Information

Sunday morning in the yard,
Clouds overhead, Indonesia,
Slow white Asia, drift this way
As if sky was an android phone
On which we studied Google maps
Though in a tick might swipe and scroll
To what that small blue flower’s called
That elbows forward through the grass
Or images of the bird that’s lit
In the pear tree, to better see
The black triangle on its breast
And sunrise under either wing.
As if information came this way,
All of it there is so far,
And more promised if we wait.
But when the sky looks back at us
It pulls our data into it,            
The wide blue gaze refuses nothing,
Every bit that makes us up
Called streaming home to that regard,
Archived, our place in all that’s known,
To be retrieved sometime or not.

The Rapture 

In the big air, the tall air
Over the middle school parking lot
Canada geese in a calling flock
Wheel slow enough for stragglers
To cross the sky, arrive and join.
When they pass above our heads
Their formal hoods and steady breasts,     
The wings they barely need to move
Lift us quick and whirl us on
Up to the deep, home in the blue.
Here we go while here we stand
As if we’re our own parents watching
Their children join a circle dance,
As if we’re children whirling, whirling
While parents hold our coats for us.
What was it we were waiting for,
Postponed again, again, again,
As a Netflix series extends its run?         
This, wasn’t it? This being raised
Within our heavy bodies                             
By unlikely messengers,               
Gathered up to join their flight            
Without abandoning the earth.

Sunday  

1. Sky
Sunday morning walk we’re taken
By the clouds above the high school,
Their luxury, their slow migration
Calling for us to join the drift
To somewhere with no floors or ceiling,
Nothing human that needs doing,
No more staying
Only going on and on
And we go, everything we carried
Dropped, and the weightless lift
Past all rooflines,
What we wanted, who we were,
All let go in glad departure.
But clouds are wet that seem so airy,
Catch light but hold no heat, and in them
No more seeing, for all that height,
Nothing in that white but dark. 

2. Forest
But there’s still time, time to go
To the forest, and each tree
Rooted through mold deep into rock,
And the water gathers, rills, leaps,
This tree and its roots make a seat
And that one a stair, each waterfall speaks
In its own voice, every leaf and wood ear,
And every step we take
Takes effort, here and here and here,
Bones of our feet, ache in our legs
Make memory of the hour, 
Who we’re with, that we are. 

3. Desert
Or we remember not every place
Runs with water and the deser
Is also good, the wide flats
Paved with salt where an ocean lay
Or canyons layered maroon and tan
And worn by long gone rivers and rain,
Carved to look like ancient buildings
Where who lived there once is gone,
And we walk a while in being gone
And savor it in these bodies,
Greet it in these lives

Author’s Biography

Peter is a queer psychotherapist, previously working in community mental health and HIV/AIDS, now in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles. He is the author of two books, Gay Fairy Tales (HarperSanFranciso 1995) and Gay Folk and Fairy Tales (Faber and Faber, 1997). Recent work appears or is upcoming in Katabatic Circus, Kestrel, Ekphrastic Review, Synkroniciti, 1870 Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Gas and BeZine.