Camping with Richard Dawkins

The foremost atheist

invokes a dune

of ash sailing

westward, the wind

exchanging

grain for grain until

it is new.  It is new

and yet it bears forward

the crescent ridge

and curled horn

of memory.

He maintains no atom

of my veins or bones

claimed me when first

I drew breath.  I am

a new alliance

of dust, in a forest

in Missouri, far

from desert waves

and Oxford.  My sweat-

beaded brow now

a salty crown, after

the long cold, I am

sunk in rain-slick

loam, claimed

like a thing with roots.

This equinox, chartreuse-

flecked underbrush

and fat gnats

emerging tell me

the moment grave turns

cradle.  Sky laced

with branches still

bare, and air thick

with singing. Throaty mud

kings usurp my sleep.

At camp, I scry coals

for a name to lift

my tongue, before

nodding off, exalting

none.

Near Circus-Lyon Community Garden

Winter 2011

The bullet savages

a young man’s jugular

as I salvage

child’s pose and cup

warm tea a few doors

down.  In a town

too small to yield a slum,

distinct worlds revolve

in singular space,

and we resolve

to forget other orbits until

lead or Jerusalem

Artichokes pierce us.

The wintered garden, softly

encased, awaits someone

to clear the murky bottles

while Black Oaks bare

their bones. The paper

does not provide

his name, only the location

of his woundedness

and an uncolored shot

of the plot where Daniel’s

berries grow.  There are names

I don’t, and names I know.