Self-Portrait Disguised as Stones

After Gila River, a site of Japanese American incarceration

1.

      Were I there          under eave and uncrushed

  set in some        dust corner after desert snow --

  Were I a riparian spec

alkaline and present       aventurine redressed

      mountain chip, moss-rose --

                            What could I speak?

    I might have soaked        secret after secret

          seen the spark birthing seed

birthing daughter and sons     their unwired love --

I might have drank joy from the blameless

           seen meeting of the gambler

and survivor of addicts    two laboring landless --

        For years I was restless

              amethyst disguised as ash rock

  freckled, forgotten         noctilucent daikon


           I was afraid of my face

2.

Do you walk through constructed silence
	arousing memory? 
	Do you follow the long-limbed 

beetle around the ancestral mountain
	arresting memory? 	

Of Capricorn and Gemini
of nebula and violin: 
	one daughter of queens wandering creosote. 

Of Milky Way and wonder throne
of swallow tail and milkweed: 
	hearty grass and omen ants gather. 
	Birds trill electronic. 
		A cloudless sulphur catches light.

Let me down slowly.

3.

I was there. I was restless--
	my mind, a body
	my body sweeping life's cells in a single direction
	over Earth's face--
		sea freedom for centuries
		a chemical fist unfolding in the fescue.

Desire did this:
	fertile dust and diatom seas
	forest lung and red rock--
		a roiling grace.

You die. I collapse into the hollow before language:
	knot in your father's throat in Hiroshima
	everlasting rock monument
	writing on the crane's wing
	folded by the dead one 
			under a future sky--

4.

I'm single stone with dual souls:

	two, then three

handfuls of rock-shard under dim
	
			immense heaven.


One conflict illuminates the other:

	our hexagonal suffering in sky time

our moonstone super enemies.


I'm talking about the garden now:

	how it stared down the wolf-heart, won.


Roots hold onto each other

	uncapsized under summer soil.

Sheer history-- 

		traveling underground eros.


One cross holds the sea-dogs at bay

	the other archives light.


Un-beast me. Pack of dogs
	
	take my palm. 


	Open me to the secret memory.