From Books Through the Pines, for Ryan

The first time I found you in pink gold and green
my eyes swam in the river
looking for animals from books through the pines
the sun split the spaces between the trees
and there were the wood ants on their mounds
the pine cones on the floor
the sound of the woodpeckers

jumping from the springboards of paradise...
I beheld the forest
its air full of motes and magic
each great tree an extension of my fingers
shedding their pink for orange scales
and waving dusky blue needles
against the clouds
and the mountains
reduced to two dimensions by distance.
In you I once found misery
in the indifference and exactness of a knife

laying in my primitive hands
the weave of my shirt
the fabrics and surfaces
that I'd dragged here
clinging to me...

Do not count me by these things

I am with the world's poor

the untouched tribes

the rain falls on my skin

I fear the city

I loathe the spread

I'm caught up in it

by mistake

an error

it's not me...
And once I thought myself untouchable

and slipped crossing the river

running fast and deep

cold from the mountain snow

thawing quickly in the April sun

dragged under up to my chest

I drove my toes into the stones

one breath like I'd dropped it

and clambered out betrayed.

Only in my brother did I find joy
when I saw his feet from under the pine
where I lay drying in the sun
he came to me as a saint
from nowhere two days early
walked from Bodh Gaya
eating the flesh of the Sacred Fig
found me his brother
crouched in the moss
heart wide open
shivering
and held out his hand
to one who has never felt such love
as then and there...
In our youth our father was the land

our mother the sea

and today they have found their places

apart

linked unimaginably through us.

Tomorrow we will walk around the lochs together

our silent thoughts moving like glaciers,

or songbirds in the Scots pines.