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Here on the peninsula letting one’s hair down
has its own apotheosis,

part of a communal unconsciousness bridging Parmenides and Jung
with Rosa Luxemburg’s fashionable visit to escape commodity fetishism

and beat one’s own laundry on stones again—
time slows long enough to dry and to try to find time to dawdle

naked in shallows, as the sight in a movie
of a dugout canoe filled with red feathers.

Just rattling on about it will do the trick, staging more
with candles and incense, honoring not one or a few gods,

but anything that holds a tune,
even in pentatonic scales that seem to have holes in them.

dimes sent spinning undermine conversation. Word of mouth
does not alleviate the gaps, will not reinvent history,

a process—yes, a oneness—no. As if it were more sincere
to keep noses to grindstones found with us one day,

like the comfortable queen-sized bed
your friends have always dreamed you of having,

more impetus to work, go west or east
to seed in the open air of the internet,

planting roots, flashing lights in the landscape
of all the rules attuned to and invented

as we go along watching the turning of leaves,
trespassing forward from fuzzy beginnings.

(Tacoma 2003)