The Martians(140)

Glossolalia peppered with names

Simple statements firm orders Let go walk



Telling me to do things a game

That made you laugh also knowing

When things were in different ways the same



Blue truck blue sky your face glowing

With delight as your language grew

Till description became a kind of telling



Power I spit out the sun I sky the blue

Sitting in that living room together

Each in his own world surprised by new



Things spaced out lost to each other

Used to each other like Siamese twins

Confined to the house by steamy weather



Me watching volleyball on ESPN

Listening to Beethoven reading the Post

You moving your trucks around babbling when



You felt like it absorbed focused lost

In your own space so fully that watching you

I forgot my many selves collapsed to one and was most



Happy the past is gone David I asked beloved of

God do you remember Bethesda

The way my mother would have



Asked me Do you remember Zion

And David looked at me curiously and said No

Dad not really I know how the house looked but all



That comes from pictures in Mom's albums you know

Yes my first memory is not of Zion but

California the Christmas I was three a brown



Trike put together by my dad next to the tree but

My dad tells me he bought the trike assembled

How can we say what did or did not



Happen David watching you I tremble

You know the world are sophisticated

You say you do not remember



That time and now you know so much of hate

Of anguish of death

Will you ever again be so elated



By the sight of swans swimming under the wharf

Shrieking with laughter as they dove for tossed bread

I hope we are these moments deeper than self



Deeper than memory always connected

Inside each other hoping

This helps hope stave off dread

Brother of mine boy receding

I will try to remember for us

The time when you could be so purely happy

I SAY GOOD-BYE TO MARS

Hiking alone in the Sierra Nevada

I stopped one evening in Dragon Basin

Above treeline by a small stream



Trickling down a flaw in the granite

On the floor of this crack were

Lush little lawns green moss



Furring the banks krummholz bonsai

Clustering over low black falls

Transparent water glossed on top



Standing there I looked

Over the fellfield basin a cupped

Hand of stone catching rocks



Inlaid with a tapestry of plants

Lichen sedge and saxifrage

Tippling green the pebble all bare



Under jagged ridges splintering the sky

Beside the rill I made my camp

Ground cloth foam pad sleeping bag



Pack for a pillow stove at my feet

In the failing light my dinner steaming

To the gurgle of water and the sky



And the stars popping into existence

Over the crest of the range still

Alpenglow pink spiking indigo



The line between the colors pulsing

As they faded to two shades of black the number

Of stars amazing the Milky Way perfectly



Articulating my fall up and into sleep

And was never tired

Dreamed the same dreams



And heard the rockslides rattle and thunder

In the throats of these living mountains

Something woke me I put on my glasses



I lay looking up at stars and the Perseids

Meteors darting across the starry black

Every few heartbeats every direction



Fast slow long short far near

White or some a shade of red some

Seeming to hiss slow down break up



Firing great sparks away to the sides

In their wakes I watched held by granite

Entrained to a meteor shower beyond



Any I had imagined possible the stars

Still fixed in their places lighting

The great shattered granite walls



Of the basin all pale witness

Together to fireworks one

Plowing the air right over the peaks



Fizzing sparks over Fin Dome

One shot down just overhead

Wow I cried and sat up to look



As a great BOOM knocked me into

A dark land sparked by fire

Fires burning My God



I cried oh my God oh my God

Struggling to get out of bag into boots

On my feet out stumbling around a smell



Like autumn leaves burning the past

I took up my water bag and crashed about

Quenching fires that reignited



As I ran to the next oh my God

And ran to the stream and stopped thinking

That here was the action of my life



Putting out fires where there was no wood

Vision crisscrossed with afterimages

Of the final fall green bolts



In every blink of the eye finally

I stood in the dark understanding

There was no need to hurry



I came to a chunk of vivid orange

A stone standing alone on a slab

A meteorite still glowing with heat



I sat down before it

I calmed my breathing

Cross-legged I watched it glow



I put my hand out to it

I could feel its heat some distance

Away the pure color of fire