A simple thing, identity.
Rising from the store of memory
it slips us into circumstance
as smoothly as a swimmer enters stream.
While these eyes perceive light and shade
mind sorts through the past,
connects the dots tattooed by sensing,
imbues experience with value, meaning,
history. Creates
a perfect fit.

If one is not aware
the present can be devoured whole
leaving no space to savour
the immanence of mystery.
Bits and pieces of this layered life
caught in a slip-stitch;
the disparate linked by threaded beliefs,
disappointments, resentments, refusals
to attend, pretending we continue,
extend the past, make passage smooth
by paving the way with what we've already been.

I imagine myself a Gastropoda,
a walking belly. Behind me,
beneath me, where I interact,
a thin stream of limus,
thick slippery mud, exudes.
(The disparate linked by slime.)
I slip along, my soft body
protected from depressions,
rocks, sharpnesses, by the effusion
of a dream.
Slipping on a self, into identity.

Occasionally slipstream, I join
a greater flow, often slipshod,
unmanaged, without purpose.
Without light.

Without light, the slime has little effulgence.
In the absence of light, rainbows cannot shine.

2.

In the book store, I am
reading the statistics
about adoptees and their birth parents,
how it happens that they don't
always feel connected when they meet, don't
want to know, have to work
at relating to the stranger
than familiar person, the call to intimacy
not what they choose to hear.

(the person who,
herself has never let go
of that enlivening, used it
like a talisman, a beacon,
a silent prayer that might suddenly
split through the skin
rupture landscapes
with its longing.)

They already have a mother, parents,
a birthright, the wrong
slipped over, fitted in with
some other home, backyard swing.
Circumstance doesn't allow
all seeds to ripen.
The yearning for acceptance
doesn't always find
soil in which to grow.
Cultivated beds and walkways
may be long established, the inhabitants
grown accustomed to their ground.

In the poetry section I open
Lorna Crozier, Bronwyn Wallace,
buy them, take them home
to dine at my table.
Wiping greasy thumb on pantleg
I turn a page to find
someone coming home.

3.

Perhaps. Uncertain time.
Neither here nor there.
Uncharted, unremembered,
a quicksand of inconsequence
breeding ghosts from desire.

4.

In the dark time
of the year, in Bolivia,
when night extends into the afternoon,
peering from an icy room
through narrow windows, into streets
below, whole families pass
with firewood strapped to backs
bent over with the weight.

Children of the llanos, arms stretched
around bundles of twigs and brush,
are pulled in the wake of their parents',
uncles', cousins' passage.
Hump-backed with branches, logs, they
converge at pre-determined sites.
Everyone in these low-land plains
transformed by wood and shadow
strides, stumbles, slumps on humanlegs
beneath broken tree forms.

Along the pathways, roads and tracks
across the altiplano,
throughout the valleys and cliffs
of the yunga, the streets of
Oruro, Potosi, from La Paz to Tarija
wood is gathered, piled high.
Over the entire country
great pyres are formed.
Waiting for their time.

The sun, in procession, stretched
like a sling-shot, taut,
at its furthest drift from earth:
a dangerous time. Sun pulled to the point
of breaking free, careening off, lost
to us, we could be swallowed by the black
maw of frigid space, drift forever into darkness
bereft of time or form; the planet cracked
by cold, breath could freeze the veins.

Then the fires are lit, the entire country
beaded with flames, Lake Titicaca ringed
with fire, a signal sent
to call the sun, recall
the light, reclaim a place, remember
ourselves in life.

Lighting fires in my heart
from the debris of fallen states,
(perception of form, shade and light
darkened by the shadows of despair
in my mind, weighing me down)
I gather memories of the light.
Above me, light recalled returns me.
Turning, I am grateful for the people of Bolivia,
for the poets who struggle the deadwood words into flame,
grateful for my teachers, all beings my mothers,
who nourish me by remembering
in dangerous times, to call to the light.

5.

Leaving the track of what has been
means letting go of easy passage;
takes us into those places
once marked on maps
"Here Be Monsters".

Now the light grows in intensity.
Differentiation fades
in the glare.

In this desert, follow stars.
Travel at night. The shifting tides
of sand and light
can undo logic, set sanity adrift.
Search for the Sisters, walk
behind the furrows of the Bull.
Wrap yourself well in folds of fabric
to contain the mind. Extend your senses;
send the heart to scout
for tracks only heart will know.
Pray the single burning prayer
that brings each hunter home.

In this way, if your time
is graced by willingness, water
will be found, for our thirst, and
we will drink.
Here
from this parched and stony ground
water, struck from rock, will spring.
A thousand throats will bloom
from our sorrows, rasping praise.
A thousand blistered lips grow moist
and sing. For our thirst
we will drink
here.

Less difficult to know
that love, than to stumble endlessly
through undulating sands;
betrayed by what is trusted most, close
at hand. Come here, where
miracles are commonplace:
the smallest nutshell cracks,
taken by surprise.
In the face of beauty,
surrounded by stars, reflected
in the pool I see
you, swimming through the skies
pursued by water birds.

Selah.
Then dawn arrives, enfolds each star.
Another day takes form from sun's embrace.

C. Kwiat