Poem No. 13: Inclination

Fiercer would be
those parched yet
growing greens
between cement slabs
on ancient rooftops
and the modern walls...

Settlement is talked
of as a colonial enterprise
and it's looked down upon.
But it's not inherently bad;
what would be wrong with
halting that seething commerce
simply by staying put? No one
knows how to stop moving,
even when they're sitting down.
To stay in a house and let
its structure haunt you until
you feel it in your bones.

There are creatures
who are called to move,
move, move. I mean
not to discourage it. Just
to say I am not one of them,
not at this time, not now.
I want to settle, as oil settles
at the top of water, as sand
shifts and settles at the bottom
of the ocean, occasional
currents, stirrings, motions
until the same restful finality.
Silt to sediment, deposited to
be broken down, ever finer.

Oh! But it's wise to know when to move. When you see a scene no longer needing assistance, or an incapability to rectify your place in a scene. Once, in a poorer part of the world, I stopped in my tracks in the middle of a back road alleyway. I could not fathom what I was seeing when I was seeing it: a massive host of black flies buzzing, loudly, on the ground, like a black hole. Finally my eyes penetrated them. They were eating, feeding on a dead dog on its side, no longer able to be recognized as a dog but for its bony legs, ears, doggish shape. I stared, my heart caught in my throat. I couldn't speak, not really, for a few days. Places like that where people forget to stop, look, and notice the tragedy hidden in plain sight... places like that ensure that perhaps there is reason to move, move, move...