Not all stars are white.

Some are greens that feed the herd—
birth yellows that call
bees and birds to hum,
then wither to brown,
yet still,
they feed the earth.

Not all stars are far.

Some are voices behind,
whispering, Good morning, sir,
a knife and a quiet light,
sharpening a face—
brightening a day.

Not all stars are five.

Some have fins—
tickling rivers to dance.
Some have claws,
scratching songs
from ceilings and walls–
the wild notes of life.

Fingers and hues—
not the same,
but they stitch
different,
unequal tales—
each one
a match
for the great eye.

Palm on Sunday.

The Vatican grip
never curved an African smile.

We stride out the cathedral
into fierce blue heat,

where no pew tears feet from earth,
where sun slaps backs already scarred by toil.

No holy book—
just truth leaking out of bark.
No pages, just sap.

No priest spinning fear of unseen beings—
just a tapper cracking wood,
pouring spirit into waiting hands.

We drink—
no hymns,
just breath and noise,
wind wrestling trees
till they laugh with us.

Our altar? A stump—
cradle when we fall.

White wine of the rainforest
sucked from gods’ own veins,
drowns grief faster than sermons.

The gods
scorn coins—
they implore us
to soothe the scorched soil,
to kiss the root
with white wine,
so we sprinkle.

With rivers no longer confined to ground level,
I should grow wings so I can climb the atmosphere,
record the flux of water vapour, and map
that fluvial network, see if it mirrors the one below,
with its pattern blurred by repeated floods,
bleeding into ink blots on the map of the present,
until the sea breaks down our defences and we

acknowledge the forests and fields on the seabed.
I should grow gills so I can track the future
ghosts of today’s children as they set up home
among the giant kelp—those trees swaying in
a breeze of ocean currents. They’ll dance in slo-mo
circles on seagrass meadows, only surfacing
to let the rain wash the brine from their eyelids.

after Why I Have a Crush on You, UPS man by Alice N. Persons

you supply me with all the things I need
even your bad moods create abundance
your daily good-byes when you
turn to night are beautiful
our relationship is complicated
like a few boyfriends I have had
you don’t always bring me joy
(and I have sometimes treated you poorly)
but still here you are
oh, Earth, you rotate and I ride along!
if you can withstand
your current abusive lovers
I will continue to tempt you
with the luscious things you love—
flowers, fruit, happy animals,
trees well-cared for, clear water
you can keep giving of yourself
the minerals and clouds
the mountains and creeks
and like the current man in my life
I will stick it out with you forever
here on you, with you
I’m ready to commit, Earth. I will
love you more than those who
pollute you. I’m serious, Earth.
Do this—come back to me
clean, lush, and eternal

              Tomorrow we can drive around this town
              And let the cops chase us around
              The past is gone, but something might be found
              To take its place
                            -Gin Blossoms

on the cusp we were left to entertain
ourselves summer shadows long

across the trampoline our casual becoming
aerial acrobats in the backyard near the barn

scent of hay and fly-spray our horses cropping
pasture grass occasionally swishing their tails

25 years since we sang Hey, Jealousy
jumping into twilight off-key meaning it

You know it might not be that bad
not yet able to drive bored ready to break

glow-stick bright into next new versions of us
You were the best I’d ever had

as close to reckoning as touching stars not needing
anything but keys and tomorrow on repeat

Enoch walked with God and then God took him ~ Genesis

Behold, the word of the blessing!
That first word banging

In the light—the word the watchman spoke
In Mary’s ear—

More trill than word,

The mating call of poison frogs
Oophaga speciosa.

A word approaching rapture

Sung with honey on my tongue
And a word approaching scribe

Sung as I swallow. I am

His undead seed. I am
His flesh,

His pockmarked hide sunbaked and buried

In siltstone. I am
His scents

The lingering perfume of wormwood
Laced with frankincense

And fornication and I’m migratory—

Naomi, stress placed on the
i — the painted lady

Sipping cosmos, sipping
Mexican sun

Flowers and the scattered blazing stars

Before I lose my husband
And two sons.

I am the lightning behind Carob trees.

That moment both science and scripture
Teach each photon falling on my eyes

To seek

But quiet. So quiet you can only smell it.
Then seconds later

I am thunder

II
Not long after comes a trip back home.
How to our left beyond the bay

The sun was setting, splintering into
A billion shards of light—

A perfectly smooth surface
Would create but one—the three of us

Singing to the radio
Making words up as we go

With everything eventually merging
In a jumbled chorus of I Am…

I Cried, no chance to cry

Or think, or even catch our breath
Becoming golden brown pelicans

Dive bombing through an omnipresent God

I should be writing all this down
And fragrances—

Not salt exactly, but dimethyl sulfide,
Itself a byproduct of bacteria

Digesting phytoplankton and ejecting
Giant cosmic streams of consciousness—

That, to this day defy all explanation
And physical laws,

A blur of bridge suspension
Creating parallaxes between fishing boats

And my new appreciation for Neil Diamond
Singing with our daughter

Like three rare poison dart frogs.
As the song fades.

And as the lived experience of it fades
So slow I barely notice

Heaven leaping from the water.

Walk with me along Nevill Park, past rhododendrons, and eleven Victorian villas
whose cedar trees, with massive limbs,
time-twisted and ever green, ever see
the hasty progression of our species.

Imagine a carriage (not that Mercedes-Benz)
and picture porcelain pots in place of plumbing.
Ignore the years of hemline creep. Embrace past generations.

Exchange today’s for prior wars.
Or contemporary effects, for the dawn, of industrialization.
And here you’ll stand, in say 1853,
beside this very cedar.

Now loose your gaze, high, into its needled canopy.
Breathe: Cedrus Libani.
And consider what –
if anything –
could surprise a tree.

~to Evelyn

Take it, you say,
holding out a small twig
with eight tiny nests affixed to it,
each cup half the size of a Penstemon bloom,
and sitting in them are eggs.

It’s bird’s nest fungi,
decomposing wood,
recycling nutrients,
enriching the soil.

These fungi grow together
but are not communal–
like us,
walking together,
keeping our own counsel.

The eggs, the size of a French lentil,
are not eggs.
They house spores,
and the nest is a splash cup
for watery reproduction.
Raindrops falling in the cup
launch the capsules
up to six feet away.
Then browsing deer carry the spores
to their new habitat.

This bird’s nest fungus
is common all over the world.
But you,
who can tell mosses from lichens
on trees or rocks
or even in the riot of nurse-log growth,
saw your first one today
and pushed me
to take it
and make something of it.

Getting to the dirt is not easy.
Getting back up will be a cranky feat.
Most hikes, I go for nature’s seats–
a log, a large-enough rock,
or a mossy rise in the earth
lifted by a sturdy spruce root–
but I wanted to get all the way down,
to have the length of me lying on the ground,
to feel the backs of my arms, the palms of my hands,
and each finger touching that matchless mattress,
to smell the damp brown smells,
to feel the cold mud,
to twitch against the tickley bug at my waist
now that my shirt is a little pulled up
due to my laborious descent.

On a level with the undergrowth of salal and sword ferns,
snowberries and twinflowers,
I am eye to eyespot with a big brown slug’s upper tentacle.
It’s Arion ater, the bane of my garden, hermaphroditic omnivore,
awful-tasting but edible, slimy and invasive,
in the origin sense of the word.
And so am I.

We meet low on this stolen island.
This chilly land with its ants and beetles,
medicine plants, fish, and game, was the rich place for thousands of years
of Coast Salish people, the Swinomish, Skagit and Samish.
What other plants and creatures were here with them?
What abundance of clean water and shellfish?
What clam gardens?
What cold rivers and salmon?
What relatives?

From where I lie on this ground,
the pale sky is fringed
by western red cedar and hemlock crowns,
shot through with crows chasing an eagle,
and with feathered cirrus clouds of late afternoon
predicting a storm.

Trying to “bring back” dire wolves by modifying gray wolves is like saying you can reach the moon if you jump really high on a trampoline. Maybe you can get an inch closer than you could before. Maybe you can put the trampoline on a platform, too. But you’ll never arrive.
~Riley Black, Slate, April 10, 2025

De-extinction tries

to revive the past, but

today in the wet woods of early spring,
skunk cabbage blooms bright yellow
like construction flags planted for a warning,
spooling out yellow caution tape for miles.

The burn scars on the old-growth Douglas firs
are there for hundreds of seasons.
Lichens hang on for dear life
to the young Hemlock and the ancients.

Although we go with throats aching

almost choked by our own hand

or by a constrictor dropped from a tree,

trailing blackberries show new light leaves,
red huckleberry sport hints of pink,
and full magenta flowers bloom on the salmonberry.

Berries and bears will come this summer.