for the most part

I.
For the most part, we see eye to eye,
as they say.  We agree the moon calls,
being minerally gravitational 
and regularly different, with its craters

and eclipses and influences, its moon rock
and rough stones to be raised from quarries,
its business as usual, as they say.
We agree this watery wet place is 

moved by what we perceive moving us.
Our assent, mutually assured,
for what is it worth, leads us
to rediscover archeology, anthropology,

stardust travels, as known,
and to become known, over years to come,
microbial new truths churning.

II.
You, part watching over not only
me, but also me, part planning
our next supper – bone-in
stewing, simmering, settled in

vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorn,
and onion flavoring the bowl
over rice, our temple and grace –
and part connecting the presence

of every essence manifest,
gelling with fam, with peers,
with whoever and whatever the moment
expects, exuding your interests

through your cheering eyes cheering on,
you reach me.

​III.
But our tasks at hand whelm and unglue
us, swells rising with 
your pulling and ever-pounding
rocky cliffs.  What was your intention,

what were your what-ifs, and how will
you explain it, how explain it now?  How
will you validate the room
in disarray, the room you make

for whom, and for whom and why?  Tell me why 
you make room for them when your room –
your room is in total disarray.  What are you
even thinking?


VI.
What was kept in a bottle, which I
kept in a box somewhere in the attic
or in storage – I could find it if I looked –
is a bottle of volcanic ash from Mount

St. Helen’s, a bottle of ash that I kept.  It has
no real story other than that I kept it
all these decades, all these years,
some bottle I was given as a boy by a

traveling salesman passing through,
who told me something about Mount 
St. Helen’s that hell I can’t remember,
that I don’t ever remember remembering.

But I do remember that bottle whenever 
I see embers falling or think of ash.