Written during Carl Daniel’s wake
from the 100 year-old Oak which died
the same week he did.
Over the great rolling
Pacific waters came
The driven wind
Licking and skipping
Over the seminal
Pounding whitecaps
Inland
Inland
Raking roary furrows
Over rows of seeded pelicans
Kissing seasoned brays
Driven to the inlet stadium
Round Point Joe
Scaling sandstone rythyms
Higher and higher
Breaching round the birthrim
Pulling the cormorants into dervish
Driven
Driven
Into the cuts of rising cypress and oak
Running the dark-carpeted forests
Ignoring all words
Up
Up
Swirling in whirlwind
Sucking the seed of Great Oak
Into a dancing circle unbroken
Driving seed into the
Darkened
Waiting
Loam.
Father seed,
Mother womb
Inward
Inward
Ticklish dance
Inside virgin
California range
Raised underneath
Yet within
The shuddering pulse
Of the Pacific.
Dance of the New Oak
Unfolding
Unyielding
Radicles snaking
Young Fatheroots breaking
And taking the earth
Founding
Founding
A Spray of five young
Stalks begin to brood
Extending from the heart
Knowing and naming
Whatever the flinted
Barking trunk
Cannot glimpse.
Carved on each branch
Are the names of all
The Lovers
The Songs they sung
The sons and daughters
Whose humble fame
Framed the surface
Of that expansive
Family name
Shuddering
Shuddering
Five heavy limbs remain
Outweighed
Stretching too far
Too far
From the heart of a trunk now dead.
Now Men will come.
Do not despise them.
Men must come.
They are coming
They are coming
Come to pull down the heavywood
Come to root up the tendriled histories
From a Century’s shadowed earth
Cutting a series of red-furled slabs
Still moist with November’s red rings
Still crusted with the dark brown-oak of Fatherwood
Down
Down
Three-fold cords
Bundled and
Stacked along the five family walls
When the cold comes
And the hollowness hearkens
Then comes the heavywood
Piece at a time
Laid upon the hot harness
Of each hearth
Time of ashes
Time of ashes
Colors dancing above the drying centered rings
With hallowed smoke climbing
From the bellies
Of Five children.
The blackened brick, wood and fire
Form the Question:
Where do we go from here?
Where?
Now
The wind once again dances
Over a great empty space.
Outward
Outward
Miles away
Orphans drop
Their inevitable fruit
driven
driven
On the Wind which comes
When new seed is sown.
The wind has shifted
New lives will be formed
Their names will be spoken
Tommorow.
__________________
© 2018 Christopher MacDonald
Azotus Theology & Art 