Potlatch Ontology

Only what you’re willing to give away reveals itself as worth selling. Though at a given moment your need to sell may be acute, even absolute, it is the strength of your desire to escape the calculus of gain that alone can redeem the artifact. That is the kiss from the maker’s lips that can breathe life into an otherwise soulless vessel. Not a corpse—which once gave freely of its energies—but something less. A doll, a mannequin, a simulacrum. However beautiful and malleable to the purchaser’s intent, the unwilled given can never be more than an effigy of value.

I sold it. Gladly. But if I hadn’t—hadn’t had to—I would have given it away. It needed to reach others.
          To this point the exchange is still tolerable.

Evening Gifts

Evening Gifts

The rose flames stupendously, orange suns bursting from
              the tightened buds
Making immaculate declaration of the soil’s innocence;
While the bones, weary of life’s perfection, lie down
in sun and in shade, stretching and scattering themselves
              with languorous abandon,
Each limb of cleanest white embracing the tarnish, the
needful green-gold staining of the dirt.

Cicada Vows

I burrowed deep
When darkness came
And I could not see
To find my own

I will not wake
Till light returns
Till then I’ll grow
In dream-rich sleep

And now I blink
And draw fresh breath
Though light be half
What I knew below

I’ll blare at green
While a new dark forms
And thrive as I can
Till it’s time to dive

Still Life with Woodcut, I Ching Mug, Murakami Novel, Milk Crate, Chair Arm, and Mounted Butterflies

You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. —Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Communities

...a deeply mysterious fact. You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it.
—Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

A Cold Melody

Tit for Tat
makes a cold melody:
You cherish me this
and in close harmony
I tender you that—

Heart’s true cadence we miss.

Refugee