by ALHS
to breathe as you breathe is to say as the cloudbeings said,
let us drink of time
so it was that they unsettled the stillness of an ocean, the cloudbeings
on one side, greed on the other and a mountain for a churn
all that is mortal is mortal at once and god, your likeness,
he bore that cloudpeaked mountain on his back as it turned
and shifted in iridescent dreams
you stood also foremost among the cloudbeings
stirring the ocean into foam and it was you, lichened, who walked ashore
with time and other panacean things: your laughter, your song, your breath
to breathe along
so too were you the breathtaking
with feet poised threatening to leave, meting palmfuls of time
for the cloudbeings, and leaving no dregs for greed to greed after
the story shifts in my iridescent dreams in each recitation
a note on simultaneity: in time you will be all of the words in the story
a sky alight with times you have become the sun,
tell me the story one time more perhaps you will be also the ocean and the churn
you will be what it is to breathe
one time more and you might turn to answer greed
ALHS is a poet and critic. She lives and writes on the unceded land of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples.
Headlight Anthology 