Water - Earth - Wind

Sacramento

Watering hole for the masses.

Mecca for those dirty, deprived, and dying of thirst.

Headwaters.

Where the river's endless belly sprouts.

I cup my hands and worship you.

Supple yet sharp,

chill biting at my esophagus.

Here I met a gypsy couple.

Disciples of the road,

preachers of simplicity.

Their soles were caked with clay,

red as the saturated sunset I saw the night before.

But once they dipped their callused feet into the water,

the scarlet sediment was washed away.

They were made clean.

I followed their example,

and hands first lowered myself into the pool of circulating water.

That day I rid myself of a violent weekend at my Grandmothers,

a test I cheated on in fifth grade,

and a cat that my brother and I killed the summer before he joined the Marines.

Raw and vulnerable I look at the gypsies and know, as they know

that the only rebirth worth anything,

is one that takes place at the mouth of a great river,

where the water is still in its infancy and cold as stone. 

Topsoil

Gritty, damp, sweet.

Protecting every plants vascular system,

keeping the woods insulated and nourished.

As if the entire growth is deep in REM,

there's no waking the dead.

I tread through the sleeping saplings,

deaf even to my footsteps.

There I collected a handful of earth,

the color of my father's eyes.

I scooped it up from the forest floor,

it was full of twigs and small leaves.

Nothing like the processed bags of soil my Mother purchases at Home Depot.

Perfect in it's non-conformity.

I traveled with it safely wedged in the crease of my palm

and planted it under my bedroom window.

Like a dream catcher fertile sediment captured all sound,

all vibrations.

Cloaking me in that same silence that lulled all the redwoods to sleep. 

Arch

Leggo castle made real,

shaped of sand and stone.

It melts into the sky,

the only divider being that ledge and endless fall.

The wind speaks freely above the arch,

it does not cower here in the wild.

Instead it takes the place of my hair,

pushing it backwards, caressing my face.

I'm walking with the birds up here.

Hovering above my shoulder they wait,

for a recycled gust of air, a bread crumb.

They show me their customs, the art of flight

and in return I leave half a sandwich and a strand of hair.

I was always taught to leave behind an offering.

Beneath the dome the air is motionless.

It doesn't dance around me,

but instead rests above the ground.

There are no windsurfers down here.

Desperate to return to the world of fluttering feathers and foliage,

I drag my body up the rock formation,

back to the restless air above.