Łees’áán yílzhódí  (Even When I Wasn’t Running, I Was Always Running)

 

There were thirty-six hours in a day

garden, art, printing press, parenting, marriage

filled the hours. January well before dawn

 

walking a few hundred feet to the studio

Rubylith flashlight filter, field guide to the stars

the road that is the Milky Way.

 

There was no running here, or

running was running in place

idle, idling, identity clear as a winter night.

 

Stars and satellites fed my hunger

those morning minutes on the below zero

prairie as far from Flagstaff as the Moon.

 

“Łees’áán yílzhódí is one of the Navajo names for the Milky Way. Łees’áán is a specific type of cake that is either baked underground or in an outdoor oven. If you can imagine bits and pieces of the cake and ash being broken off whilst being dragged against something (yílzhódí), then you have the idea behind the name for the Milky Way. It’s as if someone grabbed a piece and dragged it across the sky, leaving the stars and the specks in its wake.”
From: Navajo Word Of The Day:

Łees'áán yílzhódí - Navajo Language (Diné Bizaad) (navajowotd.com)

[RK, 12/5/2020]

 

Tempus Fugit (Leftover Pizza)

 

the train station clock, that tired man

sweeping his way across an inlaid granite floor

thinking about his refrigerated bag lunch

 

packed with a conspiracy of inanimate objects

a misspelled name scrawled on a foam clamshell

the plastic fork from the takeaway

 

I can’t throw away anything, it may

be needed at a future date

thus the need for numerals, numerical

 

order, evenly spaced around this timepiece

shaped like the ensō embossed

on my undated first and only diary

[RK, 12/5/2020]

 

Grail Quest

 

I am looking for that place

that was clearly seen

above a lake formed by a glacier

 

it was that long ago

[RK, 12/5/2020]

 

 

I Have Enough Ink On Paper to Build a Proper Bonfire

 

you toast willow twig pierced words

above an abandoned fire, beside the lake

above your imagination

beside your far off commitments

 

pockets full of winter ashes

[RK, 12/5/2020]

Sideshow (Long-Ago and Only-Slightly-Forgotten)

 

until one day I do forget, names, dates

faces peering from the past during

deep and unfocused meditation

 

creeping up on me, creeping me out

needs and wants clearly evident on

two-dimensional cutouts, soggy

 

from endless rain, the meteorologist

lied like a lamb, bleated social media

messages that were flagged as untrue

 

when the true or verifiable statement is

a dusty jar filled with glass marbles

broken, shards and spheres spilt

 

across suburban beds, I’ve picked out

the dangerous and the innocent, packed

all of it together in another jar

[RK, 12/5/2020]

MMXX (Patiently Waiting For The Others to Arrive)

 

this awkward moment when the trains stop running

away from the platform meadows and fields bloom

broom, sunflower, rye, love-in-idleness

 

a bouquet of wilted numbers, waiting

pulling up the phone app, wondering

if I typed in the correct address

[RK, 12/5/2020]

 

 

Looking for a Way to Stop Looking

keep looking you won’t find it

once you look you can’t look away

even in those nanosecond blinks
you’re looking at it again, reflected

in the mirrors at the back of your eyes

[RK, 12/5/2020]

Running
waves pile up horseshoe
crab shells, crab shells, a
fish skull that won’t stop
stinking, a bucket filled
with shells and stones
 
hard objects sunning themselves
beside rows of patient kale
mustard, collards, arugula
bok choy limber and coy
 
who will win the race?
[RK, 12/5/2020]