of a long mansion
corridor, where the wind is a small boy who
practices piano fingering key after key for a missing note.
The boy plays a melody of a one legged man, one armed man,
one eyed man, one.
All alone in my imbalance.