Before (or After) Daring a Crossing

Remember how after our young questers came back

sun-bleached, tarps flapping

sand everywhere;

twelve, thirteen year old bodies

burning with ancient

stories of sacred nothings:

drawings of peanut butter and ketchup sandwiches

and faces on buoys,

dick jousting and sand-circle twirling,

freezing bedtime sand holes,

counting the stars all night long~

from sunrise to sunrise

alone, fasting, by the seal-wild

sea;

Remember how we told them ~

after they told us

their stories

ahowl with wolf and dead-whale calls,

lunar raccoon wanderings and stick-and-

stone boundaries:

to only let in/ the ones who they chose/ to let in;

Remember how we told them ~

because we longed for them to know ~

the way songs know

the way bones know

the way we all once knew / before we were counseled out of that kind of knowing~

Not to quit at the first misunderstanding

or at the tenth: “what are you talking about?”

or the hundredth: “what happened to you?

can’t you just be normal again?”;

Maybe you will be too much

for the world you’re returning to;

Yes, maybe you will …

But what you’re bringing back

that “too much”

that “too much”

is exactly what this world needs.

We need most

what we are the least prepared for.

This moment ~ Do I go or do I not go?

They think I’m crazy

How will I be able to come back? ~

I think,

is like that;

Like the rotting bone-hung whale we sat by,

thirteen-year-old Mononoke

sketching it so carefully,

so she wouldn’t forget

that what happened out there

was real.

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