Richard Powers

Nowhere

It was almost black,
the river serpentine—
everything looked like it was
coated in silver, much bigger
than he imagined, as if
the surface was somehow
a river of birds. The moon
was right there, and every
part of it, calling.

It’s an ancestral memory,
a sound he remembers
from before he hears it.

How dark the water was,
prehistoric, too loud,
flung forward
as the wave broke.
The sky slips from peach
to garnet to blood.

Who can say?
Life is long out here.

Laura at dVerse asked us to alternate lines from one page in each of two books and construct a patchwork poem. My sources were:

“The Echo Maker” by  Richard Powers, page 422

“Duplex” by Kathryn Davis, page 152

Here

here s

“The best and easiest way to get a forest to return to any plot of cleared land is to do nothing–nothing at all, and do it for less time than you think.”
–Richard Powers, The Overstory

here magnetic s

The Oracle really got into my head today–I’ve been thinking of Richard Powers’ book about trees ever since I started reading it.  Is it possible for humans to exist in tree-time, tree-space, way above and beyond the petty grievances and obsessions of their current lives?  It seem to me if we want to survive as a species, we have to try.

here close up s

Breathe   listen
come home–grow like trees
into seed
song and then
forests–be roots blanketing
every wandering

path with wild
tendrils of green sun–
feel the earth
following
always between    belonging
to river stone light