The Rewilding
in the DMZ ravines north of the Kaesong wastes edging
south of the perfect ruler’s pink and prisoned paradise
there is a climate paying no attention to us where cranes
repopulate serpentine deltas
another history than our own another spreadsheet than human
another profit another prophecy, chromosomal and intricate
nowhere is abstract unless we are abstracted
erasure held like a fierce lantern
ruins in future tense this keyboard, a particular
blue light at the edge of shadows
when Orpheus
lost in desolation and grief
laments the double death of Eurydice, the bare land
around him restores itself as forest
one living,
unshielded tree at a time moves in closer to listen
mouth open, stained with tears
there is nothing not alive to us even wasteland
no place free of desiring
just as I want you / to read / me
and you only want / to build a nest in leaves
brainstem, sanctuary –– here is a living angel
–– cortex, neo-cortex
whose neurons bloom galaxies, star-maps while you’re dreaming
and dreaming an andromeda-supernova-prefrontal incident eclipses
your sky-book’s immense shimmering invasion
even if I forget, radiation remembers ––
our isotopes won’t desert us
(no hard-drive can hold this storm (nor the stillness after
emptiness in earth takes the shape of their two bodies
memory heals by forgetting, over-writes us
then memory remembers again –– a physical thing like a knot
what leaks is body
where train tracks converge the infinite
our eyes can’t bear to see the visible, let alone the invisible
yet there is nothing that does not see us
just as the world appears to quiet down
a tanker in the northern seas spills its cargo in violet glacial ice
her body arcs like a dolphin, rose-colored haunches curl and open
dripping stars milk firmament
the hairs on your arm, the raw blind mouth you tongue
try to open the gate without its consonants
conscience requires all the phonemes it can gather
sounds in another’s voiceprint or chromatophoric gesture
flaking into awareness
into the fiery immensity of listening
a brain floats over debris like a surveillance satellite
unmanned missile, unexploded ordinance, now a bird calls
into places we cannot endure to touch or enter
everyday whited out the news goes unconscious
and even though our minds cannot bear it
some part of us sees what is unseen
while in air crowded with the discourse of wi-fi
the not-yet extinguished
cranes open their wings into an unowned world