Spirits of the Anthropocene
I. Meditation
split-second papercut twinge the smell of cool morning giving way to too hot afternoon a wasp its long legs trailing a beetle scurrying through half-dry grass a beetle a beetle tepid water in the glass as if transformed from crystal to dull earth-water overnight clean sheets and insomnia again turning again the motorcycle rush the ambulance a question it’s a question of minding the day unwinding the cord again again the lilacs again aspen leaves again a beetle just one robin always one robin and airplane insomnia in the light of morning turning to remembrances and every collection it’s never ending and yet when evening rolls itself in again the light each seedling every call and answer across the highway it feels like it might
II. Augury
Swifts riding on the high currents, imperceptible almost over highway rush. Those very swifts with arced wings, they ride and chitter. A pair. Later five. Wheeling away almost before being seen. As if to say.
Droves of night herons crouched and crowding. Their staring eyes, the singular light tassels above their necks decorative but distracting. Distinguished flourish or strange overgrowth? Either way.
One crow aloft and croaking lonely. Wingbeats. One feather missing from its left wing lets through light. This is auspicious. This means.
III. Afterthought
It just came back to me just now, an image of myself alone in Reykjavik in 10:30 pm July twilight. Feeling like a drifter in the empty park, feeling like time was foreign too. Exhausted by driving across a volatile country under the eyes of hidden beings, all that unknown folklore. Marking every place where the land had split itself open, peering into every fissure at ferns growing in the shadow below, finding another waterfall another waterfall beyond the next bend, a-striding moss like the back of a great creature spreading itself over everything and espying fringe of lupines rolling like a wheat field but not gold — all silver and purple in the only hour of bright sunlight at 9:00 pm.
It just came back to me. It just — it was a vision I gave myself. Some other self gave me. I was there in that country trying to read that country, the land, the light, the water. Trying to read.
IV. Invocation
Wights of the lost evening, hear me. You wraiths who follow, pulling night clouds as cloaks about you, pulling shards of glass laden with starlight reflection, pulling shreds of worn-out tires, pulling sighs — follow me now and leave your burdens. Spirits of the Anthropocene, all you hiding in storm drains, in empty subway stations, at the end of the line where cement crumbles to gravel to dirt and weeds overrun — shake off your dust and harken to me. In this hour I have need of you. I have a path to tread. I have a fascination. I have a question.
V. Prophecy
wet wildings of months to come. wild months ahead. weather months, weather ahead. storm. storm water months draining into drought. months of wilderness, miles of months, wilder than the last, each one wilder wider wilderness. wet bewildered months. monthlings. mouthing ahead in the found wild. munch month not much month storm-wet and draining into dry wild. wilding. wider.
