Calculating a New Vocabulary of Joy

We multiply families of ravens,
stun words in cool gusts,
then lift, winged heat. I ramble
mathematically, waiting for a language,
croaking, ready to give up everything tertiary.

What primal number,
what rough cut square footage
expresses itself in our shared gaze?

What equals one mountain plus one man plus one woman
plus three habaneros sliced thinly, coughing steam,
sex and gasoline, gratitude dividing
into soft apologies to one tree for sinking nails
to hold prayer flags and all sentient beings?

How do two people become
one home in a flash? Quite simply.
The sky calculates it all like this:

One crisp ponderosa accepts you. I notice.
We sniff its neck. The moon squints
through its 2 am limbs upon our tangled sleep.
One cabin, our larger body, stirs
under twenty fingers. Its engine spills and fumes.

One decomposing granite hallway
takes our four-legged gait like seed,
grunts us new. Like this, teeth smiling.

We might be two parallel streams and the earth
is giving way between.
We can’t account rationally for the speed
of our lives’ glorious destruction
or the volume of water tearing through.

The solution is in the weep, the wound,
the rocky crack. Guess how
the clever juniper grew where it grew.

2013